OPINION:
Turkey, once “the sick man of Europe,” has fallen ill again, but the European Union is competing vigorously for that title. The deal reached Friday is premised on two ideas: that the EU can deal with the refugee problem by attacking the business model of the people smugglers, and that Turkey — the principal path for masses of Syrian, Afghan, Iraqi and other refugees seeking to get to Europe — can get enough money out of the EU to help its struggling economy bear the cost of the 3 million refugees it’s now hosting.
The deal that commenced on March 20 reportedly provides Europe will return to Turkey any migrants landing on a Greek island, up to a maximum of 72,000 people. (It says nothing about those landing in Italy and doesn’t deal with those following the 72,000.) For each migrant returned to Turkey, the EU agreed to admit another Syrian from Turkey under a presumably better-organized system to be resettled somewhere among the EU nations.
To help pay for this, the EU will pay Turkey up to $6.8 billion for refugee aid, give Turks passport-free travel throughout the EU and accelerate the decades-old talks on Turkey’s admission to the EU. Austria is opposed to granting passport-free travel to Turks, fearing Turkish migration.
Turkey has a lot of big problems beyond its migrant population. It has been hit by six major terrorist bombings over the last nine months that killed 220 people. Its courts, dominated by its Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, shut down the nation’s largest newspaper in another move to rid Turkey of any semblance of democracy. Its economy is very weak and unstable. But those are minor ills compared to the sicker man of Europe: the European Union.
The refugee crisis that may break apart the EU is not abating. Our NATO commander, Gen. Philip Breedlove, said two weeks ago that Russia and Syria were “weaponizing” immigration intentionally to destabilize Europe. Estimates of the refugee flood into Germany alone in 2015 was more than 1 million people, and hundreds of thousands went into other EU nations. The flow of refugees so far this year exceeds last year’s numbers.
Unable to agree on a policy to absorb or reject the refugees, EU member nations are acting almost daily to deal with what Brussels cannot. Tragically, Brussels itself paid a heavy price for weaponized immigration on Tuesday with terrorist bombings that left dozens dead.
Macedonia closed its border to refugees and reportedly forced 1,500 migrants to return to Greece last week. Bulgaria wants to send refugees back to Greece, the nation least able — financially or politically — to deal with them. Croatia and Serbia are expected to follow suit. Thousands remain stranded at the Greek-Macedonian border.
And there’s more. We’ve heard much about the June 23 “Brexit” referendum, in which British voters will decide whether to leave the EU altogether to recover their sovereignty. (President Obama plans to visit Britain to campaign against Brexit. Many prominent British pols, including London Mayor Boris Johnson, have told Mr. Obama to butt out, Mr. Johnson saying he was guilty of “extravagant hypocrisy.”)
And there’s another referendum that threatens the EU just as severely. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban ordered construction of a border fence last year, which reportedly reduced the flow of refugees into Hungary from about 10,000 a day to a handful. Mr. Orban has called for a public referendum, to be held this year, in which Hungarian voters would decide if their nation would follow the EU’s migration policies.
Mr. Orban, one of the harshest critics of the EU and its leaders (primarily German Chancellor Angela Merkel), want Hungarians to have a voice in EU policies. He has said, “If we want to stop mass migration, first we must put the brakes on Brussels.” If Hungary rejects the EU migration policy, it would be a first: The undemocratic EU functions through its own laws and policies, its own parliament and leaves no voice for its nation’s citizens. Mr. Orban’s referendum, like the Brexit vote, would wreck the EU system of government.
In fact, the EU-Turkey deal won’t do more than paper over the problems both the EU and Turkey face.
The EU continues to stumble and flail, unable to deal cohesively with the refugee crisis. The EU’s Court of Auditors found that about $2 billion were spent in Algeria, Georgia, Moldova, Morocco and Ukraine between 2007 and 2013 to halt migration, without any apparent effect. The report also took an indirect shot at the EU-Turkey deal, finding that the EU spent about $22.4 million to remove migrants to the EU’s peripheral nations without effect.
Given current political conditions on both sides of the Atlantic, there isn’t an effective role for the United States with respect to the EU-Turkey deal. It won’t stop the flow of refugees and may not even retard it significantly. Nevertheless, we should, as a matter of policy, support both the Brexit campaign and the Hungarian referendum on EU refugee policy. Contrary to what Mr. Obama says, if the Brits decide to leave the EU, they would help restore their nation’s sovereignty. The same is true for Mr. Orban’s referendum.
As Gen. Breedlove said, the “weaponization” of immigration by Syria and Russia is destabilizing the economies and political structures of the EU’s member states. We have a national security interest in the stability of Europe. Mr. Obama, characteristically, never speaks out to protect our national security interests. He is against Brexit and hasn’t yet spoken for or against Mr. Orban’s referendum. It’s time that other American politicians, especially the Republican presidential candidates, spoke out in favor of democracy and the stability of our NATO allies as well as the other members of the EU.
• Jed Babbin was deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration. He is with the London Center for Policy Research and the author of five books including “In the Words of Our Enemies.”
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