Episode 118: Is There a Leadership Vacuum in Europe?
Jeff Rathke
President of AGI
Jeffrey Rathke is the President of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC.
Prior to joining AICGS, Jeff was a senior fellow and deputy director of the Europe Program at CSIS, where his work focused on transatlantic relations and U.S. security and defense policy. Jeff joined CSIS in 2015 from the State Department, after a 24-year career as a Foreign Service Officer, dedicated primarily to U.S. relations with Europe. He was director of the State Department Press Office from 2014 to 2015, briefing the State Department press corps and managing the Department's engagement with U.S. print and electronic media. Jeff led the political section of the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur from 2011 to 2014. Prior to that, he was deputy chief of staff to the NATO Secretary General in Brussels. He also served in Berlin as minister-counselor for political affairs (2006–2009), his second tour of duty in Germany. His Washington assignments have included deputy director of the Office of European Security and Political Affairs and duty officer in the White House Situation Room and State Department Operations Center.
Mr. Rathke was a Weinberg Fellow at Princeton University (2003–2004), winning the Master’s in Public Policy Prize. He also served at U.S. Embassies in Dublin, Moscow, and Riga, which he helped open after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mr. Rathke has been awarded national honors by Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as several State Department awards. He holds an M.P.P. degree from Princeton University and B.A. and B.S. degrees from Cornell University. He speaks German, Russian, and Latvian.
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Phyllis Berry
National Intelligence Council
Phyllis Berry has been the National Intelligence Officer for Europe since June 2021. She also served at the National Intelligence Council as Acting NIO for Europe from July 2017 through April 2018, Deputy NIO from April 2018 through July 2020, and senior advisor on governance for the NIC’s Strategic Futures Group during 2015-16. She authored the European futures papers for the 2017 and 2021 NIC Global Trends reports. From late 2014 to mid-2015 she was Director for Ukraine at the National Security Council. Dr. Berry has a Ph.D. in comparative politics from Georgetown University and has taught European comparative politics, French politics, German politics, and comparative leadership.
Who does the United States call when it wants to call Europe, especially as Germany enters a transition through early elections and France experiences political turmoil? Dr. Phyllis Berry joins The Zeitgeist to discuss which people and countries are taking on leadership in Europe and who will drive decision-making in 2025.
Host
Jeff Rathke, President, AGI
Guest
Phyllis Berry, National Intelligence Officer for Europe, National Intelligence Council
Transcript
Jeff Rathke
Well, welcome to all of our listeners to this episode of the Zeitgeist. I’m here today with Dr. Phyllis Berry. Phyllis, thanks for coming by.
Phyllis Berry
Thank you for having me.
Jeff Rathke
Phyllis Berry is the National intelligence Officer for Europe at the U.S. National Intelligence Council. She’s held that position since 2021. She previously was Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Europe and a bit further back was also the director for Ukraine on the U.S. National Security Council staff back during the first Russian invasion of Ukraine. Somebody who has perspectives from a variety of angles and somebody with a lot of expertise on Germany, too. Avid listeners of the podcast will remember Phyllis because she was a guest earlier this year where we talked about global trends and their impact on transatlantic relations. We’re speaking today on December 18th, two days after the Bundestag failed to pass a confidence motion in favor of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which set in motion the process toward a new election, most likely, which will happen in February, and our discussion is going to build on our earlier podcast. Of course, there’s a focus on the U.S. transition. We’re going to direct our gaze outwards at European transitions and leadership in Europe. Phyllis, my first question to you: Does Europe face a leadership vacuum?
Phyllis Berry
Again, thanks for having me here, Jeff. My short answer to your question is no, I don’t think it does.
I think right now if we’re going to say who’s leading Europe, we would begin with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who’s just started her second term. And I think has started her second term in a strengthened position. There was a lot of innovation in what the EU did during her first term, partly because of the crises that they faced post-COVID and then the further invasion of Ukraine and then also the growing challenge from China. We saw innovations in all those areas. I think von der Leyen begins her second term in a strengthened position. She has a stronger, more cohesive leadership team with High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas the first former Prime Minister to have that position. Kallas and von der Leyen are really in sync, by the way, I think they look at both Russia and China, which wasn’t always the case with Josep Borrell. With former Portuguese Prime Minister Costa as the President of the European Council, he’s someone who has reverted to the sort of classic role of the President of the Council as being really somebody who is a coalition builder behind the scenes. And he has a reputation for helping to come to compromises. Whenever the EU and when Europe makes big decisions, and what we saw in the first term is the Commission and von der Leyen can press a new initiative and can go beyond where the consensus is at the moment, but you don’t get a big new policy without Council buy-in.
Jeff Rathke
Other words, the heads of state and heads of government.
Phyllis Berry
They have to do that. I think we also see if we’re talking about leadership change, we have a new NATO Secretary General in Mark Rutte, and we’ve already seen that Rutte and von der Leyen want to work closely together to use the benefits of both institutions to deal with the security challenges that Europe’s facing and also to bridge that gap of the countries, particularly the UK, which is obviously not in the EU anymore. Rutte’s also gotten off to a strong start. He has a lot of authority from his years as Dutch Prime Minister. He was one of the longest-serving participants in the European Council. He understands how it works. He understands how decision-making works. Those two leaders will be important.
A third thing we see is, with the relative limits of Franco-German leadership right now because of domestic weaknesses, the growing importance of a group of northern countries, the Baltics, the Nordics in informal groupings with the UK, with the Netherlands, with Poland. Poland is another country that if we’re talking about leaders, Donald Tusk has shown leadership, and with Poland having the EU Presidency for the first half of this year, they’ve already made it clear they want to use that Presidency to help Europe stand on its own feet, dealing with its security challenges, but also the economic challenges. The Polish Finance Minister was here last month, and he was speaking about that as well. And so you have this swath countries—I’ll call out the Nordics—who are playing increasing role. These countries are leading by example. If you look at the biggest defense spending countries, you start with Poland at 4.5 [percent of GDP], headed toward 5. All of the Nordic and Baltic countries are over the NATO average, which is 2.11 [percent] now, so they’re spending more. That’s one way. Another way is that they are—I’m sorry if this is a long answer—
Jeff Rathke
It’s comprehensive. We expect that.
Phyllis Berry
—but to get to this they are also, and I think it’s a good thing for the U.S. that these countries are all champions of keeping the EU open to the U.S. These are countries that all have a very pragmatic view about and strongly believe security belongs in NATO. But the EU can do things to help implement that, particularly when it comes to the defense industrial base. Another example of this group is the Joint Expeditionary Force, which has had their summit this week in Tallinn. What was striking there is while that was an organization created by the UK and shows this coalition of countries, really, it was the Swedish Prime Minister Kristersson who said, well 2.5 percent GDP defense spending may not be enough. You know, you see Denmark playing a leading role on Ukraine right now. Their spending is up beyond France and heading toward the UK. For a country the size of Denmark, it’s pretty impressive, they’re second highest per capita. But they took the lead in beginning to manufacture, to actually give money to Ukraine to manufacture in Ukraine. And as the Prime Minister Frederiksen has said, she’s seen that it’s already shown results that they can manufacture defense material more quickly, more cheaply. They can innovate. It’s worked so well that Sweden has actually signed on to that program as well. We’ve seen increased Nordic air defense. These are all examples of how we see these countries playing a bigger role.
One final person I’d mention, and that’s Giorgia Meloni. I don’t want to forget the Italian Prime Minister. I think she’s interesting in that she illustrates a couple of things. First, we’ve seen that von der Leyen worked very hard to forge a relationship with Giorgia Meloni and even if Giorgia Meloni didn’t officially support the nomination of von der Leyen, they clearly work together, and I think there might have been a performative element to the lack of support, frankly, initially. But it reflects the fact that von der Leyen recognizes the shift that’s going on in Europe. This is some of the things we talked about earlier about the changes within the party system and within governments in Europe, and so Meloni is an example of somebody who comes from a very anti-establishment populist party but whose work constructively within the EU certainly pursues her interest but has been willing to work with von der Leyen and von der Leyen has also forged these kind of coalitions and a more conservative, more to the right coalition that reflects the reality of the governments of Europe right now.
Jeff Rathke
But that is constructive, and not seeking—as you use the word performative—the kind of at times, performative stand offs between Viktor Orban and the European Union.
Phyllis Berry
Right. And von der Leyen has this procedure of, you know, I’ll work with those countries, they have to support Europe, they have to be willing to be cooperative, have to support Ukraine. So we’ve seen that. And what we’ve seen is while there are a number of weaker governments that are making it more difficult, the EU and NATO both have worked to deal with this. I think it is interesting, I hadn’t thought about this until I was looking over my notes last night and it struck me that if we go to this group of Baltic and Nordic countries that—actually, throw in Italy, too—there’s an issue of when you have a government that’s formed that’s heterogeneous, right? And we’re seeing more and more multi-party coalitions with anti-establishment parties. Sometimes it has a real effect on foreign policy, and sometimes it doesn’t have as much of an effect. We see with the Dutch coalition, which is a very difficult coalition, that their support for Ukraine has certainly been steadfast and their support for defense spending, and a tough approach to Russia has persisted. We’ve seen what’s happened. The Italian Government, we haven’t seen that. Slovakia we’ve seen more of a shift with a shift in the coalition. So there’s not a one-to-one relationship there. The Nordic countries have long had to face the reality of changing party systems. And so we’ve seen minority governments there, sort of unusual coalitions and they’ve managed.
Jeff Rathke
And also far-right parties in the case of Finland, or toleration in the Swedish case.
Phyllis Berry
And yet they’ve they seem to be able to manage it.
Jeff Rathke
So let’s go through these different levels and regional dynamics that you’ve laid out. The first you talked about, Commission President von der Leyen and the new constellation in the European Parliament and at the top of the EU institutions. And you pointed out that there are limits to how much either von der Leyen as Commission President or Costa as Council President can do on their own. While there is leadership there, it is also incomplete, in the sense that they remain dependent on the heads of government and heads of state in the European Union. What that means, if I think about some of the big issues—you’ve talked about Ukraine and that will remain one regardless of what tactics and approach the Trump administration takes, the European support for Ukraine is going to remain a center of gravity—if you think about increasing defense spending, Secretary General Rutte gave a major address earlier this week in which he basically shook the cage of European leaders and said not only do you need to increase your defense spending, but that means there will be trade-offs in other kinds of government expenditure. Social welfare expenditure, which is a remarkable line to draw in the sand for the leader of a multilateral institution where he doesn’t have a direct grip on those things. You also have the report by Mario Draghi about European competitiveness, Enrico Letta on the single market. A lot of issues have been put on the table which can only be accomplished through affirmative decisions by the major national leaders, and it seems like we’re still missing that. For example, I don’t see President Macron or whoever becomes Prime Minister being in a strong position to make far-reaching decisions on those things. Or do you see that differently?
Phyllis Berry
No, the issue of France and Germany and their electoral calendars and government formation is a challenge. It’s a challenge for them cooperating with one another, and it’s a challenge for Europe. There are decisions that can be made. Particularly, once you have a German government after the election and you have a new German coalition formed—it can happen a little bit more quickly. I know the tradition has been for very slow government formation. The history has been anywhere from one month to several, and certainly the German party leadership of all the parties that have any reasonable chance of getting into the government all recognize what it means not to have a government in place. First, the challenges that Ukraine’s facing, that Ukraine probably doesn’t have six months to wait for Europe, right?
Jeff Rathke
Exactly. Yeah.
Phyllis Berry
But also in dealing with a new administration—and we know that there are all sorts of informal discussions going on among European leaders about what we do about defense spending, what they do about Europe defending Ukraine and ensuring that if there is a ceasefire that Ukraine remains in a position to protect its ability to decide for itself its geostrategic direction. And that is a principle that Europeans really believe in. Are we going to get some big decisions in the next three months? Probably not. By the end of the year, I think there is the discussion and the movement towards some sort of special vehicle for financing defense industrial production. I think that’s coming. The question will be in what form it takes. That’s another example to me where—another shout out to the Nordics, because these are some of the frugal countries. And they have adjusted on this.
Everybody is waiting for an adjustment in the German policy, which I do think is likely to come after a government is formed. Again, there will be a question about the parameters of it, but I think I think that will come. The competitiveness issue, that’s a tougher one, right? The economic policies there—because again, von der Leyen—this was something that German governments have done in the past, this tradition of having an expert put a policy paper out. We pretty much knew what he was going to put on the table. It might have been even more ambitious than people expected, but elements of that, you were going to get from Mario Draghi one way or the other. This was a way to try to build consensus or to build movement on it. I do think it’s interesting that when the Polish finance minister was here in Washington last month, he said he fully endorsed the Draghi proposals and said we see that as an element of our Presidency that we want to advance. I think the EU realizes that it has to deal with the competitiveness issue; it has to deal with some of the supply chains that to maintain global influence, it’s a shrinking percentage of the global economy. It’s still way out by population; it’s still much more significant and as a group it’s the third-largest in in the world. But they recognize that. That will be slower, and there is an issue of this calendar. When you look at Franco-German cooperation—and again, traditionally, big decisions have been made by the Council, by the Commission President, with Germany and France. That’s how we got the COVID common borrowing, right? Was this really an arrangement. Can we do it without them playing a leadership role? I think there can be a lot of preparation.
Jeff Rathke
You talked about the Nordics and Baltics and central Europeans that this new dynamic of leading by example. So maybe we’ll call them the exemplaries instead of the frugals. And that can compensate for the absence of a shared Franco-German vision, for example, which is the state we’ve been dealing with for several years now, going back into the Merkel chancellorship. But that is different from creating a model that others feel compelled to go along with and to join. Are there limits to how far the exemplaries can go in dragging Europe with them, whether it’s on increased defense spending or on others?
Phyllis Berry
I think there are limits. You need France and Germany involved in that just because—
Jeff Rathke
—the two largest economies in Europe.
Phyllis Berry
Denmark and Finland can increase their defense spending by 4 percent, if Germany ups it a half a percent over what it is now, it probably swamps it in terms of money, right? So you absolutely need them. I guess what I’m saying is, they don’t necessarily have to be the originator of the idea, right? I would say in the positive example, in the most ambitious scenario, they will come along and play a leadership role. If they’re ready to make decisions, they do play a leadership role. We saw that at the beginning of the further invasion when Chancellor Scholz made the Zeitenwende speech and Germany stepped up and made that commitment at 2 percent. That pulled along a lot of countries, right?
Jeff Rathke
Yeah. And if we are thinking about the German—we’ll come to France in a second—but if you think about German positioning, it was remarkable to me that Chancellor Scholz was not involved—either not invited, or didn’t push for an invitation—to this Nordic-Baltic Summit meeting that happened recently. President Macron dialed in, apparently, and spoke with his counterparts. But Germany not involved.
Phyllis Berry
Well, that’s not completely true. For example, the summit this week, Germany was at the summit. Scholz wasn’t there, but Germany was there, and Germany has actually done a number of things with these countries. We see it, one, in their forward deployment in Lithuania. And they have been working with the Joint Expeditionary Force more on the military side. There’s a lot of talk about the fact that, for example, Scholz wasn’t at Notre Dame, and that the Christian Democratic chancellor candidate Merz, is talking about reviving this, you know, having a quint. Well, actually, Foreign Minister Baerbock has been holding meetings like that and so has Defense Minister Pistorius and what has been missing there has been the chancellery, and if we think about the tensions in Franco-German relations, I think that’s also probably where the differences are most pronounced. We could see a change. Once you have a new German government in place, I think there are possibilities for it to actually step up.
Jeff Rathke
So the infrastructure is there, and it can perhaps be ramped up quickly.
Phyllis Berry
And—I don’t know if you saw—I thought it was interesting that Macron isn’t going to be at the Council meeting and Scholz is representing him tomorrow.
Jeff Rathke
That was one that I had missed. Thank you for pointing that out. Interesting development.
Phyllis Berry
So the cooperation is not missing; it ebbs and flows. Ultimately what is still traditional is Germany provides the bulk in the sense of money, and hopefully, once again, militarily, it can do more. France provides ideas, and I think we’ve seen that Macron has continued to work with people and France has a military that is more of a risk taker than some other countries.
Jeff Rathke
And that’s the right opportunity to pivot then from Germany to France. It’s striking to me that among the issues that the opposition leader Friedrich Merz, chancellor candidate of the CDU/CSU, highlighted, one of his main criticisms of Scholz was the absence of a European diplomatic agenda, a strategic European agenda. And so that sets the stage, at least potentially, for strengthened European cooperation, if there is indeed a change in the chancellorship. Then, as you mentioned, President Macron remains very energetically engaged. There was diplomacy around the Notre Dame reopening. He was also in Warsaw right after that for discussions, including about Ukraine, doesn’t seem like they made a lot of progress. He had a somewhat more ambitious idea about the potential for European on-the-ground presence as part of a ceasefire in Ukraine. Poland’s a bit careful about that.
Phyllis Berry
I would say two things on that. If you actually look at what Prime Minister Tusk said, he said, we’re not discussing this at this time, which is which we hear from a lot of European leaders, right?
Jeff Rathke
Yeah.
Phyllis Berry
Wasn’t that basically the Merz argument that we don’t want to discuss this at this time. I think realistically, it’s partly they don’t want to get ahead of the U.S. administration here, right? There’s this balance or dance of what we need to prepare, but we also realize that we can’t act alone. And when we get to that point, when we get to talking about end games for Ukraine, if there is a ceasefire, if we’re talking about how you ensure that a ceasefire is truly durable and that Ukraine comes out of this stronger and in a position to actually rebuild, Europeans do recognize and by all indications are talking about what they need to do. They realize that they will have to do more, that they will have to do the bulk of it. I think they realize that. But realistically, no one is quite ready to commit, even France, without some sort of U.S. backup, some sort of assurance because we are talking about Russia.
Jeff Rathke
Otherwise you’d be repeating the Minsk problem, which is—my words, not yours, Phyllis—but the United States was insufficiently invested in the Minsk process, was distant from it. And, at least in my experience, what the Russians ultimately care about is the position of the United States. So the U.S. being disconnected from a major matter of European security essentially means that the Russians are also not going to take it as seriously and they’re not going to feel they have as much at stake in it.
Coming back to the Franco-German question—and maybe this is a good one for us to wrap on—let’s say we have a change of government in Germany. Among the European relationships that Friedrich Merz has talked about, and which he talked about in his address in the Bundestag earlier this week when they were debating the confidence motion, was the relationship with France. But there’s a question about what President Macron can deliver, given the really complicated and fractious domestic political situation. Do you see that as a significant constraint on the ability of the next German government, whatever its composition, to revive Franco-German cooperation on important issues?
Phyllis Berry
I think it is a burden, because if you look at the relationship historically, when you’ve had changes in government in either country, it has interrupted at least the high-level initiatives. There’s a degree of cooperation that proceeds regardless of what’s going on. But those high-level initiatives, it takes a while for leaders to get to work with one another, and we’ve seen those interruptions and we’re in a period now where if we have a German election in February and we have a government form anytime from early April to sometime in the summer. We get to July and France—we’ll see, how long does Bayrou, someone, remain Prime Minister? Are there new parliamentary elections? I think it is a significant obstacle there.
I do think that Macron can make decisions, and he’s willing to do that. If there’s any leader who would go to a Council meeting and agree to something, regardless of whether he truly believes that the whole political system supports him or not. I would imagine this would be someone willing to do that. We’re talking about constitutional systems. He is the president. He still has the powers of the president, and he certainly seems to be determined to use them as much as he can. I think the biggest obstacle would be anything that would require outlays of French money. But again, if you come to common European decisions, it’s not done that way.
Jeff Rathke
Well, we have a lot to look out for on the European scene in the coming months, especially as the new U.S. administration takes shape, lays out its priorities for its relations with Europe, and we see how new constellations of power and influence are taking shape within Europe. Phyllis, I want to thank you for shedding light on these trends and helping us understand where they might take us in the coming year.
Phyllis Berry
Thank you.
