Austria,
it’s time to join Nato. Vienna can't remain neutral,
balancing interests of Russia and the West, while being part of the West
By Liam Hoare -
"Politico"
In many
European countries, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to a fundamental
rethink of long-standing security and foreign policy doctrines.
Admittedly, the most notable
shift, Germany’s Zeitenwende (turning point)
has been far from smooth, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz has seemingly tended to do
the right thing only after trying other options first. But the fact remains
that the country has pivoted away from Russian natural gas and is now donating
tanks to the Ukrainian war effort.
Meanwhile, in May, the previously
neutral Sweden and Finland formally submitted applications to join Nato; and there are signs that Turkey and Hungary — who
have been holding up the ratification process — may now be softening their
objections to this Scandinavian surge.
Austria, though, has not yet gone
through a fundamental rethink. Yes, it did sign onto the European Union’s
sanctions against Russia and its financial aid regime in support of Ukraine,
but it has opted out of any military participation, citing its constitutionally
anchored “permanent neutrality” — a stance that is no longer feasible.
Austria has neither exported
weapons to Ukraine — even though it has 56 aging
Leopard 2 tanks ripe for donation — nor has it participated in
training Ukrainian forces. Imports of Russian gas are approaching
pre-war levels, with 71 percent of Austria’s gas coming from Russia
in December. And major Austrian companies like Raiffeisen Bank International
and wood manufacturers Kronospan and EGGER remain active in
Russia despite sanctions.
A coalition of politicians,
diplomats, artists and businesspeople did, however, recently publish an open letter
marking the first year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Bemoaning the lack of
serious political debate regarding Austria’s security policy, the ad-hoc
coalition lamented that “large sections of domestic politics and society have
fallen prey to the illusion that Austria can remain as it is,” adding that
“important questions about the future of Austria, Europe, and the international
order are being neglected.”
But in parliament, no party bar
the liberal NEOS has sought to question Austria’s neutral status since the
invasion began either. Indeed, the far-right Freedom Party, which currently
leads in the polls, has embedded its opposition to European support for Ukraine
in its rhetoric. And among the general public, a poll taken in May 2022 —
the very month Finland and Sweden applied for NATO membership — showed that
only 14 percent of Austrians favored doing the same, with a whopping 75 percent
opposed.
It’s as though the clocks in
Austria stopped dead on February 24, 2022.
The problem is Austria remains
shackled to neutrality by the stories it tells itself. The first of these is
that neutrality was the price the country had to pay to end the postwar Allied
occupation and regain its independence in 1955.
The second is that neutrality and
prosperity — the so-called “economic miracle” of the 1960s — are inherently
bound together. That Austria wouldn’t have become a country with Western
European living standards were the Soviets still in control of the country’s
east.
And a third is that neutrality was
the platform that allowed the country to play an outsized role in global
affairs in the 1970s, when then-Chancellor Bruno Kreisky
interceded in the Middle East peace process and sought to improve relations
between the Global North and South.
All of these are more or less true — or, rather, they were.
The fall of the Berlin Wall meant
that by 1990, Austria had gone from being a country at Europe’s periphery, on
the fortified border between east and west, to one right at the Continent’s
political center.
Austrian capital flowed east, Eastern
European labor came west, and throughout the decade, the country became a
natural destination for refugees fleeing former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević’s genocidal war. In 1995, Austria then
joined the EU along with Sweden and Finland and signed up to NATO’s Partnership
for Peace — members of its armed forces still participate in the peacekeeping
missions in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina today.
Yet, despite all this, Austria
continues to cling to its official permanent neutrality as if the face-off
between Europe’s former military blocs — NATO and the Warsaw Pact — were still
ongoing and as though it isn’t an EU member. But Austria’s prosperity, security
and place in the world is no longer tied to neutrality as the public and
political class still seem to think.
Quite the reverse.
Last year, over two-thirds of
Austrian exports were sent to fellow EU member countries, and the country’s
economic reach into Central and Eastern Europe is both broad and deep. You
can’t visit Romania or the Western Balkans, for example, without falling over
branches of Raiffeisen or Erste Bank, or without
filling your car at an OMV gas station.
It’s time to accept that Austria’s
neutrality-linked independent foreign policy went the way of Kreisky when he left office in 1983. And the fact that the
U.N. and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, among others, call
Vienna home is the legacy of a bygone era. Were Kreisky
alive today, perhaps he would have sought to negotiate a Black Sea grain deal,
but that role was played by Turkey — not Austria.
Today, on almost all nonmilitary
matters, Austria’s foreign policy is the EU’s common foreign policy. The
country is totally enmeshed in the Continent’s political and economic
structures — but its Euro-Atlantic integration remains only half complete.
No longer a border state, Austria
is almost fully surrounded by EU and NATO members — Germany, the Czech
Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Italy. Its
military is little more than a natural disaster response unit, and it has
effectively outsourced its security to its neighbors.
For Austria, neutrality has become
an excuse to sit on its hands and do nothing while NATO supplies Ukraine’s
military. The view that it can survive as a neutral country, balancing the
interests of Russia and the West, while also being part of the West is no
longer morally or politically tenable.
Austria should accept
responsibility and join the NATO alliance.
***
(www.politico.eu - Liam
Hoare is the Europe editor for Moment Magazine and author of “The
Vienna Briefing” newsletter on Austrian politics and culture)