Interview
“If Europe remains an appendage of the US, it will become an insignificant part of the world”
With the Ukraine war, anti-Russian sanctions, the economic downturn and US-China tensions, Europe seems to be once again engulfed in a major crisis. The level of integration that the Old Continent has reached once again calls for a pan-European rather than a “national” way out.
German researcher, writer and publisher Hauke Ritz has been analyzing Germany, Russia and West-Russia relations for more than 15 years. Ritz says that this work dates back to 2007, when he began to realize that in the future there would be a strong geopolitical confrontation, if not war, between the US and Russia. “And once you understand that,” he says, ”it’s hard to find a more important topic.”
This issue, the German author says, has “to some extent taken over” his life. In order to grasp the “deeper causes” of this tension, he says, he began learning the Russian language and visiting Russia.
One of Ritz’s most striking theses is that the concept of “the West” and “Europe” do not coincide. For him, “the West” refers to the post-World War II order and is clearly the name of US hegemony over Europe. “Europe”, on the other hand, is a continent that dates back thousands of years, a continent of both peace and war, a continent of Enlightenment, revolutions and Reformation, but never ruled by the hegemony of a single power, an oasis of multipolarity, culturally united but politically separate, a place of balance of power…
Hence, when Europe finds itself again, free from the “Western” hegemony of the last 75 years, it will not only become one of the poles in a “multipolar world”, but will also enter a “multipolar” era within itself. How will this happen and through whom? Whether Rtiz has an answer to this is up to the reader.
Hauke Ritz’s new book: Vom Niedergang des Westens zur Neuerfindung Europas [From the Decline of the West to the Reinvention of Europe] To order: https://mediashop.at/buecher/vom-niedergang-des-westens-zur-neuerfindung-europas/
First of all, I didn’t refer to Oswald Spengler in the book because I think the decline we see today is a very different kind of decline. At that time, the West as we know it today didn’t really exist. We will come back to this fact later. I just want to point out that today we are seeing the collapse of the West at a tremendous pace in many areas, and we get the impression that it is really accelerating year by year, month by month, and it is becoming very visible.
Compare the current situation with 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down. At that time, most of Eastern Europe and even the Soviet republics were influenced by the West, its products, its music, its way of life, its model of civilization. The same was true for many countries in the south, in the Global South and in the east. At that time, the West was the only manifestation of modernity in the world.
After the Soviet Union collapsed and the system of socialist states dissolved, the West had a kind of monopoly on modernity, on the interpretation of the modern world. And everyone wanted to be connected to this world, whether it was through movies, through products, or by emigrating to a Western country. The West also had the image of democracy, of a just, rich and prosperous society, of innovation.
Now look at what the West stands for today. For sanctions, for war, for strange ideologies like the LGBT movement… which is causing heads to shake not only in the Global South and the East, but also in the West itself. So the Western world has lost not only its moral superiority, but also its soft power, its charm.
And not only that. We no longer see the interpretation of modernity in modern China, we started to see modern India, and Russia has also come back as a great civilization. So the West is in a very different situation now, and the loss of the appeal of its status as a model of civilization is something that I think is too serious to be repaired in a short period of time.
That’s what I always use: Western world. Of course, the opposite term that should be used in this context is Europe. And Europe is something quite different from the West.
We will come to that in a moment. I think you see Europeans and westerners as separate identities and civilizations. Do you think that the US is what we should understand by the West at the moment? And what is the difference between the US vision of the world and the European world?
There are so many differences. I really think that western civilization and European civilization are quite different concepts in many ways.
First of all, the West is something quite new. How long has the West really been around? The West as we know it today first appeared after the Second World War, and at that time it was basically the American sphere of influence that was created by military expansion during the Second World War, and where the soldiers stopped, the West stopped.
North Korea was not part of the West, but South Korea was. The same is true for Germany. East Germany was not part of the West, but West Germany was. So the accidental movements during the war created a sphere of influence and it was called the West.
Of course, you can make an argument, “No, the West is older.” There were revolutions in Western European states. The French Revolution, the English Revolution, the Dutch and others. Yes, but these were also countries that not only made revolutions, but also established colonies in overseas empires. Maybe this is also connected. If you have a big trade over the seas, you have a lot of merchants who start competing with the aristocracy and then you are more likely to have revolutions.
But these early stages of the West were not united. There was a lot of competition between them. But in the late 19th and early 20th century, we see that this rivalry started to turn into a kind of alliance. For example, the Entente Cordiale between Great Britain and France, then the alliance between Great Britain and the United States. This could be a kind of embryo of the West as we know it today.
But the West in general is not more than 100 years old. So it’s a very young entity and it includes North America on the one side and the Europe of the European Union today, which includes the Slavic states like Poland on the other side. And then you have South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. So culturally speaking, these are very different countries, very different parts of the world, influenced by different religions, and all united by one factor: American domination, American hegemony.
So in the end, you come to the conclusion that the West is basically this American hegemony. There is a lack of a cultural base, there is a lack of history.
Europe, on the contrary, is something quite different. Europe is 2500 years old. Europe started with the model of democracy in ancient Greece and democracy came back to Europe in modern times with the French revolution and other revolutions.
But there is a long period in between when Europe had quite different models of government and a different way of organizing its society.
So Europe is an entity that has a vast history of quite different periods and epochs, but there is still something that can define the whole of this time, which is more than 2000 years. So the concept of Europe is much more complex and much deeper than the concept of the West.
Do you think Europeans have some antidote to the West?
Europe, of course, belongs to Western Europe and Western Europe is that part of Europe that started to have colonies expanding overseas and then it became the west. So maybe some Western elements also belong to Europe.
But Europe is more the center of Europe. Germany, Italy are not usually seen as part of the West. They didn’t have big empires overseas for centuries. They were organized in a decentralized way. Then you have the Slavic peoples in the east. So Europe is all of that.
And the term Western suggests that there is a single model for this whole area and the whole history of Europe. Europe is also defined by its achievements in art, literature, music and philosophy. It is also defined by Christianity and Christian history. It is also defined by references to antiquity. That is, by the memory of the ancient Greek culture in ancient Rome, which was common to all European states and created a kind of unified field of knowledge and reference for all European states, for example through Latin and the ancient Greek language. So there is much more to Europe than the West.
There is also a big difference in terms of the concept of world order. The US is protected by two oceans. Nobody can harm them. If they wage a war on another shore, they can be sure that there will be no repercussions for them, that nothing will come back to them.
This was not the case in Europe. Europe has had enormous wars for as long as it has existed. One of the most brutal periods in European history was the Thirty Years’ War in Germany in the 17th century. But there were also civil wars in other European states.
What Europe learned from this war was that you cannot wage war and foreign policy on values. If you start making the issue of Catholicism and Protestantism part of your foreign policy, part of your national expansion, then you will have never-ending wars.
You are pointing to the Westphalian system.
Yes, it is. So after this war, the Westphalian system was created, where these young nation states learned to respect their differences, that each state has the right to manage its own internal affairs and that there should be no outside influence.
Every state, despite its population size and power, was equally a subject of international law, and this was a great civilizational achievement, which of course was lost again and again in the centuries that followed. But this was a very different concept of world order. A world order that accepted multipolarity, that did not interfere with each other, that started to think about each other’s otherness, that accepted the simultaneous existence of various powers.
The US has a completely different conception of world order. First of all, they think that they are somehow chosen by God, that they have a manifest destiny given to them by God. The concept of a sacred mission means that they think they can only get stronger, stronger and stronger. Therefore, the task of ruling the world belongs to them. And they are an indispensable nation. American exceptionalism. That’s why the whole history of American foreign policy is defined by the fact that they cannot be partners. They cannot partner with anyone else because they always think they are superior to others. They always think they have a better system than others.
And that’s why the Americans have so far found it difficult to make a treaty with, for example, Russia or China that they can really stick to because they always think that other nations, other states don’t have the kind of democracy that we have, that the people there are oppressed.
So the contract that we have now is only for a while, because the state that we have this contract with is not as developed as we are. It is not elected in the same way as we are.
This is basically a tragedy because the United States has not been able to create partnerships because of this notion of sacred mission, exceptionalism, indispensable nation. Instead of creating partnerships with Europe, with Germany, with France, with Italy, it has slowly but surely transformed Europe into a kind of colonial status. This is also a tragedy for America itself, because if Europe was a partner for the United States, it could have influenced it in a positive way. For example, we could have avoided many of the mistakes that American foreign policy has made in the Middle East or with Russia.
But because America does not see Europe as a partner, it has learned nothing from us. They always acted as if they already knew everything. This has led to a foreign policy that has antagonized much of the world.
The US now has a contradictory relationship not only with Russia, which is at war, but also with China, with Iran, increasingly with Turkey, with the Arab world, with Africa and Latin America, where they have waged enormous wars and destruction. So there is no area of civilization left in the world where the US has a normal relationship, not even with India.
And this is very destructive for the US because the US has basically created a kind of counter-alliance by antagonizing all the other major nations or civilizations in the world.
BRICS was created by the US, the US created BRICS, even though they were not intended to do that, but BRICS is basically the child of US foreign policy.
So you talked about two very, very different mindsets. On one side you have the manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, and on the other side you have the Westphalian system of Europe. After the Second World War, the unity of Europe was against the Soviet Union and communism, but at the same time it was doing it in conjunction with the hegemony of the United States on the continent. How did they achieve this hegemony over the continent? Or in other words, why did the Europeans allow the Americans to lead them against the Soviet Union?
Europe, as I mentioned earlier, had been organized for centuries as a kind of balance of power. After the Second World War it was difficult to go back to this system. I think the Soviet Union would have wanted to go back to that system because the Soviet Union was already a very large country and it was a burden to control more states outside of itself, especially if you think of the huge destruction that the Second World War caused in the most populated areas of the Soviet Union.
So the Soviet Union had no interest in controlling a large part of Europe and it certainly had no interest in controlling all of Europe. This may explain why, for example, in 1952, the Soviet Union made the offer that it would withdraw its forces from Germany for neutrality, that Germany could be reunified if it became neutral like Austria. But this offer was rejected by the West German government and by the United States, which wanted to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down.
Now the Americans were there and they started. For them Europe was a kind of gegenko, as we say in German, the opposite shore. So for the US, as a naval power, it was very important for them to control the opposite shore of the ocean and that was Europe and they wanted to stay there.
In their mentality, they saw their presence in Europe as a kind of trophy or a victory because they had the impression that they had a better system. And the US was populated by people who fled Europe because of political oppression or religious oppression. That is why to this day many Americans have a negative impression of Europe. For them Europe is a place that is not as free and democratic as they are. Returning to Europe after the Second World War meant for them that now they had to fix Europe.
They didn’t really do that. Of course there are some Americans who admire European art, literature and philosophy, but on the whole they look down on Europe more than they respect it. For them it was not a problem to reshape, to reorganize European culture. They also wanted to unify it, to create a kind of alliance against the Soviet Union. Because the United States saw itself as an exceptional nation with a sacred mission, they could not accept that there was another nation like the Soviet Union that had a project of socialism and an idea for humanity. So they wanted to dominate, I think.
For the Soviet Union, of course, the American presence on the European continent was a danger because Russia had experienced for several centuries that it could live in peace with Europe as long as there was a balance of power. But every once in a while Europe unites, for example under Napoleon, and then attacks Russia. Or Europe united under Hitler and the conquest of Nazi Germany and then attacked Russia. Now the American presence on the European continent means that Europe is once again united under American rule. For Moscow, this meant the danger of being attacked once again. That’s why they were in Eastern Europe.
Even so, they didn’t really want that.
Which brings us to Russia, to the question of Russia’s relationship with the West. Do you think it is possible to have, for example, a European security architecture that includes Russia again? Or will the Kantian idea of “perpetual peace” prevail? Or will post-EU Europe be a continent of wars? Because even if Europe, even if the European Union disintegrates, it is possible that the axis of Germany and France or only the axis of Germany will prevail. A post-EU Europe because Germany is still the biggest economy in Europe. It has a lot of opportunities to steer other countries.
No, no. It is not possible for the reason I just mentioned. I just said that Europe has always been organized as a balance of power, which means that if there is only one power ruling Europe, it means that Europe is destabilized. This is not good for Europe.
Germany may be the most powerful country in Europe, but it is not strong enough to rule Europe on its own. That’s the beauty of Europe, there are so many states in Europe and some of them are equally powerful: France and Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain, they are all similar, they are the biggest and they balance each other. I think that Europe can only be governed in such a balance, and the countries between which this balance is realized may differ from century to century.
In the era of the European Union, there was the German-French axis, which was a way of rebuilding or replicating this balance. Also, Germany is not very popular in the rest of Europe because of the legacy of the Second World War. Germany has friends. In China, in Japan, in Russia, Germany is highly respected. If you are far away from Germany, Germany is respected. But if you are close to Germany, in Poland, in France, in Great Britain, Germany is not so respected. For all these reasons Germany cannot unite Europe, it cannot and must not lead Europe. Europe has to organize itself in this similar balance of powerful forces.
Then you mentioned the issue of Russia. As soon as the European states or Europe as a whole understands its interest, it will very quickly start organizing a peace with Russia, if peace is possible. Because it is in Europe’s interest.
If you look at European history, you will see that Europe has been strong in times of peace and weak in times of war. In the United States it is the opposite. The US is strong in times of war and weak in times of peace. That’s why Europe needs peace.
Moreover, Russia is part of Europe. So when we talk about Europe, we are automatically talking about Russia and if we exclude Russia from Europe, it is like excluding a large region from China or an important province from India.
So in addition to the integrity of the continent, which can be shown geographically on a map, to exclude Russia from Europe culturally would be to exclude, for example, a great achievement of classical music from Europe. Tchaikovsky, Rahmaninov or the legacy of literature, philosophy or socialism is also part of Europe. The whole history of Eastern Europe during the Cold War is linked to Russia.
So Europe can only be healthy and have a future if it includes all of Europe. A Europe that excludes Russia will be badly divided and will probably have no sovereignty over its own cultural development.
Then we are once again in this distinction between the concept of the West and the concept of Europe. For the first time in history Europe is ruled by an outside power, a power that is located in a completely different geography, on a completely different continent, and it is called the West. You have pushed Russia and Russian culture out of Europe in order to maintain this artificial entity called the West. You have removed the memory that Russian culture and Russian influence is a natural part of Europe, like Italian culture and Italian influence or Spanish culture and Spanish influence. If you have the concept of the West, you will always have borders in the East.
But if we look at the concept of Europe, there is no need for a border in the east. Because Europe has been organized for centuries in a kind of balance of power, it can extend this concept even beyond the borders of Europe. And to some extent, the idea that Europe is organized in a balance of similar powerful states is a concept that very well represents the idea of BRICS, the concept of bricks of a multipolar world made up of similar powerful states like China, India, Russia, which are completely different from each other, but which accept certain ideas about the organization of the world order.
So we can say that we need to cut Russia off from Europe in order to have a US hegemony on the continent, in Europe.
Yes, this is in the interest of the United States. They want to sanctify this European interpretation of the West. So what we call the West today is basically the American interpretation of European culture.
The Americans themselves came from Europe, so they carry the heritage of European culture with them. But for a long time they lived on a different continent, in a different climate, in a different geographical situation. They are also a melting pot of nations. They have a completely different life experience and a completely different space than you have in Europe. Under these conditions, this European culture changed, which became the United States. Now American culture still has European roots, but it has become something different.
This half European, half non-European culture of the United States came back to Europe after the Second World War and started transforming Europe, reshaping Europe in the image of the United States and the EU. The European Union was an attempt to create a kind of copy of the United States in Europe.
And this is also the mistake of the European Union. The mistake of the European Union is that the European Union is not European. It has no connection with the history of European ideas. It does not refer to the 19th century. It does not refer to the 18th century, to the 17th century. It does not even refer to ancient times.
More than 20 years ago, when the European constitution was being planned, some people wanted to write a quote from the famous ancient Greek politician Pericles. Later this quote was removed because it was not politically correct. Pericles might have said something wrong about some minorities. They could not accept Pericles any more and so the quote was removed. This shows you the relationship of the European Union to European history.
Or look at the banknotes of Europe. Maybe I have one in my pocket. This is very meaningful. Here it is. This is a five euro note. Here you see a kind of building. This building is not real. It’s artificial. Fantasy. This bridge isn’t real either. It’s just an artificial bridge imagined by a painter.
So Europe has a very negative relationship with its own history and culture. So much so that we cannot even represent our own architecture on our banknotes.
So you think that in order to become more European, you need to get rid of the European Union as an institution?
This is of course dangerous. We have to look at the reality we have now. Right now we have the euro. There is a huge interconnection between different economies. We have a lot of interdependence within the European Union. The dissolution of the European Union would be catastrophic. Just like the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which created a lot of poverty and civil war. So nobody wants that.
So I think this is a very complex question and I don’t have a final answer to this question. Of course the EU needs at least some kind of restructuring. It needs to be fundamentally reformed. I don’t know whether it is possible or not. Maybe history will show how it will happen, what will happen. Maybe some states will start to leave the EU. Because history shows very clearly that a state that has no real identity of its own, that is built only on the basis of dependencies and laws, is a very weak entity and can disintegrate. And this could also happen to the EU.
Of course, if the European Union really disintegrates, it could be a very ugly process because the economic consequences would be enormous.
But one way or the other, do you think we are heading towards a post-EU era?
You see, there is the emergence of BRICS in the world right now. I just mentioned that BRICS is basically built by the shortcomings of American foreign policy, by its arrogance and selfish behavior.
What is interesting about the BRICS concept is that it includes very different civilizations and some of these civilizations are also states. For example, China is a state but it is also a civilization. India is a state but it is also a civilization. The same can be said about Iran.
In the case of Russia it is more complicated because Russia is also part of the European civilization. Some Russians deny it and say no, we are Eurasian in a similar way to Europe. But if you are in Russia, you see and feel European culture in every corner. So it is really difficult to separate Russia from Europe.
But the concept of civilization state is a very interesting concept or a very interesting term. The question is: Can Europe be a civilization state? The answer is both yes and no.
Yes, it can be, because for the whole history of Europe, after the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe was somehow united. Europe was politically divided but culturally united through the church and the Christian faith and also through the monasteries that were established in many different parts of Europe, all trying to remember the old history, the old literature and writings.
And this went on for 1500 years, Europe was united either through Christianity, through religion, through the church, or later on through the philosophy of humanism, the Enlightenment and the exchange of literature.
For example, different European writers wrote in different languages, but they were always reading each other. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it sometimes took only months for the first translation. All important authors caused a reaction in other countries where they were introduced in translation. German philosophy influenced not only Germany but the whole of Europe. The same is true for the French Revolution.
So Europe is a kind of, in Germany we call it a resonance chamber, a resonance chamber where cultural styles, architectural and painting styles ripple across the continent.
At the same time, we have political fragmentation. This is unique in the world because all other parts of the world are organized differently. If you look at China, for example, China was politically united even though it had many different languages and peoples. The same is true for India. I think the same is true for the Arab world and Russia. So in most parts of the world, at some point you have some kind of political unity.
In Europe, it never happened. It never really happened. There were attempts, for example Napoleon tried, Hitler tried with his strange and brutal ideas, but it always failed.
In the end, we have again political fragmentation with a kind of cultural unity. I think this is a model for the future. If Europe can represent this model, it will also be a mirror of the multipolar world, because in the multipolar world there are different centers of power that are in some kind of balance with each other.
Europe can become a pole of the multipolar world and at the same time represent multipolarity in itself.
This brings us to the second and last part of the title of your book, which is the reinvention of Europe. How can Europe reinvent itself and what elements in Europe have that energy?
First of all, we need to understand the difference between Europe and the West. We need to understand that we have lost a lot in the last 80 years because Europe has tried to make itself more like the West, or because the European Union has tried to reconstruct Europe as a mirror, a kind of copy of the U.S. We need to recognize these differences and then we need to start reclaiming what we really are.
I think these processes are going on in a different way in every European country. I think once we understand once again what Europe really is, what Europe can offer to the world and what has been done to us in the last 80 years, I think we can start to build a kind of European union that will once again be built on culture, history and a complex understanding of culture, which will once again have a kind of utopia in terms of education and civilization.
In the 21st century we are facing great challenges. For example artificial intelligence, genetic engineering. Europe has something to offer in this regard. We have the heritage of humanism and Enlightenment. So we can start with a kind of intellectual discourse, if we really need to do everything we can, because in other parts of the world, especially in the United States, there is a tendency to do everything possible in the field of technology.
Europe can make a different proposal to the world. Let’s try to control technology. Let’s try to put the human being first so that technology adapts to the human being and not vice versa. Europe can also become a neutral part of the world, like a global Switzerland, where intellectual discussions can take place on artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, but also on the preservation of culture.
Europe has a special opportunity to play this role in the 21st century. This is because Europe has influenced the rest of the world for the last 500 years. Since the rise of the Spanish and Portuguese empires, world culture has gradually become Europeanized. If we are in Latin America today and there are political debates, people use terms from European political philosophy to discuss their internal differences. The same is true for other parts of the world.
There is only one world culture in the world, and it has been largely shaped by Europe for several centuries. That is why Europe is now in a very good position to offer a place for discussion, meeting and exchange of ideas on civilizational issues in the 21st century, which will perhaps also be accepted by other civilizations, although they are interested in developing their own traditions.
Maybe in the future we will see a Chinese world culture or an Indian world culture, an Islamic world culture. I don’t exclude it, I welcome it, but it will take time, because if you want to transform your regional culture into a world culture, you have to create art, you have to create, you have to create, you have to write books, you have to create a philosophy, you have to create music that can be attractive to other people in other parts of the world, and this cannot be done in one generation. It cannot be done even in two generations. It needs time.
Europe has already done it for the last 300, 400 years. This is a kind of heritage not only for Europe but for the world and it has to be preserved. That’s why Europe has to be sovereign, it has to be independent, it has to be an independent pole in a multipolar world, not some kind of appendage of the United States, not some kind of American colony that sees itself through American glasses and unfortunately has a kind of colonial consciousness as it is today.
So we have to overcome the colonial consciousness that we have today and start to see what we really are, what we are with our good sides, what we are with our bad sides.
Of course a lot of bad things have happened in Europe. You mentioned colonialism, especially from the Western European states. Yes, there is a bad legacy, but at the same time Europe has given something to the world and we have to see both, the bad and the good. It is not very healthy to see only one side.
So do you think Germany can play a special role in this process? I mean, when you talk about Germany and its special role, it’s a bit terrifying because Germany has historical burdens. But is it still possible for Germany to play a leading role in what you call multipolarity in Europe, as a pole in a multipolar world?
Yes, Germany can be a pole in a multipolar Europe. Of course, like France, like Italy, like other important states and regions, there should be such a pole.
Of course, at the moment Germany is most affected by the current crisis, by the war in Ukraine, for example, the high energy prices have led to a kind of deindustrialization in Germany. So we are starting to feel it.
Usually Germany is not a place where active revolutions take place. Our revolutions, the German Peasants’ War or the Revolution of 1918, of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, all failed.
If there was a revolution in Germany, it was a political revolution. Of course you can say that fascism was a kind of political revolution, which was quite ugly and of course not something we want to point out.
But if you look at history, there were spiritual or intellectual revolutions that came out of Germany. Martin Luther, for example, came up with the idea of Protestantism, which was a reform of the church, which was also a kind of revolution. But it was more of a mental thing, it was not an active political revolution.
The same was true of the idea of socialism, which was rooted in the history of German thought. Marx was, after all, a German philosopher. So maybe in this sense something can come out of Europe, maybe out of Germany. Maybe some Germans can offer an idea.
But I think other European countries are also important. France is important, with its legacy of revolution and activism. Italy is important, Eastern European countries are important.
I think in the end we will see something coming from various corners of Europe. From one side comes an idea, from another side comes political turmoil. And from another corner of Europe a reasonable reform can be realized. In the end they will contribute and help each other.
But right now we are at a crossroads. What if Europe remains as it is now, it will become an insignificant part of the world; it will not be able to play a role as an appendage of the United States; its wealth will decline, its population will probably decline; European societies will lose their coherence and identity and Europe will become an insignificant and poor part of the world.
Nowadays we are beginning to see the situation and we are beginning to come back to ourselves. I think there are forces in Europe that are interested in this. Not only the normal population, but also what we have in Europe, in Germany, what we call Mittelstand in Germany, which are small-scale factories with a hundred or 800 employees, but big businesses that are very specialized in a certain product.
So there is still a lot of wealth in Europe. So there are forces that can do something. I think these processes are already going on.
I can’t see what will happen in the future. I can’t describe to you how this change will happen. Maybe it will come in a surprising way. Just like the change in 1989 happened in a surprising way. Many people thought that the wall would be there for the next 20 years and suddenly, overnight, it disappeared.
So history is completely unpredictable. History is always a surprise. If we have a vision of the future, we can be sure that this vision will not manifest itself 100%. History is always different from what we think.
But I am sure that there is a lot at stake right now. 2500 years of history, 2500 years of emerging cultural complexity, emerging civilization. All this should not be for nothing. Europe is important not only for Europe but for the world.
And I think a Europe that is once again faithful to its tradition of history, literature, philosophy will be respected in the world. Still, we have the legacy of colonial atrocities. But there are always two sides. So I see a future for a cultural and intellectual consciousness for Europe. Maybe this is possible.
Foreign affairs writer Lily Lynch discusses the shifting political landscape of Central Europe and the Balkans in this interview with Harici. Lynch, whose work frequently appears in the New Statesman, New Left Review, and The Baffler, addresses a range of topics from Hungary’s recent elections to Serbia’s complex foreign policy maneuvers. A recipient of a 2025 LA Press Club award, she examines the “clarifying effect” of the Ukraine war on regional leadership and the evolving nature of right-wing populism across the continent. The conversation offers a detailed analysis of the challenges facing the European right and the persistent geopolitical tensions in the region.
I would like to begin with Hungary, specifically with the recent electoral victory of the right-wing populist Tisza Party, much like Viktor Orbán and Fidesz, and of its leader, Péter Magyar. What does this victory signify for Hungary’s future? The deep corruption and abuses of power involving Orbán’s circle had also received coverage in the international press. The fact that the country’s three major parties at the top of the electoral list are all right-wing paints a rather bleak picture.
I think that Magyar’s victory demonstrates several things. One is that right-wing ideas are still broadly popular in Hungary. The fact that Magyar is not so different from Orban on issues like immigration demonstrates that. So right-wing politics were not defeated in this election; instead, it is clear now that they are very much entrenched in Hungary and do reflect the sentiments of the public.
At the same time, I think there’s a particular brand of right-wing populism that is starting to cause some fatigue. This is a sort of clownish, personality-driven Trumpian populism that is wedded to Zionism, and which Orban embodied as well. I think Magyar’s success hints at a desire for a more sober and serious right-wing politics, decoupled from MAGA populism, and perhaps somewhat less revisionist: a politics that are anti-immigration and conservative but also more content with the status quo.
The electoral result also suggests that Trump’s brand has grown increasingly toxic, and that Orban’s choice to embrace Trump–going so far as having JD Vance campaign for him ahead of the election–hurt more than it helped. Trump is becoming a burden for the right, particularly in Europe. After Trump’s threats towards Greenland, no one in Europe can say they support Trump and also support respect for sovereignty. Of course, this is exactly what Orban once preached, as he fashioned himself a sovereigntist. In the end, it appeared that he only opposed encroachments from Brussels, but gave Trump’s America a pass.
At the same time, Orban’s deliberate stoking of the culture war ended up producing diminishing returns for him. Without decent economic performance, and with so much perceived corruption, his culture war crusades on issues such as gender simply were not enough to keep him afloat. In addition, Orban’s re-traditionalization efforts failed. The pro-natality policies he put in place were expensive but did little to boost the birth rate. Church attendance under Orban was even lower than it was during the socialist period, when religion was frowned upon by the authorities.
It may also be useful to touch on Serbia. The government led by Aleksandar Vučić appears to be pursuing what is often described as a “multi-vector foreign policy.” On the one hand, there is the prospect of EU membership; on the other, there are Serbia’s historically rooted ties with Russia. Yet in the course of the war in Ukraine, how should we interpret the statements coming from Moscow, particularly the strong reaction led by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) to alleged arms deliveries to Kyiv via third parties? How sustainable is this condition of being a “swing state”?
There was a time when Vučić managed Serbia’s complex geopolitical position relatively well. At the height of the Vučić era, which was already a decade ago now, Serbia had relations with Russia, China, Turkey, the US, and many countries of the Global South that are members of the Non-aligned Movement–all while remaining a candidate for EU membership. But February 2022 changed everything for him. A major war in Europe–no longer confined to Donbass–meant that he was suddenly under much more pressure to harmonize Serbia’s policy with that of other European countries. In practice this meant things like imposing sanctions on Russia, and by voting in lockstep with EU and NATO member countries on resolutions on Ukraine in UN General Assembly votes.
It is true of course that Vucic was permitting indirect Serbian arms sales to Ukraine, which bought him a lot of credibility in Western capitals. With the Russians, meanwhile, he made excuses: He claimed that he was under a tremendous amount of pressure, and basically could not tell the West “no”. For a while I think the Russians accepted this, if grudgingly. But then as the arms sales to Ukraine didn’t stop after Vucic said they would, there were strong reactions in Russia.
I don’t think any of these actors, with the possible exception of China, trust Vucic anymore. For a long time, Vucic was all things to all people. A great example was in a UNGA vote Serbia voted in favor of a resolution on Ukraine, then Vucic immediately issued a statement saying that it had been “a mistake” and that they’d meant to vote against it. This was a deliberate strategy of ambiguity: which message to believe? The actual vote or Vucic’s statement to the press. He was masterful at this, for years: give one message to Washington, one to Moscow, and one to Brussels. I think you can sustain that kind of ambiguity for a time, and perhaps even a long time, but war has a clarifying effect. At a certain point, you just have to choose.
Vucic has also been one of the losers of the second Trump administration. This is the exact opposite of what he had hoped: he expected Serbia to be a natural ally to Trump. Instead, Vucic has been rebuffed by the administration, and repeatedly. Vucic stayed faithful to his mutli-vector foreign policy with the expectation that Trump would come to power and immediately end the war in Ukraine. I think he really believed that would happen–that Trump would end the war in Ukraine immediately. If that happened, Vucic’s job would have been a lot easier: there would be far less pressure on him from the EU, for one. So long story short, two recent developments have imperiled his multi-vector approach. First, the full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022, and second, Trump winning a second term, and subsequent ambivalent relations with the White House.
It may also be worthwhile here to address the issue of Kosovo, which, as is well known, has in recent years become a fault line that periodically simmers and boils over. In the December elections in Kosovo, Albin Kurti once again returned to the office of prime minister. Would it be possible for you to share some information on this, or perhaps your observations and/or firsthand impressions? It seems likely that this is a place we will be discussing in the years ahead.
Albin Kurti has staked his career in part on his opposition to the creation of something called “the Association of Serbian Municipalities” of “Community of Serbian Municipalities” in northern Kosovo. Northern Kosovo is home to a Serbian-majority population who absolutely do not recognize Kurti’s government as legitimate and largely answer to Belgrade, though they often feel left on their own by the Serbian government as well. According to the 2013 Brussels Agreement between Kosovo and Serbia, the government of Kosovo has to create something called the Association/Community of Serbian Municipalities, a sort of thin layer of sovereignty or self-government that is nonetheless subordinate to Prishtina. Meanwhile, Serbia would extract itself from the north, ceding control of it to the government of Kosovo.
This has always been hugely controversial in Kosovo, as some believe it will create the conditions for eventual Serbian secession. Kurti remaining in office effectively means that there will be little progress made on this front. This is something that has made Western capitals very frustrated with Kurti, and he was under EU sanctions until last year.
However tense the current status quo is, I disagree with those who say a return to full-scale war is imminent or inevitable. There are something like 4,500 peacekeeping troops in Kosovo as a part of KFOR, NATO’s Kosovo peacekeeping force. That said, I am sure there will be the occasional flare up of localized violence. This currently happens every 1-2 years. But I highly doubt that these spasms of violence will lead to a full-scale war. Despite all the acrimonious feelings and distrust, there is little appetite for another big war in the Balkans by any side.
Finally, I am curious about your assessment, in broader terms, of what has given rise to the right-wing populist wave across Europe and/or how it is likely to shape Europe’s future overall. The supposedly “anti-establishment” profile, as in the case of Giorgia Meloni, either ends up directly submitting to the establishment, that is, to the Brussels bureaucracy, or produces state structures of astonishing corruption. This is a genuinely compelling issue, and I would be very interested in your views.
My answer about what has given rise to the right-wing populist wave is not at all original. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this wave was preceded by the 2007-2008 financial crisis, which led to an overall crisis in faith in institutions, experts, and in liberalism. This was fertile ground for a populist backlash against “elites”. Of course, these anti-establishment politicians ride to power on promises to “drain the swamp” or fight the powers that be, and then turn around and adopt very conventional policies once in office. Or, in Orban’s case, they may actually break with established consensus, but turn out even more corrupt than the liberal “elites” they rail against. There is always a rhetoric-policy gap in politics, but it’s especially pronounced on the populist right.
Interview
‘The so-called international order is crumbling; national interest is the only remaining truth’
In this extensive interview with Harici Medya at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, Swiss journalist, Editor-in-chief of Die Weltwoche Roger Köppel provides a piercing diagnostic of the fracturing global order. Analyzing the downfall of the so-called “rule-based international system” through the cold lens of realism, Köppel articulates the inherent fragility of modern alliances when confronted by the supremacy of national interests. From the volatile Iran-Israel axis to the internal schisms within NATO, and from China’s emergence as a strategic alternative to the complex interplay between theology and power, each pivotal issue is reshaped by Köppel’s distinct and uncompromising perspective.
The dialogue further explores the friction between the Vatican and the American populist right, interrogating the resurgence of religion as a potent geopolitical instrument. Placing significant emphasis on Türkiye’s central role as a mediator within this “biblical” theater of conflict, Köppel champions the necessity of authentic diplomacy over moralizing rhetoric. Ultimately, this conversation offers a profound intellectual roadmap for navigating the sanctuary of pragmatism in an era redefined by the maneuvers of “great predator countries.”
I’d like to start with the ongoing talks about Iran. There is this current discussions between United States and Iran that they had an agreement about the Strait of Hormuz, but then things soured quite a bit and now Iran claims that they’re going to close the strait again because the American side also is not opening the blockade. So in a more general sense, what do you think about this ceasefire? How do you think it’s going to evolve in the upcoming days?
If I knew, I would have great qualified knowledge. Probably I could be a very rich man because I could foresee the stock market development. Unfortunately, we are in a very difficult situation where national interest, security concerns and even religious convictions are in the field of battle. And I can just hope that at the end of the day, goodwill prevails and that all sides find a way to settle this terrible situation. But how it can be achieved… I’m a Swiss. It’s very, very difficult to give here any kind of advice. I think I can understand all sides. I can understand the security concerns of Israel. I have a lot of sympathy with that. I can understand the American position, which was, since President Reagan, rather clear concerning Iran. And then you have Iran, this amazing civilization, which at least in European eyes, is also on a way, which can be—let’s be very cautious here—which can be considered a threat for other countries, building up ballistic arsenals, experimenting with nuclear explosives. It’s a very, very demanding issue. But somehow I’m still optimistic. I believe that they find a solution. But at the moment, it’s very hard to see how.
The United States and Europe had some sort of conflict between each other when it came to the Iran war. Donald Trump had certain expectations from its European allies, which already had a strained relationship after the Greenland debacle. When it comes to why Europe did not send any help, how do you describe that? Do you think Trump was right? Do you think Europe was right? What is the situation between the two parts of NATO?
I think what we see in the relationship between the EU and the United States is a symptom of the topic that has been discussed at this conference here in Antalya, which is the crumbling, which is the downfall of the so-called international order. And you can see it even on the level of military alliances such as NATO, that these alliances, they mean nothing in today’s world. We are in a world where national interest rules. And I believe that always national interest has ruled. But sometimes there was a lot of hypocrisy and the big talk about international order, rule-based order. But at the end of the day, it was only and always national interest. And we see it now with NATO: when it’s in the national interest that the Europeans can talk and use NATO, they say, “We are NATO members.” If the biggest NATO power, United States, says “Now you have to help us,” the Europeans say “No.” So I don’t want to judge this. I don’t want to say who is right and who is wrong. But I would like to say that this just indicates to us that these international rule-based systems, alliances such as NATO, they give no security today, they give no order today. The only thing that matters are national interest and the capacity of national leaders to sit together and find solutions for conflicts. And this is why this forum here in Antalya is very important. Because in such a world of national interest, where conflicts can pop up any second, any minute, it’s very important to bring back diplomacy, to talk, to create platforms such as these in order to interact. I think this is great that we have on one day the Ukrainian Foreign Minister and on the other day the Russian Foreign Minister. I wish we had more such forums also in Europe. And this is my critique of the European Union. We are too much… The European Union is too much moralizing, telling everybody who is the bad guy, who is the good guy, and is not engaging enough in finding common ground, common solutions via diplomacy.
When you look into the relationship between Europe and Russia or Europe and China, especially with the NATO meetings previously, before the second Trump administration, it was always claimed that these countries are adversaries to the Western order in general. But now, especially strained relations between Europe and the United States, we are seeing many members of the European Union trying to find alternatives to their security arrangements with the United States, which can be considered with China. Especially now we are seeing the Spanish Prime Minister going to China. Emmanuel Macron said something similar. And there were Keir Starmer’s meeting with Xi Jinping in China. So in general, do you see China being an alternative to United States? Do you think that Europe will change its course towards East?
Well, I’m from Switzerland, from a neutral country. And we try not to make enemies. We are too small; we have to be able to defend ourselves. And Switzerland is very much open to the world. We work with everybody. And even our neutrality has a bit suffered in the last years because the European Union has pushed Switzerland a lot in order to participate in the sanctions against Russia, even delivering weapons to Ukraine. Fortunately, we did never that. We were strictly neutral in the juristic sense. But with the sanctions, we have lost a bit our absolute impartiality. So Switzerland is totally open to the world. And I think many European countries should follow this path and should not talk themselves into these kind of confrontational views of the world. Of course, I mean, there might be other interests. If you look at the Baltic states, with their history with the Soviet Union, with Russia, it’s complicated. Poland has another tradition; they have to find out for themselves. But generally speaking, I would say in today’s world, we have to invest in great bilateral relationships. The European countries should cooperate with the United States, of course, with China, with Russia. I mean, Russia is a neighbor of Europe, but Europe, what is Europe? Europe is a group of small and middle countries with different histories and also different national interests. And somehow the EU is a structure which is too heavy-handed for this multiplicity of interests. So I would strongly argue from a Swiss perspective: make peace with Russia as soon as you can. Make no war, no conflict with China. Stop this moralizing attitude and patronizing of others. Just try to be a small bunch of countries who is not in big power politics anymore. Let the others be big powers. We can be big economic powers, big scientific powers, big powers of diplomacy and understanding and leave the rest to the big predator countries that are also on this planet. Of course, the big powers have big problems. We are smaller countries with smaller problems.
There’s a sentiment, there was a sentiment in the first Trump administration that if the European countries hang on tight for as long as possible, there will be eventually a leader that is willing to work together with Europe once again, which was Joe Biden in that. And when Joe Biden was elected, the Ukraine war started. And then we saw a reconsolidation of European countries under NATO umbrella in general. But now we are seeing the strain in the relationship is so hard that things may not go back as much as it can. But still, in the many international meetings, we are seeing figures like Gavin Newsom from California, which could be potentially the next president of the United States. And he was saying, “You need to once again hang on tight until 2028.” Do you think that if a Democrat president or a president that is someone that’s more close to American establishment… Do you think if someone like that gets into the presidency in United States, the concept of “collective West” will come back and Europe and United States will go back to their relationship like it was before?
Well, I hope not that we will go back in the time before Trump in that sense, because Donald Trump made—the American President made—something which was to me overdue: he said we have to talk with Russia again. We have to engage in diplomacy. Under Biden, there was no diplomacy. And if Gavin Newsom wants to be the second Biden—no diplomacy with Russia, the collective West meaning “we, the West, the best against the rest”—then I don’t think that this is a philosophy with which you can win the future. Of course, the United States is a big country; you could say a Godzilla country. And a Godzilla country has a lot of problems. They have a lot of alliances in the region of China, with Taiwan, with Japan, entanglements. It’s not easy. Of course, you have global interests. You have to see what you can do. And I think the reality, the dominating trend in the reality is—and I think Trump has realized this—the time of unilateral dominance of the United States of America is over. That was the case after the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1990. Then the Russians were lying on the ground. China was still very weak after Mao Zedong. I mean, they were starting to recover. Now we have a different world. We have China, which is basically number one economically. We have India, which is growing very fast. Russia has recovered. Russia doesn’t swallow a NATO enlargement to the east, you know, neglecting all the security concerns of Russia. I have great understanding. The Russians say “No, we don’t want this.” The Americans would never tolerate Russians or Chinese with their military structures in Canada or in Mexico. I mean, they wouldn’t wait as President Putin for eight years; they would intervene in eight hours if something like that happens. So Trump has realized America is not strong enough to be the dominant hegemon of the world. So he starts to focus, to concentrate on his prime spheres of influence, which is South America, which is the Middle East with all the oil. He has a rivalry with China. But I think Trump is, ultimately, he’s a pragmatist. Probably he was being overconfident with Iran. I can understand that. He didn’t want… I mean, he doesn’t want… He’s not interested in the interests of the United States and of Israel if Iran gets nuclear weapons. So they had to do something. But you know, they probably overestimated themselves. We will see. I don’t know, but we’re seeing this kind of multipolar world is in the making, and therefore, we need a lot of diplomacy and pragmatism. I think Trump is a pragmatist. I didn’t think that Biden was a pragmatist. I don’t think that Gavin Newsom seems like a pragmatist. I don’t know. So I hope that we see leaders, whoever it might be, who will not go back to the old times with no diplomacy, no talking, with this kind of Western supremacy attitude. This is not good. It’s not good for the West. It’s not good for the rest of the world. It’s not good for everybody.
In the first question, you mentioned a little bit of the religious conflicts. From what I understand, at least, you were talking about the Trump and Pope little fight maybe. So this situation in the last week has really gone out of control. The statements coming from both sides were pretty harsh. Donald Trump and especially a Catholic, J.D. Vance, was telling the Pope that he should be careful when he’s talking about theological matters, which was pretty interesting on its own. But when you look into this, do you think it is happening because Donald Trump saw someone that is critical of himself and he just didn’t want to take that, or you see a more sectarian conflict on the background of the situation? Because we have many figures like Peter Thiel of Palantir having meetings in Rome, talking about the Pope, talking about the Antichrist. And there was Steve Bannon who was mentioning we should overthrow Pope Francis and overthrow Vatican. There are plenty of figures in the American populist right that have a problem with Vatican. So in general, what do you say? Do you think that this is a sectarian issue?
In my first answer, I actually alluded to another biblical conflict, which is the conflict between the Israelites and the Ishmaelites, you know, going back to the great prophet Abraham and those great peoples which emerged from that great father, grandfather of civilization: the Israelites and the Ishmaelites. And Iran, you know, being one of the great empires, of course, also during the Islamic rule of the world. And then, of course, then you got the Jews, God’s chosen people. And I would say that religion is also a big part of Middle Eastern politics. But it’s great, it’s good you mentioned this dimension also in Western politics. Well, I would suggest, I mean, not to take Trump literally, but to take Trump seriously. And not every utterance of people from his camp or from other camps has to be taken totally seriously. I’m a Protestant, but I’m theologically interested. I saw with certain bewilderment these, you could say this wrestling, this verbal wrestling between the Vatican and then we saw these absurd pictures of Donald Trump, the American president, like posing as some kind of Jesus. But we have seen some similar stuff. I mean, there are people who think that Trump is losing his mind. Well, I don’t hope that’s a sign of that. I don’t know. That’s what the Americans have to find out for themselves. But I would say this is, for me, just an absurd indicator of probable—and I hope I’m wrong—nervousness on the side of the American leadership which realizes that things in the Middle East are not going according to plan. And I think that the American President has put himself under no less stress because he said he wants to finish the war in Ukraine. It’s still going on. He has his vision for Israel, he has his vision for the Middle East, he has his Abraham Accords, which is a great achievement. But now they are somehow not, you know, really, really in the spotlight anymore. You see this war in Iran, he doesn’t seem to find an end, an emergency exit. So probably these verbal entanglements are a symptom of stress. But on the other side, we have seen so many things Trump has said and strange stuff, you know, and I wouldn’t take it too seriously. Of course, the Pope, it’s his duty to criticize, to criticize war-making powers. I mean, this is his duty. And he is also… he’s right when he says it’s a crime to use God for politics, which is not only true for Christians; it’s also true for other religions today. Some powers use God to make politics. That’s always dangerous. And I think this is the ultimate sacrilege. As a Protestant, the people who speak about God meaning themselves… that’s a very dangerous species. We should be careful of these guys. So the Pope is right in saying this. And Trump, of course, he wants to present his point. I wouldn’t give too much attention to that. Peter Thiel… I have been to these lectures in Rome. I have listened to them. Yes, of course. I was there and it was confidential, so I shouldn’t say anything. But I’m smiling when I’m reading the newspapers about these lectures, what he was supposed to have said. My father was a Catholic too. Peter Thiel’s notion of the Vatican is not that the Vatican is the Antichrist. That’s not his position. I made an interview with him in my newspaper and he was explaining what he meant with Antichrist. He said the Antichrist is a worldwide bureaucracy which is grabbing power and putting sand into the eyes of the people, saying, “We save you from the apocalypse, we save you from Armageddon, from the climate catastrophe. We will bring eternal peace.” So Peter Thiel is not against the Vatican. Peter Thiel is not against whatever. You know, he’s concerned about the global bureaucratic state, which he identifies from his studies with that what the Bible called the Antichrist. But there are a lot of theologians who would not accept this description. They have a more narrow definition of the Antichrist. But it was a very interesting lecture and it was on a very high intellectual level. And I think not many politicians who criticize Peter Thiel are capable of having such a lecture themselves. So it was very interesting for me to listen to that.
Okay, one last question. It’s going to be about Türkiye. More specifically, the latest affairs that we’re seeing all around the region is bringing out a new situation where Türkiye and Israel are the new rivals in the region itself. Iran seems to be taking a little bit of a backside. And now that this is recognized by both sides, by both Türkiye and Israel, the rhetoric is getting stronger. Yesterday Mr. Tom Barrack was here and he was asked this very question and he said that it’s only rhetoric, it’s nothing more. These countries do not have to fight, are not on a path to fight. But he’s of course a side note in this situation and he obviously doesn’t want to see these two countries to get into a quarrel like that. But what do you say about this? Do you think in the near future of Middle East you expect a conflict between Israel and Türkiye?
Well, if I listen to certain statements of involved statesmen, there is not much diplomacy there. It’s very confrontational. We have listened yesterday to the Turkish President. Erdogan was very clear in his views. Also the Turkish Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, a very thoughtful person, but still with strong words. And I fear that now we are here in a still very serious conflict between Israel and probably Türkiye. I hope as a Swiss, that Türkiye—which under President Erdogan has in a… I’m not talking about interior politics; I don’t want to interfere, this Turks have to sort out themselves what they see appropriate. From outside, I see a very strong head of state, the President, in a smart way, who has positioned Türkiye as a key player of international diplomacy. And I hope that Türkiye can use this weight, this respect it has gained, in order to find a way also to accommodate the legitimate security concerns of Israel. Then I can understand Israel in this sense that Israel has had a lot of wars in the last eight years. It didn’t start these wars. Israel has been built out of a terrible catastrophe which is in the responsibility of the Europeans, especially the Germans, which is the Holocaust. They have created this state of Israel after the Second World War, which was not accepted by some of the nations in the Middle East. And so there were wars; Israel won these wars, they gained territory, they gave this territory back in the philosophy “land for peace.” So they gave the land, they didn’t get the peace. And there is now a new, you can say, more hardline political agenda which says, “Well, after the massacre of Hamas, we switch. We don’t believe in land for peace. Now land is peace.” It’s a bit, you could say, the Russian perspective. Russia was attacked many times. They said, “We need a cordon sanitaire in order to protect ourselves. We start to think in square kilometers.” Problem is, Israel, they start to think the same way. But at the core are legitimate security concerns. I don’t think that Israel is an imperialist power who wants to have an empire reaching from Pakistan to Portugal or, you know, a huge territorial player. But I think there are legitimate security concerns. And Türkiye, as this great moderator, has this great diplomatic force in the center of the world, of this world. I just hope that President Erdogan will find a way in order to bring Israel to the table. Now with Syria, which is very close to Türkiye, they have a great understanding, as far as I could see here, with other powers and the track record of President Erdogan, I think he’s in a unique position to bring here peace. But how this should be, I don’t know. In Switzerland, we say in the Middle East, “This is a biblical conflict.” It’s so hard to find a solution. We are glad that we are not living in this conflict field. We are living in the center of Europe. We had many wars there as well. But thanks God, they are behind us. Let’s hope they are not returning.
If it’s a biblical conflict, then we are all doomed. It’s not a thing.
No, then we are not doomed if it’s a biblical conflict, because then we can say we are all children of God and God didn’t create this world in order that human beings make war all the time. So we just have to find our… There must be a solution. We just haven’t found it yet.
Well, someone said we should be careful when talking about theology, so I should just stop here.
I agree.
Thank you.
Thank you.
In an exclusive exchange conducted by Harici Medya on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy offers a clinical dissection of the shifting tectonic plates in Middle Eastern geopolitics. Amidst the fog of ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran, Levy delineates a region caught between the unpredictable whims of the Trump administration and Israel’s ambitious pursuit of regional hegemony.
Daniel Levy, a senior adviser to the government of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, was part of the Israeli team that attended the Taba summit with the Palestinians in 2001. He also participated in the second Oslo negotiations in 1995 with then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Between 2012 and 2016, Mr Levy served as Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is currently president of the New York-based think tank US/Middle East Project.
The veteran diplomat provides a sobering analysis of the fragile ceasefires in Lebanon and the intrinsic link between Netanyahu’s political survival and the perpetuation of conflict. Crucially, Levy draws attention to a burgeoning sentiment within the Israeli establishment that increasingly frames Türkiye as a long-term strategic challenge, mirroring the rhetoric once reserved for Iran. This profound dialogue serves as a roadmap for understanding the complex interplay of personal egos, military-industrial interests, and the calculated destabilization of state structures across the Levant.
First of all, of course, the talks are going on right now with Iran and United States. There were certain news coming in the morning. First, Donald Trump claimed that everything is fine, the Strait of Hormuz is open. Then things didn’t go that way. It seems that the Americans didn’t open their own blockade and now the Iranians want to go back to closing the Strait themselves. So, so what do you expect from the ongoing talks right now? Which direction do you think that things will lead into?
I think there are three or four basic possibilities, scenarios. One is there is a deal of some kind. Second is there may be some quiet understandings or expectations, but there’s not something you could really announce as a deal. But the American President decides he’s had enough anyway. He declares victory and walks away. Of course, Iran, with equal, if not greater justification, will also declare victory and everyone will give their speeches. But essentially the ceasefire will hold, there’ll be an arrangement in Hormuz, etc. And that could transition later to negotiations. But, so that’s the second scenario. Third scenario is Trump decides that the way to get a deal is to do one big final strike just to show that he’s still the tough guy, he’s the warmongers. The Israelis and others, those inside his administration, convince him to strike again.
Like an amphibious assault. Like a what?
Well, it could be. What I’m saying is there’s another American-Israeli aggression, maybe from Trump. The goal is you escalate to de-escalate like he did in June of 2025. But once you do that, you’re no longer in control of events because Iran will respond. If that’s the third scenario, then either that segues towards a resumption of a prolonged conflict, or that segues towards walking away, declaring victory. Sorry, negotiation. We seem to be more in the non-escalation trajectory at the moment. Even though there are the things going on in Hormuz, which if the Americans are going to blockade, of course the Iranians are as well. So that’s where we are. The problem is in trying to decipher what will happen next. Of course, there are lots of moving parts, but the thing that makes this most difficult is you have an American president who is not only unpredictable, not only incompetent, but also incoherent. He has no strategy and therefore he doesn’t really know why he went to war, what he wants to get out of the war. I know there are people who think that’s naive to claim that; no, of course, there’s American geostrategy. You’re trying to take hold of an important choke point in world energy. It’s good for the American military-industrial complex. All those arguments are fine. There’s an element of that. But that’s not what’s defined this war. What’s defined this war is the fragile ego, the peculiar personality, easy to manipulate, as we saw with Netanyahu. The reports of how Netanyahu went to the White House, went to the Situation Room, told the American president a story which in any other American administration, the experts would say, “Mr. President, now that our guest, the Israeli Prime Minister, has left, here’s what’s really the story. We’re not doing this.” This president fell into the trap that no other president has before. The trap’s been laid before by the Israeli prime minister. So because of those things, it’s more hard to predict than it would otherwise be. And the president, President Trump, can lurch from, you know, one… he can wake up one morning, he’s spoken to someone, he’s heard an interview on Fox TV and make one decision, and then the next morning makes another one. So it seems that he is fed up with the war. He knows that the politics, the economics are difficult for him to manage. But maybe he thinks he’s Jesus again tomorrow and he carries on the war.
The Lebanon part of the war was really on the spotlight because Pakistan was saying one thing, Iran was saying one thing, then the United States and Israel were saying the complete opposite of what they were claiming. So what we have seen from the beginning of those talks with the ceasefire, it seems that the initial discussion was about actually involving Lebanon, too. And now we come to a point where Israel was reluctant to listen to what Donald Trump or the entirety of American systems tells them to do. But now, for some reason, Donald Trump managed to push Israel to hold a ceasefire on their own. So do you think that this is a failure by Israeli government to not be able to hit their war goals, which was reaching out to the Litani River? What do you think about it?
So, first of all, and this is playing out inside Israel, this doesn’t feel like a win on Lebanon. They’ve destroyed things. That’s their modus operandi. But being told, and especially the very particular language that President Trump uses in his Truth Social postings, “Enough.” This isn’t where Israel thought it would be. It also makes it quite clear that this was part of the deal, that it was the Iranians and the Pakistanis who were telling us the truth on Lebanon. It is also probably the clearest indication we have that Trump actually wants to close the escalatory logic of this war and to be in an ending this deal, de-escalation place because he’s imposed this ceasefire in Lebanon on Israel. It also shows us that if the Americans want to impose something on Israel, they can. Not that we needed any proof of that. Because it’s obvious America has the leverage. America gives them the weapons, America gives them the political support. If America says stop, Israel says yes; it tries everything to avoid that. It will continue to try to provoke. So inside Israel, there is a lot of criticism. First, as usual, Israel overestimated its own capacity and underestimated that of its adversary. You had the Northern Commander of the Israeli military saying, “We were surprised by Hezbollah still having this capacity to send rockets to fire on the ground.” But, and the “but” is important. As usual, it’s a ceasefire, Israel style. And it’s a ceasefire that the Americans have accepted, at least in this respect, Israeli stipulations on the ceasefire. Which means Israel is still physically inside Lebanon. So it doesn’t have the larger security buffer, but it has a significant security buffer. In fact, they took additional land inside Lebanon, bordering Syria, in the hours leading up to this declaration. And Israel, according to the document, the text, can act to prevent immediate operations from the other side. But who defines what that is? Who defines what the threat is? As long as Israel defines the threat, it will define it widely. Nonetheless, Israel has been significantly curtailed, which never happens on the Palestinian front, of course.
With Netanyahu government, there are a lot of, maybe conspiracy theories, maybe more normal comments. But people are claiming that Netanyahu is pursuing more and more war around their neighbors and with Iran because he wants to, you know, just keep going in the political scene. If they stop, maybe he’s going to get into a court case, he’s going to get arrested. Do you think that’s the case or do you think that the Israeli government and Israeli state itself wants to pursue these wars?
So I don’t think it has to be one or the other. It can be both. And I think in this case it is both. Netanyahu, who is alive, by the way, in terms of rumors of conspiracy theories… Well, it’s a weekly rumor. Exactly. It has served him politically since October 7th to be a permanent wartime leader, for Israel to be in perpetual war. Every week he’s still supposed to be in court. Every week he still sends his lawyers to the courthouse to say, “I can’t come this week, I’m busy with the war,” which is genuinely what’s happening. It seems like with the election getting closer, he wants these conditions and he has many options: Lebanon, Iran, Gaza, West Bank. So it’s not just a continuation of war, it’s a continuation of war on multiple fronts. There are other elements to this. Economically, part of how Israel has managed its economy is a version of military Keynesianism, which has been to pump money into the economy not only through the military-industrial complex, but also through the compensation that reservists receive. So part of the money in the Israeli economy at the moment is the very generous packages that those who sign up for more and more and more weeks of military service are getting. And Israel went into this war with a low debt-to-GDP ratio, so it has headspace to keep doing that. But then there is the part of this that’s not about Netanyahu, his personal court case and political management. This is about something that goes much deeper. He has support from the opposition. The opposition criticized: “Why didn’t you get the Americans to do more with us in Lebanon? Why didn’t you build more shelters?” They’re actually mad that they stopped. The opposition are just as belligerent in this respect as the Prime Minister. Back when there were discussions over the Israelis being held in Gaza, the opposition would say, “Get the hostages released and then resume the attack. Why don’t you at least get the hostages released?” So this goes much deeper into Israeli conceptual thinking and how the state has gone on a journey to promoting and then manufacturing societal consent for genocide against the Palestinians and war in the region. And so the way one has to understand this is Israel has a vision for regional domination that requires the weakening and collapsing of surrounding states, of any potential power balances or anything that could emerge as a peer competitor. Of course, Israel’s not the only one that has been involved in encouraging the collapse of states. Israel wasn’t the primary actor in Syria for sure. Israel did then go and smash up what was left of what the Syrian successor leadership could have done after Assad fell. And it even includes trying to… there are some states you’re not going to collapse, but you want to co-opt them. You want them to become dependent on Israel, more vulnerable, like the Gulf. Israel’s desired intentional outcome from this war with Iran was that the Gulf would be more weakened. And of course, the Israeli system is very clear in which country next needs to be weakened; it’s a country called Türkiye.
Yeah, I’ll get to that. But firstly, the cost of doing all of that, the road to regional hegemony, if you will. It’s always claimed that it’s Israel’s reputation and Israel’s friendships, all in the West, in Europe, in the United States and everything. But there’s this idea that if this war stops, somehow, not just Iran, all of that stops. Probably Israel has the idea that things will go back to how it was before. There won’t be any sanctions, there won’t be any, quote-unquote, “hard feelings” with the Western countries. Do you think that’s going to be the case? Because when Germany put sanctions on weapons sales to Israel, they waited for a ceasefire in Gaza, and the moment that it took place, there was just no more sanctions or no more ban for weapons sales. So do you think that’s going to happen with European states who right now are showing negative emotions towards Israel’s actions?
So I think this is a project of overreach, of exaggeration, which is typical of a state that goes to a very extreme place, which is the case in Israel today. But the Israeli, Netanyahu and others’ counter-narrative would be: so far it works. So one thing that’s going on here is while we’re in this moment of fluidity and while he still has Trump onside in the White House, and while everyone else is going, “Oh, my God, what do we do with Trump?”—Europeans, Arab allies, even Tier One Asian-American allies—Netanyahu is saying, “Let’s exploit this moment to strengthen our position to the maximum possible, and then things will settle down again, but we’ll be that much stronger.” So the bet he is placing is if Israel is successful enough, then the others won’t have a choice. They’ll be dealing with a much more powerful Israel. You know, as soon as Germany went one way, it went back the other way. And not only went back the other way, Germany has now signed one of its biggest drone manufacturing deals with an Israeli military arms company. So Netanyahu is saying, “Look, if I can pull this thing enough in my direction, if I get more of the Gulf with me, then India will be less reticent about taking sides. It will be more with me. I have the relations with Greece and Cyprus on energy. Maybe I force Lebanese gas to come this way, maybe I force the Syrians into a similar arrangement. Even if we’ve lost image, even if the reputation looks different, power talks and we can lose the campus and we can lose public opinion, but we can retain enough power that people won’t have a choice. And then they’ll basically accept in Europe as well.” Everyone will look at America as unreliable. This is even thinking for a post… kind of how do we function with an America that has reduced power? If we can assert this, others will fall in line. That’s the gamble. That’s the bet that Netanyahu is placing. There is, to my mind, sadly too much evidence that it’s not a crazy bet. Now, I don’t think it’s going to work. I think there will be blowback. I don’t think he can succeed. But that’s what he’s trying to do. And at the moment it’s not clear that he will fail.
Final question. You already mentioned about their will to, you know, have a quarrel with Türkiye. They’re making it evident in the media, they’re making it evident by their politicians and the claims they do. But at the same time yesterday Mr. Tom Barrack was here and he asked the same question if there will be a fight between Israel and Türkiye. And he said that it’s just rhetoric, there’s nothing serious behind it, that they are just being pushed by people around the leaders like Netanyahu and Erdogan. So I would like to ask you, is there a realistic scenario where Türkiye and Israel are going to face each other and what position the United States will take in such case?
So we’re not talking short term, but this is more than rhetoric. Israeli officials go around the world to their friends and they say, “We need to talk to you about Türkiye, why this country is dangerous.” They are beginning to talk about Türkiye in the way they used to talk about Iran. And Iran was not a short-term project. Iran was a decades-long project of creating the conditions for a confrontation. They warn about the Turkish missile program. That’s the language that they use. But it’s not just that. Türkiye would be not a serious actor in statecraft if it wasn’t now testing on the other side, which I’m sure it is, which is to look at… we’re not talking about war in the short term. What we’re looking at is what vulnerabilities can we begin to create or exploit. One should, for instance, see the energy relationship not only with Greece and Cyprus, but with Egypt. And if they can pull, as I said, Lebanon and maybe try and pull Syria just to test… maybe we can’t, but let’s try. Try the first time. If there is a Syria-Israel relationship, they will see where it can go. Now, I’m not saying that will happen; I don’t think it can. But on Lebanon they will try. They may get further. On Syria, they will try. The relationship on the Kurdish front, Israel got a defeat there when the Americans came in and said, “No, we’re not going to,” when the SDF was forced into the climb down that it was forced into with the Syrian state. So they get setbacks as well. Somaliland, the Israeli recognition of… So there are going to be things happening in places that you go, “What was that about?” and then you say, “Oh, okay.” One of the angles to this story, like the Somaliland story, is a Turkish angle. Israel putting a base somewhere next to where Türkiye has an influence. Sudan. Israel’s not a main actor in Sudan, but Israel’s closest friend in the Gulf is a very main actor in Sudan. So let’s see what we can do there. So you will see sometimes under the surface things going on if Israel is able to continue to pursue this. Now, the counterpoint to that is whether you begin to get an alliance in the region which includes containing and deterring Israel as part of its DNA, as part of its mission statement, if you like. And that’s the subtext to a lot of what is going on is whether Israel can pull more people in its direction or whether we get something that begins to look like containment. But if Israel could continue to pick off country after country, one at a time, then it will continue to escalate its future planning in a belligerent way vis-à-vis Türkiye. If it is forced to roll back some of its ambitious domination project, then the Türkiye thing is too much of a stretch.
Thank you so much, sir.
Pleasure.
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