As previously posted, this blog is of the view that the EU is doing itself no favours by the absolute confusion over its policy towards the greatest diaspora of modern times and its apparent lack of urgency in trying to reach one. Meanwhile the flow of hopeful multitudes continues, all but overwhelming the resources of a growing list of EU members to the south and east. More drownings have been reported. There are, however, hopeful signs.
There is evidence that Hungary’s hard line position has softened but that Croatia’s warm welcome has buckled under the strain of vast numbers. Reality has forced something of a coordinated process to transit everyone to Germany with the minimum formality. This makes more sense than trying to set up sophisticated bureaucratic procedures in fields and tiny border crossings. But Germany, alone willing to take realistic numbers, will itself begin to creak both logistically and politically, as the hundreds of thousands turn into millions.
The best news is that a serious diplomatic effort is now in hand involving the US and Russia, backed by Iran and the UK, to end the war in Syria and establish a durable government which can operate a good deal better than the fiasco in Libya, the disaster in Iraq and the tragedy in Afghanistan where the Taliban is becoming, as predicted by the blog time and again, ever more powerful. Military defeat of the IS is impossible short of genocide, as you cannot invade a religious ideology. What the joint powers can achieve by military means is a containment which tells IS it cannot win. If this new effort gets that far, somebody will then have to talk to IS. At least there is a map of where to go, even if the road is hard. Only when peace is restored will the flow of millions ease.
This four power initiative has taken most of the world by surprise. There are four main drivers. The first is that IS is the common enemy of all the players. Second, although tactically the American led air strikes on IS targets has frustrated its advance and helped drive it back here and there, it is still gaining territory and followers and expanding into Libya. Third, the abject failure of the Pentagon plan (which was always a pipe dream, never a plan) to train moderate fighters to oppose Assad has failed completely with the net total of recruits in the filed amounting to an embarrassing five in total. This is because there are no fighters now opposing Assad except IS, Al Qaeda and the Al Nusra front, all extreme Islamists of militant anti-western intent. America now understands that its own troops would do more harm than good. Fourth, Russia remembers Afghanistan undermined the Soviet Union so that later pressures brought it down.
But another dark cloud caused the phone lines between the capitals to buzz. The flood of refugees threatens to destabilize Europe, whose rickety system of multi headed governance cannot even manage its currency properly, let alone an influx of millions which everybody feels duty bound to welcome but who in reality nobody wants. Any destabilising of European unity is something on nobody’s wish list, America, Russia and Britain most of all. Because they have been called in to clean up too often before.