The_Times__6_March_2020

34 2GM Friday March 6 2020 | the times

Wo r l d

Germany has been urged to work
with France on a joint nuclear deter-
rent amid doubts about President
Trump’s readiness to stand by Europe
in a military crisis.
Tom Enders, the former chief exec-
utive of Airbus, called on Berlin to
overcome its taboo against atomic
weapons and buy a stake in the
French force de frappe (strike force),
consisting of some 290 warheads.
President Macron recently offered
EU leaders a “strategic dialogue” on
the role of France’s nuclear arsenal.
The German response has so far
been ambivalent. The country is
covered by the US “nuclear um-
brella” through its membership of
Nato.
It is an open secret that Germany
hosts about 20 American warheads at
the Büchel airbase, near the Belgian
border. The weapons are under the
control of the US armed forces but
would be deployed by Germany’s
ageing fleet of Tornado combat jets in
an emergency.
As questions mount about Wash-

It is hard to imagine Angela Merkel

posing for a photograph beneath a

map of Germany’s pre-First World

War borders, including tranches of

what are now France, Poland, Lithua-

nia and the Czech Republic.

Elsewhere in Europe, however,

times are changing. Ten weeks ago

Viktor Orban, Hungary’s populist

prime minister, held a party meeting

at a table overshadowed by a colossal

chart of the territories that belonged

to his country a century ago, covering

large parts of Slovakia, Croatia,

Romania and Ukraine.

In modern Europe, states’ borders

are immutable. Yet in many Euro-

peans’ heads the lines are blurred, as a

recent survey from the Pew Research

Centre, a US think tank, shows.

Sixty-seven per cent of Hungari-

ans, 60 per cent of Greeks, 36 per cent

of Italians and 30 per cent of Ger-

mans agreed with the statement:

“There are parts of neighbouring

countries that really belong to us.”

In practice, the figures are unlikely

to indicate widespread support for

annexation. Many Germans may feel

a certain kinship with areas of west

Poland, for example, but few would

countenance parking the Bundes-

wehr’s tanks in Danzig.

In an age of resurgent nationalism,

however, feelings of belonging are

again a geopolitical headache. Most

European states have an “imaginary

border” encompassing territories

bound to them through historic ties of

language, ethnicity or conquest.

From the Italian-speaking regions of

Switzerland to the majority German-

speaking South Tyrol in northern

Italy, there are corners of Europe

where these double identities have

bedded down peacefully. Sometimes,

however, they are hard and deadly.

In the east of Ukraine, Russia’s de

facto revanchist invasion has cost

about 13,000 lives and displaced more

than two million Ukrainians.

Nearly 30 years after Yugoslavia

was dismembered, the conflict is clos-

est to the surface in Bosnia. In its

north and east, a sizeable territory

known as Republika Srpska, one of

Bosnia’s three semi-autonomous

regions, is becoming a Serbian satel-

lite state in all but name. Milorad

Dodik, the pugnacious leader of Bos-

nia’s ethnic Serbs, has militarised the

area’s police force and revived the

threat of secession. The territory has

also withdrawn its recognition of the

Europe’s borders still

marked by old hatreds

1995 Srebrenica genocide, in which

8,000 Muslims were killed by Serbian

forces in an area now in Republika

Srpska.

In Belgrade, President Vucic of

Serbia, who was minister of informa-

tion during the Yugoslav conflicts, in-

dulges Mr Dodik without going so far

as to suggest that an independent Re-

publika Srpksa could be annexed.

This would be unpopular with the

Serbian population, and probably a

step too far for the EU, which consid-

ers Serbia a candidate for member-

ship and is its biggest aid donor.

Serbia has similar intentions re-

garding Kosovo, once its southern-

most region but recognised as an in-

dependent country by more than half

the UN’s member states. About

200,000 Serbs live there.

The EU itself is not immune to such

quarrels. Mr Orban chose to be pic-

tured with the map of “Greater Hun-

gary” for a reason. It is a visual em-

blem of the perceived wound inflicted

on his country by the 1920 Treaty of

Trianon, in which the victors of the

First World War stripped the former

kingdom of Hungary of its coastline,

its navy, nearly three quarters of its

territory and five of its ten most popu-

lous cities.

Generations of Hungarian leaders

have kept this wound festering: since

2010 Hungary has issued more than a

million passports to ethnic Hungari-

ans in surrounding states.

Mr Orban has no designs on these

territories, yet the provocative behav-

iour serves two purposes. The first is

that his largesse is handsomely re-

paid in votes: the Hungarian diaspora

have overwhelmingly supported his

party, Fidesz. The second is that it en-

ergises his political base at home.

Europe is a continent of young

states and old memories. Its dark past

may have been carefully interred and

overlaid with goodwill and suprana-

tional institutions, but it is never far

from the surface.

Hungary

Oliver Moody Berlin

Hannah Lucinda Smith

Skopje

Podgorica

MACEDONIA

ALBANIA

Pristina

SERBIA

MONTENEGRO

Proposed land swaps between

Serbia and Kosovo

50 miles

KOSOVO

Greater Hungary 100 miles

HUNGARYNNN

AUSTRIA

SLOVENNIANI

ROMANIA

SLOVA KIA

SERBIA

BOSNIA

CCROC AT IAA

UKRAINEUKUKR

MARCO ZAFFIGNANI/THE PERFECT MOMENT PHOTO COMPETITION/SWNS

Jaw-dropping Fishermen in West Papua are accustomed to close encounters with huge whale sharks circling their platforms

Germany urged to join

French nuclear deterrent

Germany
Oliver Moody Berlin

ington’s commitment to defending its

Nato allies, however, divisions have

emerged in Germany over whether

to seek a deal with France instead.

Mr Enders, 61, who left Airbus last

year and now runs the German

Council on Foreign Relations, a think

tank, said that Berlin needed to do the

“unthinkable” and take Mr Macron

up on his offer.

“My impression is that the leading

politicians in Berlin would rather hide

under their desks than give an

answer,” he wrote in the newspaper

Die Zeit. “But the German govern-

ment cannot afford to ignore the

rapidly evolving reality. It is high time

for a courageous step towards a new

European security architecture.”

Mr Enders argued that Germany

should help to fund the modernisa-

tion of the French atomic armoury.

He said that the deterrent would be

credible only if the power to use it

rested with the French president

alone.

Yesterday, however, Heiko Maas,

the Social Democrat foreign minis-

ter, said that Germany needed to talk

to France about scaling down its nu-

clear arsenal.