The Right Surges in EU Elections, With Liana Fix and Matthias Matthijs

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is the right surges in EU elections.

With me to discuss the results and consequences of the recently completed European Parliamentary elections are Liana Fix and Matthias Matthijs. Liana is a fellow for Europe at the Council. She writes on German foreign policy, European security, Russia, and transatlantic relations. She's the author of A New German Power: Germany's Role in European Russia Policy. Matthias is senior fellow for Europe at the Council and the Dean Acheson associate professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. He is an expert on comparative politics and European political economy. He recently co-wrote a piece for CFR.org titled "What's at Stake in the EU Elections?" Liana and Matthias, thank you for coming back on The President's Inbox.

FIX:
Thank you, Jim.

MATTHIJS:
Thanks for having us.

LINDSAY:
Matthias, I want to start with you, given the piece you wrote for CFR.org. Now, voters from the twenty-seven EU members went to the polls over the weekend. What were they voting for?

MATTHIJS:
Yes, so over 400 million votes across the twenty-seven EU member states were eligible to vote, and we know that roughly about 51 percent of them actually turned out to vote. So they vote roughly along national lines, right? So that's why when we discuss the results, we will see that these results differ across individual member states, depending on who's currently in power. But in theory, at least, they should be voting on a new slate of members of European Parliament. And so this is roughly proportionate to population of the member states, with Germany having by far the most, and then a few very small countries like Malta or Cyprus having the minimum of six members of European Parliament. So a little bit like the way Vermont and California have members of representatives in the House of Representatives.

LINDSAY:
So Matthias, explain to me what the European Parliament does.

MATTHIJS:
Yeah, so the Parliament is the only body that's directly elected in the European Union. They've been doing this since 1979. They cannot initiate legislation, but they have to sign it and vote on much of legislation in that sense. And they're responsible for broad policy at the EU level when it comes to trade, when it comes to the environment, when it comes to immigration, and when it comes to managing the single market and all that that entails.

LINDSAY:
And when we think of the EU, we normally think of Brussels. Is the European Parliament based in Brussels?

MATTHIJS:
It's an excellent question: The main seat of the European Parliament has traditionally been in Strasbourg, and that's where they tend to meet twelve times a year, mostly for its big plenaries. It's a brand new building and it being on the border of France and Germany, Strasbourg, it's always been the symbolic sort of seat of Franco-German cooperation and EU project, that's a peace project. That said, it also has seats in Luxembourg and in Brussels. Most of its kind of day-to-day meetings and committee meetings tend to happen in Brussels. And so every month or so, there is a week where the whole apparatus of the EU travels by train from Brussels to Strasbourg at great expense, but it looks like that's a situation that will continue in the future.

LINDSAY:
Now, Liana, as I understand it, one of the significant powers of the European Parliament is to pick the head of the European Commission. Now, Ursula von der Leyen currently holds that position, and do we know if she intends to pursue a second term?

FIX:
Yeah, as always with the European Union, Jim, it's a little bit more complicated. So it's not just that the European Parliament can pick whoever they want, but first, the member states and the heads of the member states who we present the European Council, that's sort of the second institution next to the European Parliament, they have to agree on a candidate, and that candidate has to be confirmed by the parliament.

So would they agree on von der Leyen? Yes, probably. She has a good majority of support by the heads of states, and can the European Parliament actually vote in a majority for Ursula von der Leyen? With the election results that we have right now, it looks pretty good for her. She wanted to run again, that was very clear. She's very ambitious. She was a very successful commission president. President Biden, in past years, it was the first time that a U.S. president has actually invited von der Leyen to the White House, a European Commission president, and to elevate European Commission president to this role.

So she's been successful all over the board, and with the majority that she has in parliament now, it is safe to say that, with a little bit of backdoor negotiations, she can get a majority in parliament. Now, the only caveat here is that France, President Macron, has called new elections in France, and we will talk about that. But the question here is whether he actually wants to commit to von der Leyen while he's in election campaign, because he was the one who proposed an alternative candidate, the Italian Mario Draghi. So the only caveat for von der Leyen at this moment is not the European Parliament, it's actually Macron's election campaign that will start immediately, right now.

LINDSAY:
Okay, I want to get to how the plot thickens. Before we do that, Liana, I want to actually just look at the EU parliamentary elections from sort of a macro view. So Matthias, as you look at this, what is your headline for the results of the EU elections?

MATTHIJS:
The headline is the broad pro-EU center holds, you could even say the center right strengthen, the far-right surge has failed to materialize. Beyond that headline, Liana is absolutely right. There was one dark cloud cast over this relatively good result from a kind of EU official point of view. Yesterday for pro-EU parties, where you could say the liberals and the Greens lost votes that went to the center right and the far-right. But that was mostly due to poor performance of the Greens in Germany and the liberals in France, where they're currently in government.

So the dark cloud that was cast over this relatively good result for official EU is that Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, called Marine Le Pen, his major opponent, on the far-right's bluff by saying, "Okay, I'll call an early election." Because her deputy, the very young and charismatic Jordan Bardella, who's not even thirty years old, who headed Marine Le Pen's party list for the European election, during his victory speech said, and called on Emmanuel Macron to go for snap elections and to respect the result of French voters.

Nobody expected Macron to call a new election, because he doesn't have to do that, right? But I think a few things made him decide in roughly a half an hour to do exactly that. Number one, turnout was low in France, right? Around 50 percent, for European elections, that's maybe normal, but during French domestic elections, where much more is at stake, that could be as high as 80 percent. So Macron may be thinking a lot of centrist voters stayed home and they will come out to vote for centrist parties, including his own, in a French election

The other thing is, even if Le Pen, her party wins those elections, it's better to have them govern now, form a government, make coalitions, make messy compromises, have the prime minister even, as long as Macron himself remains on top of it all as president, with broad powers, especially in foreign and defense policy, which they cannot touch. That would then mean in 2027, when Macron cannot run again, because he's at the end of his second term then, Le Pen cannot run as the anti-establishment candidate, because she will have been part of the French government, and also will have governed over any sort of chaotic developments, will have to own those.

All that said, it sounds good and maybe it is too good to be true, because this is still a major gamble. It could well be that Le Pen wins, wins big, becomes prime minister, governs relatively well, like Giorgia Meloni in Italy has done, and then is in pole position to become president of France in 2027. So we have three weeks to find out, the elections will be in two rounds: First round in June 30, and the second round on July 7th.

LINDSAY:
So Liana, what is your sense of the reaction in Berlin and other capitals in the European Union to the decision by President Macron to call snap elections?

FIX:
It was a shock, and it's honestly a shock for the French themselves, because no one expected that so soon. France has the Olympic Games, so there was some speculation that Macron might call early parliamentary elections, but only after the Olympic Games, because he would not want to miss the opportunity to preside over the Olympic Games. And for the other capitals, there are few politicians in Europe that are as brave or as reckless, depending on the way how you look at it, as President Macron. So I can't think of any other head of state or government who would have done the same gamble in Europe. So they all look in shock to Paris. They all look to Paris with concern, because if Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen and Bardella win the Parliamentary elections, the consequences for Europe will be huge. Macron might contain the far-right in government for the next two years, but he might also not.

And we already have, with Meloni in Italy, a far-right government in power. She has mainstreamed herself, she has become an important pillar of the European Union and of the West, but no one knows if Marine Le Pen will do the same. She and Meloni actually don't get along at all. They have different groupings in the European Parliament. So it is a very risky gamble, not only for Macron, but for the entirety of Europe. And as Matthias said, what started out as relatively boring elections, I mean, if you compare the results from five years ago to now, there was a pandemic in between, there was a war in between, and still the shifts that you see just in the composition of the European Parliament are not huge. So it started out relatively boring, but the repercussions of these elections for the domestic politics of member states are huge, and most importantly in France, but we will also see repercussions in other countries.

We see it already in Belgium, and Matthias can talk to this much better than I can. We also see the repercussions in Germany, where a three-party coalition is challenged by a really bad election outcome. And that's the fascinating part for all nerds about the European Parliamentary elections; it's incredibly complicated, but the repercussions that it has on politics in Europe, on the domestic level, on the Brussels level is more significant than it has been in the past, though the European Parliamentary elections are not the second order elections that no one really cares about, and people just go there to cast a protest vote. They have become really important elections for the European Union on a Brussels level, but also on a member state level.

LINDSAY:
Matthias, I want to get to the question of what has happened in Belgium, and I want to get back to Liana about specifically how Germans voted. But before we do that, I want to go back to the broader issue of looking at the European Parliamentary elections, because they've always been described to me as elections that happen every five years, and they're a way for voters in national states to express their disagreement or unhappiness with their national governments. So it's mostly a protest vote or has a heavy protest element. Is that still true, or is that a misrepresentation of what's happening in the European Parliamentary elections?

MATTHIJS:
It is true to some extent, right? From that point of view, the European elections were a mixed bag. In France and Germany, there were clear anti-establishment, anti-government voting patterns. I mean, in Germany, a coalition that had 52 percent of the vote less than three years ago now barely makes 31 percent, if you add up Social Democrats, plus Greens, plus FDP. In France, it was disastrous, from the point of view of Macron. But in the two other big EU countries, in Poland and in Italy, these were very good results for both Donald Tusk, who recently became prime minister, who saw his position consolidated, also sees himself strengthened. And definitely for Giorgia Meloni, who let's not forget, her Brothers of Italy party was marginal in the European Parliament, because five years ago, she barely had 6 percent, 7 percent, and just under ten seats, or maybe just ten seats. Now, she's going to twenty-five seats.

Then, of course, in smaller countries, think Austria, anti-establishment vote was very strong. There, the far-right surged and is in pole position to win the elections this fall. In the Netherlands, you saw some confirmation of the far-right result for Wilders, but at the same time, the center-left did very well. So are these still second-order elections? To some extent, yes. I think EU citizens or national citizens, they feel that they can vote more in protest at these things. Turnout also tends to be much lower in EU elections, even though that kind of downward trend stopped in 2014, with turnout at 51 percent. It's actually slightly higher than five years ago, even though that could just be because the Brits didn't vote this time, because they're no longer in the EU, and their turnout was closer to 40 percent. So I wouldn't get too carried away about this.

But it is undeniable that EU and what the EU does is in people's everyday lives. And so whether it's the environment, whether it's defense vis-à-vis Russia and Ukraine war, whether it's immigration, these are things where the EU is very active in, makes laws, and so people in that sense, the political parties domestically campaign on these issues as well, even though the results tend to somewhat differ from whether elections are purely fought on a national basis.

LINDSAY:
Liana, and I want to return to a point that Matthias made near the beginning of our conversation, and that is the center has held, or at least the center-right has held, that much of the success we see of far-right parties has come at the expense of parties that are left of center. To what extent do you agree with that assessment? And if you do, why is that happening?

FIX:
So I agree with that assessment, and one of the interesting reasons for that is that we have seen there were a lot of concerns about the far-right is taking over Europe a couple of years ago, but what we actually see is that the far-right has adopted policies which are smarter than that: And I exclude the German AfD here, because they are sort of the only exception, but many of the far-right parties in Europe have started to mainstream themselves.

So what does it mean? They have started to stop questioning the EU itself, because the Brexit vote had such a shocking effect on the European Union population, that actually repeating that or suggesting it as a solution to your own country doesn't work anymore. But the new strategy of the far-right in Europe, in as far as you can sort of summarize it for all far-right parties, it's to change the European Union from within, instead of sort of questioning the European Union and European Union membership.

And you see this in many member state countries, that governments are either going into a coalition with the far-right, or being supported by the far-right, or they're kind of building a minority government, relying on the votes of the far-right. So we've seen, throughout the last years, a consolidation of the far-right, a mainstreaming of the far-right. And that is sort of this challenge for the conservatives and for the center-right: To what extent are they going to go into coalitions and to work with the far-right? Especially with a candidate like Meloni, who has tried to position herself more to the center.

And that is one of the reasons also why the center-left has not been as successful, because the center-right has opened up on the level of member states to coalitions with far-right governments, which gives them new power, political options on this level playing field. And then, on the other hand, I mean, those are trends, right? So we might see in the next five years, we might see a trend that goes back towards the center-left. And the other point is if the UK was still a member of the European Union, the center-left would have come out much stronger in these elections. So that's also one aspect one has to take into account, if judging how far to the far-right, the European Union or to the right the European Union has actually moved, and to what extent this is just sort of a snapshot in time.

LINDSAY:
So Liana, I do want to talk about specific elections. We've covered France, we've talked a little bit about Italy, but obviously, the big economy in Europe is Germany. The coalition, as Matthias pointed out, saw its vote share plummet. My understanding is, for the Social Democrats, this is their worst election in a century. Help me understand what has happened in Germany.

FIX:
Yeah, so if you look at it from one point, you can say, "Well, the glass is half full," because the AfD, the far-right in Germany have actually been at 20 percent, even 22 percent in opinion polls ahead of the European parliamentary elections. So them coming out with, I think, about 16 percent now, is actually less than expected, and confirms that many...Both the support for the AfD as a protest vote, but when it comes to real elections, that support goes down. And the AfD also had its fair share of scandals, spy scandals with Russia, with China, taking money from these countries and so on. So that really has hurt the AfD, who, as it's important to underline a contrast to many other far-right parties in Europe, is not mainstreaming or becoming more central.

The AfD in Germany is becoming more radicalized by the year, and is actually considered a party in many parts, in many states of Germany, that once countered to the constitution and is under observation by domestic intelligence. So it is a radical party, and this is only the beginning for the Traffic Light Coalition, as we call it, between the Social Democrats, the Liberals, and the Greens in Germany, because this autumn will be a tough challenge. We have regional elections in Germany, especially in the eastern part of Germany, where the AfD has performed particularly well. In one country, Saxony it even got 42 percent, which is remarkable. It's a huge number, and we will probably see these election results confirmed in regional elections until the end of this year, which will put the current three-party coalition in Berlin under additional pressure.

The question is will they survive until the September elections in Germany? Probably, they will, because it is in their interest to stay in power, but their election results in those elections will probably not lead to a repetition of this experiment of a three-party coalition in Germany. What we will probably see is a return of the conservatives, Merkel's former party, the CDU/CSU, because it's difficult to see how they can turn around the performance after these European elections and after regional elections this autumn in Germany.

LINDSAY:
Just to draw you out a bit more in that point, Liana, do you see an increasing differentiation or division between the eastern parts of Germany and western Germany? I ask that because I've read a lot about how, in eastern Germany, has sort of trailed western Germany over the years economically, that there's growing disillusionment with their situation. Is that playing out in politics, that we're having an intensifying regional divide, or is that something that is just something that pops up in news stories when an American newspaper sends a journalist through the eastern parts of Germany?

FIX:
No it is still an issue. I mean, if you look at wages in eastern Germany, there's still differences between eastern Germany. If you look at unemployment between eastern Germany, there are significant differences, and you can see this legacy of a divided Germany. But then, on the other hand, the eastern states, they have caught up. So it's not such a big difference as it was in the past anymore. What we see with the AfD is what we've already seen in the past with the left party. So for a long time, it was the far-left party that was in power, unchallenged, in eastern states in Germany. But after this long time, there was disappointment that the far-left was not able to change, to cater to the preferences of east Germans. And now, we see the far-right coming in as this kind of protest party in east Germany, replacing the far-left.

So I think it also goes deeper, one could probably do an entire podcast on this, on the legacies of the GDR, to what extent political thinking in East Germany still is different to West Germany after so many years living under socialism and so on. We could also dig deeper about foreign policy preferences, which in East Germany are very different from West Germany, sort of this deep being anchored in the West, which was so important to West Germany, with Konrad Adenauer, NATO membership, EU membership, that really this kind of legacy and socialization didn't really exist in East Germany. So it goes deeper than just the economic differences between East and West. But again, for East Germany, it is a long tradition that they vote for a protest party. It's not entirely new, only that now it is the far-right and not the far-left anymore.

LINDSAY:
Matthias, there's one other country that I want to talk about, and that's Belgium, because we saw political upheaval there as well. I don't know if you would agree with that description, but certainly, the prime minister has stepped down. Walk me through what the election means in terms of the politics in Belgium.

MATTHIJS:
I'm originally from Belgium. I'm right now recording this from Flanders Fields, where the poppies are actually growing quite amazingly right now. So that said, Belgium is a beautiful microcosm of broader European Union dynamics, right? In many ways, Flanders is the northern saint, budgetary wise, and Wallonia, the south, is the southern sinner, from back in Euro crisis days. This is very much the dynamic in Belgium, but also, I think the broad European trend that happened in the EU elections actually completely materialized within Belgium.

And what do I mean with this? In Flanders, the far-right underperformed compared to what polls were saying. The Social Democrats in Flanders did better than expected, because they weren't in government in Flanders. The French-speaking socialists, the Walloon Socialists, got a beating, because they have been in government forever. So in the end, you see this across Europe as well. Social Democrats, as Liana mentioned earlier, there's quite some positive signs, if you want to be an optimist for them, right? Italy, they did quite well, France, they did quite well.

So everywhere where they're not in government, actually, Social Democrats have done well. Where they are in government, like in Germany, they did very poorly. Wallonia, in many ways, you have to go back to when I was about maybe three, four years old, they haven't quite voted center-right in forty years. Now, all left-wing parties lost votes, and it's the kind of center-right liberals, as well as Les Engagés, the kind of reincarnation of the old Christian Democrats in Wallonia that also did very well.

So in Belgium, it's actually quite straightforward: In Wallonia and in Brussels, you will have a simple formation of the center-right liberals with the kind of former Christian Democrats, so a center-right system. But in Flanders, you have the New Flemish Alliance, the cleaner version, if you want, of the far-right. That's also pro-Flemish independence, but has given up on that dream for more autonomy within Belgium, will definitely lead the Flemish government probably with Christian Democrats and probably with Social Democrats. The big question, and I know that's what you're getting to with your question, is how long will it take for a Belgian federal government to be formed?

LINDSAY:
That wasn't where I was going, but I know that's the question that Liana has.

FIX:
I do.

MATTHIJS:
So here, it will be more complicated, because the mirror images are the opposite, right? The Flemish liberals of Prime Minister Alexander De Croo had their worst result in, I think my, lifetime, right? They're down to 7, 8 percent of the vote in Flanders. But the liberals in Wallonia, their brothers, and sisters, and cousins did extremely well, plus 8, 9 percent, a major victory, actually. The Socialists in Flanders did relatively well. They improved in the first time in twenty years, their vote share, but they got a beating in Wallonia, and then the Christian Democrats in Flanders suffered somewhat but did really well in Wallonia.

And so, good luck forming a government that's somewhat coherent there at the Belgian level. It will be of the main winner of the elections, Bart de Wever, the current mayor of Antwerp, who heads the New Flemish Alliance, to try to form a government, but that could well take a very long time. I don't think it's going to take the record book of Guinness Records 541 days, which it took in 2010 and 2011, but it could take well beyond, it will take the European Commission to be formed. And that could actually help them, because the most difficult person, I guess, in a Belgian government formation, can just be sent as a commissioner to the European Commission, and that would then be a great way to have the obstacles removed, but we'll see.

LINDSAY:
I should just point out for people who aren't familiar with the makeup of Belgium, Flanders is Dutch speaking, Wallonia is French speaking. There's also a small German community in Belgium, as well. I want to shift gears and talk about the overall consequences of the election for foreign policy: In the sort of instant analysis, instant pundit category, I've heard two claims made, Liana. One is that the parliamentary elections are bad news for Ukraine. We're going to see the West splinter, move away from support for Kyiv. The other thing I've heard is this means the death of the European Green Deal. How do you react to those two instant conclusions?

FIX:
I don't think I would agree, especially on the Ukraine part. So let me start with the broader picture: The European public was asked, sort of, ahead of the European Parliamentary elections, what really matters to them. And for the first time as the third most important issue that matters after poverty, social exclusion, and health issues, the European public actually mentioned security and defense.

So suddenly, a topic which has never really been an EU topic. It has always been a NATO topic, has sort of gone up the priority list for European citizens, security and defense. And they do want to see the European Union playing a role there. So security and defense is sort of the big pot. There will be money coming in for security and defense, there will be a new commissioner. So it is a big area for the European Union that it will try to explore, and von der Leyen will certainly try to make the best out of, and that is obviously the result of the war against Ukraine.

But do we see a shift in Ukraine support with this European Parliament? I don't see it. I mean, we do have some surges on the far-right, as Matthias said. Those are mostly in the non-aligned camp. So first, they will have to find a political family, a political grouping. But as of now, it looks that the center parties who are all committed to supporting Ukraine are very strong. They will continue to hold the line there. And even among the far-right parties, there are actually differences between far-right parties that support Ukraine and far-right parties that don't support Ukraine. So for example, Meloni has been very successful in making herself more acceptable by strongly supporting Ukraine, and thereby sort of getting acceptance or some sort of, you know, we look away from her more radical domestic far-right policies. So Ukraine is still safe with this outcome of the European parliamentary elections. I would not say that this is a triumph for Putin whatsoever, I would not go that far.

The European Green Deal, the picture is a little bit more mixed, because von der Leyen has really relied on her majority, on her sort of grand coalition in Parliament for this European Green Deal. And the Greens, as Matthias said, really have taken a beating, and one can speculate why that is the case. I mean, obviously, in Germany, but perhaps the bigger trend is that, although many Europeans are for measures to mitigate climate change, more and more, they realize what the costs of these measures are, and that there will also be individual costs.

And that makes it really difficult for the Greens that have climate change as such a prominent part of their agenda to demand radical reforms, when the costs become more apparent for that. So that can become a challenge for the Green Deal, but I would not yet say that it is dead at this point, which points again to the conclusion that we said at the beginning of this talk, that actually, just from the composition of the European Parliament, for the chances that von der Leyen has to be re-elected, we do see surprising continuity to five years ago, but Matthias may disagree.

LINDSAY:
Matthias, what is your take on the foreign policy consequences of the results of the weekend?

MATTHIJS:
In the spirit of maybe casting a bit of doubt on what Liana just said, even though I broadly agree with her assessment of Ukraine and also the Green New Deal, is that while the center holds in Europe, I think the second-order dynamics that we see the effects on the member states make Europe a lot less governable or harder to govern in the next five years. And why is this? I think it comes down to the Franco-German Alliance, the Franco-German engine that was already sputtering, that you could say had its high tide in the summer of 2020, when Angela Merkel and Macron came up with NextGenerationEU in the response to the pandemic, and maybe had another high moment shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, or maybe that year, even though it's been back and forth.

Macron and Scholz already don't get along too well. In the next six months, to the next eighteen months, to even the next two years, they're going to be completely internally distracted. There's going to be a lot of German and French navel-gazing, at a time, frankly, that the European Union cannot afford it. I mean, if you look at the moment that this is about, the moment that Europe needs is a sort of 1985-1995 decade of institutional innovation, right? They want to do enlargement to ten countries to the east, hard countries that need reforms, that need political and economic reforms. They want to have a big budget, which needs to be agreed in the next few years. They want to do institutional reform, which would stop the Orbán's of the world blocking everything and move to some sort of qualified majority, right? So you need to update both the hardware of the EU, which is very 1990s or at least 2009 Lisbon Treaty, and the software, which is still based on ideas about the single market and monetary and fiscal policy, that's a very 1990s, 2000 rules-based world.

And so back again, Europe needs to move from this rules-based world, from rules, to much more tools, to become actually much more American in that sense, to be ready and fit for purpose in this geopolitical, geoeconomic competition with China, with the U.S. And you need more money for this, you need more purpose for this. I fear that internal squabbles and internal domestic politics are kind of consuming away these leaders' attention, that in a sense, von der Leyen, for all her talents, and I think she's done incredibly well in the first five years, and from that point of view, if she does get a second term, she can continue to build on all the institutional innovations she set in motion, but she cannot do it without the support, the strong support of France and Germany, right? She seems to have the support in Spain, she has the support in Poland, and even in Italy, but it's the key couple of European integration where I see the darkest clouds hanging over the EU in the next few years.

LINDSAY:
On that sobering note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guests have been Liana Fix, fellow for Europe, and Matthias Matthijs, senior fellow for Europe at the Council. Liana and Matthias, as always, thank you for taking the time to chat with me.

FIX:
Thank you, Jim. It was a pleasure.

MATTHIJS:
Yes, thank you, Jim.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and leave us a review. We love the feedback. You can email us at [email protected]. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on CFR.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Justin Schuster for his editing assistance. This is Jim Lindsay, thanks for listening.