This week the British defence analyst Robert Fox wrote: “The migration and refugee phenomenon is set to be the greatest security challenge of our time. The prospect is of millions being on the move for years to come – and we are just not equipped to deal with it, mentally or physically.”
These are alarming words for an European audience. Anyone looking from afar at Europe’s handling of the tens of thousands of migrants coming from the Middle East and Africa can only conclude that it is a case of institutional failure on a grand scale.
While Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has promised asylum to all Syrians, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, sealed off his country’s southern border with razor wire to stop the flow. Mrs Merkel, the most powerful leader in Europe, is now trying to force the 28 members of the European Union to take a portion of the estimated one million migrants who are expected to come to Germany this year.
While other countries in the European Union have generally buckled down to German demands for budget-cutting, there is now open revolt at the suggestion of mandatory quotas for refugee settlement. Certainly, there is nothing in the EU rule book to support this. So how is Europe going to find the money, the willpower and then infrastructure to cope with a world on the move?
The chaos is to a certain extent the result of a mad season in western politics. As voters turn away from established politicians in search of authenticity, the most unlikely figures are defying political gravity.
Bernie Sanders, a 74-year-old avowed socialist, is catching up on Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In Britain, Jeremy Corbyn, the far-left maverick who has never held a senior party post in 32 years in Parliament, was elected by an overwhelming majority to lead the Labour Party. And this in the party that provided five British post-war prime ministers, including Tony Blair. The tone was first set in Greece, where the insurgent Syriza party swept to power on an anti-austerity platform in January, only to be bludgeoned by its European partners into accepting harsh fierce budget cuts.
Mrs Merkel, a politician whose caution is highly prized by Germans, caught the mood by throwing open Germany’s borders to migrants and then appealing for “German flexibility” – a hitherto unsung Teutonic virtue – to cope with the influx. Mrs Merkel is following a more generous popular mood towards immigrants, nudged by new data which shows Germany as having the lowest fertility rate in the world and therefore in need of some young blood.
Yet, moods can change on a dime. Mrs Merkel finds herself abandoned by the new members of the EU to the east who have no experience with integrating ethnic minorities, having lived under communism for two generations. As Mrs Merkel has posed for selfies with refugees, the capitals of central European countries have seen anti-refugee and anti-Muslim protests.
The former Polish foreign minister, Jacek Rostowski, says Europeans are indulging in “an orgy of self-righteousness” by encouraging migrants to come and then trying to farm them out to countries – such as Poland – they do not want to go to.
Driven by the unstable mood in the West, politics in central Europe is moving to the right by capitalising on the feeling that the ex-communist bloc states are still second class citizens in the EU. Poland has thrived in the EU at the cost of two million of its citizens going to work in wealthier European countries, often as builders, baristas and care staff. The Polish rock star turned far right politician, Pawel Kukiz, has suggested that his country is victim of a Brussels plot to scatter Poles around the world and replace them with other nationalities.
This is nonsense, of course. Poles are indeed scattered around the world but they either sought refuge from communism or went in search of better pay, and on both counts were welcomed all over Europe.
There is no short-term solution, but it is becoming clear that the only way to stop millions of Iraqis and Syrians fleeing their region is to end the war there. So far the West has had no workable plan. But the teetering regime of Bashar Al Assad, now clearly in need of Russian military support, suggests that a new stage has started.
Britain and France and other allies now intend to step up their air attacks on ISIL so that, if the regime collapses or agrees to a Russian-mediated peaceful transition, ISIL will be in no position to take Damascus.
Could the Syrian bloodbath end this way, with the migrant crisis spurring the western powers to a more forward leaning stance in Syria? Perhaps.
Without an end to the Syria crisis, the future of Europe is more unpredictable: the east-west fissures opened up this summer have added to the north-south division caused by the euro, the single currency, under which northern European countries – Germany and Holland – have thrived while Mediterranean ones such as Greece, Italy and Spain have sunk into a pit of debt.
It seems unlikely that the EU’s greatest achievement, passport-free travel around 26 countries, could survive under the constant pressure. Mr Rostowski, the former Polish foreign minister, predicted that barbed wire fences would need to be erected to prevent migrants forcibly settled in Poland from moving to countries they would prefer to live in, such Germany, France, Britain or Sweden. With razor wire in place on Hungary’s border with Serbia, and similar defences planned on the border with Romania, that no longer sounds alarmist.
Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs
On Twitter: @aphilps
