Prime Minister Rama in Estonia: We face the risk that the security burden will distort economic priorities
During his visit to Estonia, Prime Minister Rama participated in discussions on strategic developments and Europe's role in the face of new international challenges at the opening panel of the Lennart Meri conference, one of the most important international forums dedicated to security, diplomacy and the future of Europe.
Political leaders, international relations experts, and representatives of global institutions discussed current geopolitical challenges and the perspective of Euro-Atlantic cooperation in a period of tensions and major changes in the international arena.
The following are excerpts from the conversation that Prime Minister Rama had at the opening panel of the conference:
Teri Schultz: How do you see NATO 3.0 in Albania, once again, a country traditionally strongly in favor of transatlantic relations and NATO, how do Albanians feel about NATO? Do they feel that everything is in order?
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Albanians are the Western Taliban. What does this mean? We are with the transatlantic alliance until the end, whatever it is, and by the way, I want to start here, because yesterday I had the honor of attending a very beautiful ceremony in Germany, where Mario Draghi was honored with the Charlemagne Prize. He gave a speech that made me think that two years had passed since his report on Europe and meanwhile the speech was more or less delving into the same thing. What has happened when it comes to acting is not much and this is the basis of the main concern if we talk about concerns. I do not want to provoke anyone here, but I am very tempted to draw not a parallel, but to make the former Soviet Union a starting point, when it comes to how things are understood or perceived in one way or another, but in the meantime are not addressed.
This is tempting not because Europe could become the Soviet Union, but it is tempting because there is a fundamental question that needs answering. Can Europe under certain conditions allow defense imperatives, geopolitical anxiety, and fragmented responses to create a long-term imbalance between security ambitions and what I call the resilience of civilization, which is to say that we are facing the risk that the burden of security will distort economic priorities. Perceived strategic inferiority causes an overreaction, and what is the most dramatic part of talking about NATO 3.0 or whatever you want to call it is that bureaucratic fragmentation weakens the response, which then leads us to another point that deserves at least some attention and discussion, which is whether political legitimacy is undermined by the pursuit of military power or not? All of these things worry me about where Europe is going. So, instead of blaming, trying to reassess our position, pointing the finger at the United States of America or President Trump, we need to make a real assessment, try to understand that the context has certainly changed, but what is the real answer? I don't think the real answer should be just to jump into overspending and not address the structural problems that we have, because we are many countries, together we are a big economy, but when it comes to the whole way in which we have to act and harmonize, we are no longer what we seem when we are seen as an arithmetic sum of our GDPs. I will close, to your surprise, with a question that I think Europe should ask itself. How much can a civilization spend to secure itself without weakening the foundations that make it worth securing itself because there are so many complex tasks and challenges that we have to address in parallel. As Mario Draghi said yesterday, "we need to reflect on the simple fact that we have no barriers with the world and all of a sudden we are shocked that there are some tariffs, but we have many barriers within our perimeter that do not make us as strong as we want to appear when the moment comes to react in the direction you asked me."
Teri Schultz: Is it a different perception in Albania? What are people worried about, if not the Russian threat that we feel in the north?
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Jana said she is not the prime minister and is not a government official and can be direct
Teri Schultz: I'm not sure he wasn't saying that we weren't direct, it depends on how you look at it.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Yes, of course! I mean that when Trump was elected, he said that: “God had a plan and wanted to bring him to the White House to save the United States of America”, and in fact I said at the time that he only told half the truth, because God's plan through saving Trump was to wake up Europe. I don't really understand when Europeans waste time with; “what Trump said”, “what Trump said”, and so on, “what Trump said”. I believe my American friends more when they say: - “Take President Trump seriously, but not word for word”. So the serious part. is that President Trump has made Europe see itself with all its weaknesses. Speaking as the Prime Minister of Albania, a country that is seeking to enter the European Union and already one among the leaders, I have already heard so many times; “we want you in Europe”, “we want you in Europe”, “we want you in Europe”, but it never happened to take a step. We needed Vladimir Putin to wake them up and say, oh this geopolitical thing is real, the geopolitical threat is real, it's not just theoretical. On the one hand Putin helped Europe wake up and speed up the process for us in general and on the other hand Trump helped Europe understand that it needs to pull itself together.
What I see as a problem is the complete disconnect in our discussion between what we should do from a military point of view and what we should do with everything else. But these are interconnected. I am very afraid that if this defense spending remains at these abstract percentages, we should increase it to 3%, 4%, 5% and it is not linked one, to industrial productivity and competitiveness in Europe and two, to the integration of procurement which is another big problem and then to innovation in general plus to democratic legitimacy for Europe, not just for elected governments, then it is very likely that Europe will have more weapons but it will be weaker.
The political dimension is so important because on the other hand, it is also an alternative that all this anxiety about security revives the dark forces that have long been present in Europe, and here we must become very serious because if rearmament and all this spending occur alongside economic recession, inequality, panic about migration, declining trust in centrist political parties, then Europe will face a much stronger extreme right, with ethno-nationalism, and then neo-fascism can appear in its true colors.
I mean that Europe's challenge is not simply how to arm itself, how to have more soldiers, how to have more weapons, how to grow more and more when it comes to spending, but it must ensure that rearmament does not become a tool for democratic destabilization and this can be, this is a real thing if we want to learn from history, because Europe has a history and history has shown us a lot about what we should try to do and what to avoid.
We have in a way admired, almost worshipped Europe and the European Union as a great power for peace and security. And we have always mistakenly thought that all the blood, all the conflicts, the dark forces and ghosts are a thing of the past. When suddenly we are faced with a great strategic dilemma.
It is not enough to identify where we have problems. The biggest problem is how to solve these problems when it comes to the competitive aspect, when it comes to energy security. We live in a continent, as I said before, that is very strong when you do the arithmetic sum of GDP, but that is terribly weak when you see how the energy market is so fragmented and how energy costs much less in one corner and much more in another.
I think it could be a big trap if defense becomes self-consuming and paradoxically it could turn this feeling of anxiety, of insecurity, the feeling that you are under some kind of attack and the feeling that you have to face an aggression in the coming years and therefore we have to expand militarization. So it could turn into a trap to radicalize politics and make strategic constraints increasingly impossible.
Let me close by saying that on the one hand we have that high-risk path that is fragmented military expansion. It is fragmented, let's put it bluntly, debt without productivity, social decline and of course then the nationalist opportunism that is always ready to emerge. If we want to take the lower-risk path of rearmament, because we must not forget that only a short time ago everyone was very enthusiastic about disarmament. Now we have an enthusiasm for rearmament, so integrated modernization of defense, industrial renewal, technology, innovation, democratic resilience. These are the things that can somehow counterbalance, balance. Otherwise you will be in a position where they will tell you without telling me once the questions to be approved before you moderate.
Teri Schultz: No that will never happen.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: I hope not.
Teri Schultz: We also want to take questions. There are many people in this room who are policy leaders and ministers.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Ah, if questions need to be asked, then moderate them better
Teri Schultz: Then, next time you will moderate and I will be part of the panel.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Why are you complaining to me? Moderate it better
Jana Puglieri: Security is the basis for everything and that means we need to invest. It's not about militarization, it's not about a rush to spend. Because if you look at the percentage of spending and NATO's regional plans and what needs to be done to deter, this is based on capabilities. It's not a figure just out of thin air. Let's say we're spending more on defense. There are real needs that need to be met. So this is based on the capability objectives that NATO has set. Of course you're right. It's not about spending more, but spending better, more collectively procuring and also the number of weapons, all of that, but it's not about the militarization of Europe as I see it!
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Just to make sure I'm not being taken out of context. I didn't say we shouldn't rearm and just have a party there with Russia on the borders. I just said that the challenge for Europe is not whether it rearms. That's beside the point. The question is whether during this rearmament it will maintain economic vitality, will maintain democratic legitimacy, will maintain social cohesion and whether it will become what it should be in a world where competitive global powers are emerging very strong while Europe is lagging behind.
The last thing is what distinguishes a militarized country or space. I have lived in such a militarized space with the Europe we want. In fact, it is not a question of how militarized, how armed they are. But what separates a long-lasting civilization from a civilization that is consumed by the cost of defending itself? The first is, let's say one is the civilization of the United States, of the Soviet Union and then this one of Europe which I hope will be this one. So, ask citizens not only about armaments, ask them about the price of energy, about startups in Germany, about this, that and that and they will say yes, yes, yes. Yes, we want this, we want that, we want that. The question is how to do both.
***
- My question is for all European representatives. Is it time to change your laws and allow Europeans to go defend Ukraine?
- I really liked how Edi Rama tried to outline this discussion. He talked about Mario Draghi and actually the framework that we had in relation to the United States of America. So President Trump has actually seen the economic aspect of the security part, so he synthesized it. So I understand what you wanted to do with the Mario Draghi discussion. So if you go to China and they have a synthesis. I want to raise this question. How do you see this discussion in Europe? Is it still a "niche boutique" discussion or focused on Mario Draghi or a broader discussion?
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Instead of closing the time with questions, I have to answer. I think that at the end of this conversation, what have we got? Are we here or are we trying to talk about how Europe should build defense and be self-sufficient, at least that's what everyone on the European side said. But when it comes to what's in the background, the easiest thing is to hit the US or Trump, while our problem is not Trump, it's not the United States of America. It's not a question of whether they come or go. It is what it is. As Trump says. Our problem is how Europe will become a power that will cope with this increase in its military capacity, while at the same time becoming or being the country that we all adored when we were beyond the wall. So, to be the country of competitiveness, to become the country of a genuine common market, to become a country with an unfragmented energy market, a country where artificial intelligence is not simply and only regulated, but also created and understood, but to become the country where we must not forget that what has made Europe what it is is not the fact that Europe enters war, but because Europe has been the most extraordinary soft power in the world.
It's also something else. Europe needs to talk to Vladimir Vladimirovich. Not just talk about Trump. And talking to Vladimir Vladimirovich is not easy, I know. It doesn't mean not supporting Ukraine. It means supporting Ukraine to the end, but also understanding that to honor Europe and European culture and history we have to play it differently. And that's how I answer that other gentleman. Yes, ISIS has recruited more people, but Europe cannot copy ISIS, because we have to aim for something completely different. This is the thing that we avoid all the time. The gentleman said there Spain etc. Listen, Pedro Sanchez has given a very good argument. He doesn't need me to be his lawyer. But he gave a very good argument that is not about how many percent, but about capacities. It is about how we build these capacities that are European defense, not just Estonian or English defense and so on. European defense and we are so far from that that we are constantly trying to get answers about how Trump will become less keen to confuse or confuse us. That is not going to happen.
Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal: I want to correct my friend Edi. He is quite passionate. I agree that the problem is Putin. Yes, it is a problem, a real problem, and the problem is also the weakness of Europe. Europe has been a peace project, without weapons, and now it is becoming a peace project with weapons and it requires a lot of changes. Europe, however, should not look to Putin for European security. This is not the right way.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: So why are you applauding? That's clear. I didn't say that. Excuse me, Israel and Hamas are at each other's throats until they die and in the meantime they talk to each other. Don't forget, I come from a country where since the 1960s no one has been to Moscow and no one comes from Moscow. So I am absolutely far from someone who wants to meet with Vladimir Vladimirovich. But someone has to meet. So what do we do otherwise? Prepare what? Russia is there. It's not like they're going to go somewhere else. So, while we're doing all that was rightly said, diplomacy is a necessity, then why do eight leaders go to Trump, sit down with him and tell him what Vladimir said? Let them go directly.
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