"Boots on the ground". That's the only credible security guarantee that would work
“Boots on the ground. That's the only credible security guarantee that would work, and that Ukraine should accept in return to any kind of agreement they may or may not reach with Russia”.
Interview with Tanja Börzel
Dr. Tanja A. Börzel is a distinguished Professor of Political Science at the Freie Universität Berlin and serves as the Director of the Center for European Integration. She also holds a Jean Monnet Chair and is the Director of the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script" (SCRIPTS) at the same university.
Among her most notable works is “Why Noncompliance: The Politics of Law in the European Union”, which has been instrumental in understanding compliance mechanisms within the EU. Dr. Börzel is a recipient of several prestigious academic awards and has been involved in numerous international research collaborations, underscoring her impact on the field.
Prof. Börzel is a leading German expert in the field of European Studies, particularly recognized for her contributions to governance, institutional change, and compliance within the European Union.
O. Kandyuk: First of all, thank you for agreeing for the interview. It is a pleasure to have such a prominent expert in our project. The last decade has been more than rich in overlapping crises for the European Union. We can mention Covid, Schengen crisis, migration, Crisis of rule of law etc. This has even allowed you to articulate the concept of a “perma-crisis”. But what lessons can the EU learn from that crises and its response that can be used during the current crisis?
T. Börzel: Well, some people say the European integration is driven by crisis and dealing with crisis the EU becomes stronger. Because crises, they are ambivalent. Crises are existential threats, but if you act decisively, you prevent a catastrophe and get out of the crisis.
And I think the EU has been pretty successful in managing these crises. Will this be enough to prevent future crises? That's debatable. But I think it started with the financial crisis, the global financial crisis, then it became a banking crisis, then it became a sovereign debt crisis, and then it became a euro crisis.
But if you look at how the EU managed to get through and the kind of reforms the EU adopted, I think it made the EU stronger, without touching the treaties.
Next crisis is the migration crisis. Again, I mean, not perfect, people have a lot of expectations, but you always have to consider the EU is not a state, it requires the consent of its member states. I always compare it to the United States. The US would have not been able to muster the kind of measures the EU enacted during the refugee crisis, and even more so during the COVID crisis.
It was amazing. For many, it's always too little, too late. But you always have to keep in mind what the EU is actually capable of, and you cannot compare the EU to a national state, particularly not a highly centralized national state.
So, to cut a long story short, what I'm saying is the EU is uniquely positioned to deal with these transboundary crises, so for the EU it's a moment to show its added value, and to use these opportunities, then to move forward with European integration, not by changing the treaties, because we don't have time, but by adopting measures. Member state governments are willing to adopt measures, in crisis, to manage the crisis, to get out of the crisis, to deal with the consequences of the crisis. They would never, ever be willing to compromise without that crisis.
And the final crisises, the energy crisis, the Ukraine crisis, it's the same, right? I mean, sanctions against Russia, 8, 9, 10, 11 packages, even with the votes of Hungary, ultimately, shows how the EU can act, if the member states are willing to act, to upgrade the common interest, and to work together, it's greater, in terms of crisis.
O. Kandyuk: You’ve mentioned that those changes in EU, this outcomes after Russia’s war can be described as ‘more cooperation among the member states rather than more centralization at the EU level’ Don’t you think that unity and more cooperation among member states will anyway lead to more centralization of power by the end of the day?
T. Börzel: But why should it? I mean, there is an implicit bias, not only among pundits, journalists, but also among scholars, that more Europe, a stronger Europe, always means more power for the European Union, more power for the Commission, more power for the European Parliament, less control for the member states, through majority voting.
Apart from the fact that we have majority voting in a lot of areas already, we have also seen the limits of majority voting, if member states lack the willingness to work together to solve problems. There is no evidence that supranational institutions, that reduce the control member states have, of what is decided at the European level, increases their willingness to cooperate. Quite on the contrary, because of the right and left-wing populists, the Eurosceptics, giving the EU more power and reducing the control of member state governments at the EU level backfires big time, because it fuels the Euroscepticism mobilized by right and left-wing populist parties.
So I would actually say we need more Europe, but not equate more Europe with more centralization.
O. Kandyuk: Speaking about the influence of the war on the European Union. Can this common threat change the Union? I mean, the perceived security threat has been asymmetrical (It was quite different for Vilnius and Lisbon). And of course, the member states can rely on the safety net provided by NATO. But do you think that NATO’s reliability could be called into question, especially in light of the recent election results in the United States? Could such a situation push member states toward deeper integration, particularly or at least in the military sphere?
T. Börzel: You read the article by Dan Kelemen and Kate McNamara, where they essentially argue that war makes states.
I'd be very careful with his argument. Also Frank Schimellfennig wrote a response, and he is right by arguing that this war is not a direct threat to the European Union.
I mean, as much as solidarity we show with Ukraine, Ukraine is not in the European Union, so there is still the danger that the member states at some point will throw the Ukraine under the bus, as they've done it before, and going to come to some kind of agreement with Putin – have a neutral Ukraine, whatever, some kind of solution.
Why? Because Russia is not attacking the European Union, and Putin, he's a lunatic, but he's not crazy. He will not attack, also because all the member states are in NATO, and even with Trump, if Russia attack a NATO member, that would mean a completely different world, but Ukraine is not a NATO member.
So, what I'm saying is that threat to war, that sort of unifying effect of war that we observe throughout history is not immediate enough to the European Union and to create a kind of Hamiltonian moment, not only with regard to centralizing the fiscal power, but also military power. I don't think it's going to happen.
O. Kandyuk: I didn't have this question written, but in this case, obviously, Ukraine won't be a member of NATO, at least until the war goes on, and basically for some time after. What could be the option for the security guarantees then?
T. Börzel: See, this is the thing. A lot of people favor a kind of Finlandization of Ukraine, but they don't see that this can only work with the security guarantee of the West, even if Ukraine agrees to give up territory, or accept the referendum. It will not work without the West, the European Union, at least giving a security guarantee that if Russia dares to attack the rest of Ukraine, again, they will have to deal with the EU directly.
Otherwise, I don't think how Ukraine could agree to any kind of peace treaty with Russia. I mean, that would be suicidal, because we know from Putin, you don't even have to assume that he is an aggressive imperialist. His political survival hinges on the immediate neighbors of Russia not becoming liberal democracies.
Because liberal democracies, as we know, are more prosperous, they are more free, and they are more peaceful than non-democracies. So, Putin has a country that is authoritarian, that has a resource-dependent economy.
I think that's what's driving him, at least as much as trying to build a narrative to legitimate his rule. We've seen it time and again, whenever one of the neighboring countries of Russia made steps towards more democracy, Russia tried to destabilize this country. That won't go away.
So, even if you cut Ukraine in half, as long as the rest of Ukraine would continue to pursue to become a liberal democracy and a member of the European Union, Putin will continue to destabilize the country. So, that's why it needs a security guarantee. Now, the question is, how do you do this? The cheapest way would be NATO membership, because Putin has painstakingly avoided so far to mess with NATO? He's not completely irrational. He wants to survive. But NATO membership is not in the cards, not only because of Trump. Germany would never, ever, ever, ever do it.
We had the chance once, and it was Germany and France that killed the prospect of a NATO membership for Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova in 2008, I believe, right? At the Bucharest Summit. So, they're not going to do this. So, what is the alternative? Security guarantees by individual states. But they need to be credible. Remember, Second World War? France and Britain had given Poland a security guarantee. They didn't stop the Germans, and they declared war on Germany, but they didn't attack.
Anyway, so I think it needs to be credible, and the only way to do it would be to put boots on the ground. I think that's the only credible security guarantee that would work, and that, from a normative point of view, Ukraine should accept in return to any kind of agreement they may or may not reach with Russia.
O. Kandyuk: In other case it will be Budapest memorandum 2.0
T. Börzel: Exactly.
O. Kandyuk: In one of your recent work you wrote, I quote: “The problem of the EU's limited capacity to act does not lie primarily in the weakness of its fiscal and coercive power, but rather in member states prioritizing their national self-interests over shared goals”. But I think that the time when nation-states rise above their self-interests if it ever comes, it won’t be any time soon. Does this mean we shouldn’t expect an “ever closer Union” until then?
T. Börzel: Upgrading of the common interest, right? I mean, it shouldn't be the national but the European interest. This is the kind of way Trump approaches international politics. “Making America great again” for him means putting national interest first and national interest conflict with the US international commitments. I don't think that's necessary the way the Europeans look at it.
Because we've seen a lot of upgrading of the common interest. The sanction packages against Russia costs significant also for Germany.
The member states have their short-term national interests but European interests are long-term national interests. The idea of the European integration is that certain problems cannot be solved by individual states only. You need to act jointly.
Migration, climate change, there are so many issues. So the problem is that the costs are short-term the benefits are more mid-term, long-term. I think you can actually explain that to Europeans because Europeans have had more than 70 years of experience that working together at the European level actually secure peace, prosperity and security in Europe. But the politicians don't do that. So the problem is not so much the people. I think the majority of the people will be persuaded, politicians just have to do this.
Coming back to the point I made originally, institutions help upgrade common interests but they don't make member states upgrade the common interests. Thus simply by changing to majority voting won't get member states to support something they cannot sell back home. So you need to find other ways, right? And we've been able to do it.
O. Kandyuk: To continue the topic, you support the idea of widening without deepening. That the EU can widen its membership while maintaining its current depth of integration, arguing that previous enlargements have demonstrated this capability. But don’t you consider deepening is something desirable for the evolution of EU. And don’t think that Brussels can perceive current situation as the unique chance to get more powers?
T. Börzel: I mean, we define deepening as more centralization at the European level, transferring more national sovereignty rights to the European Union and deciding on the exercise of these rights by majority voting. That's what usually is understood by deepening. And there is no evidence, really no evidence that this leads to better policies.
And I would actually say, now with the changing situation in the member states, it has the opposite effect. Because in this country [Germany] you have 30% who support either a left or a right wing populist party that are both equally Eurosceptic. So, what would happen if we now move forward in order for Ukraine to become a member of the European Union, we need to cede more sovereignty to the European Union, which for them means less democracy.
What do you think they're going to do in elections? And what do you think people will vote for? People already feel disenfranchised. They don't feel they have control anymore about things that happen in their daily life. They don't feel that their vote makes much of a difference because they are told all the important decisions are taken by the courts, by the central banks, by the European Union.
All institutions that are not directly accountable, they're not elected democratically and they're not accountable directly to the people. That's what the populism is all about. So let's get rid of all these institutions and the European Union that taking back control was the battle cry of the Brexiteers.
And it is the illusion that if countries take back the control of their borders and of their money, all the problems will go away. And a lot of people believe that. Let's kick the migrants out, let's not let them in again and get back control of our borders, get back control of our money and Germany will be fine again.
That is of course not supported by any evidence. Look at Switzerland and look at the UK. Switzerland never ceased control over its borders and its money. Britain got it back and they also have big problems also with right and left-wing populism. So it's not going to work. But that's the narrative.
So what I'm saying is talking about giving the EU more competences, more control over our economy, over our borders, over whatever, could backfire big time and could actually mean the end of the European Union as we know it. So I'd be very careful.
O. Kandyuk: But the growth of populism is happening anyway. Brexit happened even without the strengthening of might of Brussels.
T. Börzel: But it was a major argument: taking back control. And who has taken the control? The EU. That was the key argument.
I would be careful. I don't see the need for more power to the EU because the EU has proven effective or ineffective not depending on the competences it had. It depends on the pressure the EU is facing. The members of the EU have been perfectly capable to act as one if they faced a common crisis.
They perceived as a common crisis and they felt they can only solve the crisis by acting together. That's what it needs.
O. Kandyuk: Let's talk a little bit about the coming enlargement. In some of your works you’ve mentioned, that the new member states from Central and Eastern Europe that joined in 2004-2007 have integrated surprisingly well contrary to some concerns. We may also hear some sceptical concerns this time. How do you think will this enlargement be as successful as previous?
T. Börzel: One of the reasons why there were no major disruptions as a result of that accession of 12 more member states had something to do that these countries pretty much complied with the Copenhagen criteria.
I mean, we can talk about the level if we use the three Copenhagen criteria to compare the performance of some of the old member states but what I'm saying is it if the accession countries are ready to join the EU. Ukraine Moldova and Georgia and actually the majority of the West Balkan countries are nowhere close to where the Central Eastern European countries were when joined in 2004 and 2007.
So to be fair we can talk about geopolitical or other reasons why we should not insist on substantial compliance with the Copenhagen criteria but compliance with the Copenhagen criteria we argue and we find was the condition for deepening and widening not affecting the EU's capability to act without previous deepening. So widening worked without deepening because the new member states had pretty much complied with the Copenhagen criteria before they joined and that won't if we insist on Copenhagen with Ukraine Moldova and Georgia they're not going to join in the next years.
O. Kandyuk: Actually it was one of my next questions. The current geopolitical situation, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, creates the enlargement dilemma. I mean, it creates the urgency for enlargement but also presents challenges in terms of preparedness for both the EU and candidate countries. Is there any solution of this dilemma? How can the EU balance speed and preparedness in the accession process?
T. Börzel: I think there is a chance to say accession is a process so I think it was super important to offer the three countries a membership perspective. It was a huge step but did we have to open the accession negotiations with countries not fulfilling the criteria other countries had to fulfil to open accession negotiations?
I'm not sure because these countries haven't felt yet the full effect of economic integration with the EU. Their economies are not competitive, period. A lot needs to change and the good thing is that enlargement offers not only money but also instruments in terms of capacity building, but that takes time. This is a process of 10-15 years not because EU doesn’t want them but because they're not ready to join. If they join their economies would be destroyed and they would have social disruptions with political consequences.
So I really believe it is important to see accession as a process and that process needs to be credible and that's a problem with some of the Western Balkan countries but Ukraine isn't there. The part of Moldova occupied and so is the part of Georgia – that's a completely different situation than what we had this little territorial dispute between Croatia and Slovenia or Cyprus that have a deeply frozen conflict. But here you have a country that occupies a substantial part of these states that has no interest in these countries joining the EU and trying to undermine it. So I don't think these countries will join any time soon before these issues are solved so let's look at it as a 10-15 year process.
Then let's start with security! First give these countries a security guarantees because that's what most people care about. Georgians voted for the “Georgian Dream” because they are scared to death of a war and rightly – Russia has occupied a third of their territory. So give them a security guarantees and then work on the economic and the rule of law issues and be consistent but make sure that they meet the accession criteria for their own good and I believe if you give them what they want most – a security guarantee – that might actually help them accept the fact that they won't join the EU tomorrow.
And then the other thing is partial membership: give these countries access to certain parts of the EU. There are different ways: we have differentiated integration, we have the European research area, we have Schengen, we have various schemes. So there are ways of associated membership or staged membership, there are different concepts on the table. “We need to be in the European Union tomorrow” approach not going to work
O. Kandyuk: But you heard representatives of the Balkan countries that they don't want to be the “second hand members”? And what would you do with the social moods in these countries?
T. Börzel: Well, let think about Bulgaria and Romania. They joined in 2007 just to discover they are not part of the Euro, they are not part of Schengen. They were excluded from major parts of the policies – they are “second class member states” still to the very day. So what is the difference?
O. Kandyuk: But then you need to explain it to the population of these countries.
T. Börzel: Well, that's what a stage or partial membership needed for. We give them access to parts of the EU where they qualify. There is no point in giving these countries access to the single market because they will be crushed. They are not competitive and this is not in their own interest. So I think there are ways to explain it but it would take politicians on both sides to talk to their population. It's in our own interest that countries to join and we want them to join but we want them to be ready to join and we are going to help them to be ready but don't push it because you have seen what happened in Hungary and Poland for example. Some of the disruptions caused by the integration of the EU – social inequality, economic inequality has decreased between member states but within member states it has actually increased and that is something you need to take into consideration. That explains partly why right wing populist parties have been also successful in Eastern Europe where the European Union was much more popular than in some of the West European countries and where people are at least as supportive of liberal democracy and market economy as in some of the Western EU member states
O. Kandyuk: And the last question will be about scenarios. Thinking about two - three possible scenarios of Ukrainian integration what options do you have in mind?
T. Börzel: Well, it's not what I think is going to happen and it's also not what I think should happen it's what could happen if member states had the political willingness to make it happen. So one good thing about the US election actually is that the elections were peaceful, the power transition will be peaceful and Trump doesn't have to dismantle democratic institutions because he controls them for the next two years: he has the Senate, he has the House of Representatives and even the Supreme Court. So the good thing for us is that with Trump we can no longer rely on the US. We don't know what Trump will do, so it might be the final wake-up call for the Europeans to act together. It could create the pressure necessary for some member states.
Tusk is pursuing that idea of a coalition of the willing among the European member states. And that might actually have a bandwagoning effect, some other member states might actually think, the more participants, the lower the cost. So, joining forces and putting boots on the ground. That would be the security guarantee. That is one scenario.
I'm not so sure whether they will be able to do that, but what they could do is at least do what the “NextGenerationEU” scheme did – authorize the Commission to lend money on the international financial markets to finance weapons for Ukraine. And, since it's no longer German weapons, its weapons bought by the European Union and provided to Ukraine, and the EU is not a member of NATO, allow using it long range and attack targets in Russia. That would be, I think, a realistic scenario they could do that, because it wouldn't cost money right away.
That would get us off the death break debate we've had in Germany, which actually brought the coalition to its final end. I mean, that was the straw that broke the camel's back, I think. At least that's how Scholz framed it. I think he wanted to use this as an opportunity to get out of the death break. It didn't work.
But there is an issue, right? At the moment, it's a zero-sum game. Do we support Ukraine, or do we build affordable housing in Germany? Do we secure our pension system? It's terrible, but that's what it's going to be. And if we don't issue some kind of euro bonds, it will be the same debate at the EU level with the multi-annual financial framework.
There's not enough money in the bank, so you need to bring in new money. Borrow it jointly and pay it back in five years, six years or ten years from now, when none of these governments that agree to the borrowing join debt. And that is, I think, a feasible scenario.
Security guarantees, joint security guarantees is another scenario, which is feasible, probably less likely. But these are the two things. And again, I don't think the European Union will compromise on moral cause. And I also think they shouldn't. Because without security guarantees, It makes no sense. Even if you will start compromising on, it will take four, five years, six years. And in the meantime, what are you going to do with Putin, right? So we need short-term solutions. And accession is a long-term process. We start with the short-term solution for the security situation, and I think that will facilitate the whole accession process for the years to come.