WEBVTT

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It's Thursday, the 3rd of September.

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On Saturday, Iceland held a referendum on whether to open discussions about joining the EU, the people, and more importantly, the fishermen said, nah, we don't think so.

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Then on Tuesday, Germany did something it almost never does.

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It blamed Russia for attacking Ukrainian cargo planes in Germany with drones.

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And in retaliation, Germany closed the Russian consulate in Bonn.

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and said that if the Russians did it again, they'd close something in Dusseldorf.

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You just wait, mister.

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Meanwhile, a former perfume salesman may be about to run a German state.

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And because there isn't enough air pollution, the State Department is spending $4 million to fill Europe's right-wing media airwaves with more BS.

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And finally, Paris, Brussels, and Berlin are singing, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Kaja Kallas?

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Do they make her more powerful or take her job away?

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Right now, nobody can tell you which.

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So that's this episode.

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It's question, story by story, is your spine getting stronger or softer?

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So, here's a question nobody asks.

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What do you do when one of your oldest friends is Toomas Henrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia, the European Union nation?

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I'll tell you what you do.

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You call him.

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A lot.

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My name's Andy Valvur.

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I'm a comedian, American-born, now living in Europe, because, well, if you could, wouldn't you?

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I grew up in the U.S., hearing stories from my parents about a country that didn't exist.

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At least, not on any map you could buy because the Soviets had wiped it out.

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I only had one buddy who understood.

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Toomas.

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His parents were also Estonian, also refugees, and Toomas and I grew up sharing the same traditions, same weird Estonian Saturday school, and same conviction that America and Europe were family.

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And for most of our lives, they were.

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The alliance held until it didn't.

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Right now, the relationship that defined the free world for 80 years is coming apart, and Europe is scrambling to figure out who it is and what comes next.

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Toomas and I talk about this stuff, and it seems selfish to keep these conversations to myself.

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So here it is, the Continental Rift, with former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and me, Andy Valvur.

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Serious politics, questionable hosts.

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Hey, Toomas.

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How are you doing?

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I'm good.

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So Iceland said no.

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Is it a big deal or not?

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Well, it's less of a deal than I think it's made out to be because, you know, it's August or was August and everyone needed something to talk about.

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The result is that 52% or so against 47 voted not to reopen negotiations.

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Yeah.

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But that does not mean that it said no to Europe.

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I mean, basically, Europe was like, well, I mean, you guys decided you want to have a referendum?

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Fine.

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But on the other hand, it's as one person said, it's like the girl you never wanted to go out with told you she's not going to go out with you.

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They get all the benefits of being in Europe.

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It had to do with fish.

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because that's the main source of income in the country.

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And the fishermen said that, well, we don't really want to negotiate fisheries with the EU because the EU has its own position on fisheries.

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And so they said no.

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So basically the rural areas said no.

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The older people said no, as it is.

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They are in the European economic area, which means that, well, they get to do a lot of the trade that goes with the single market of the European Union.

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But, I mean, the negative side of that is that they have no voice in the kind of legislation that is passed in the European Union because they're not a member.

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So they are rule takers, but not rule makers.

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And so, I mean, the whole thing started actually with kind of anxiety over...

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over the United States.

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And it's increasingly belligerent attitude toward toward Greenland and some kind of mix ups because people in the United States were not sure about.

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Which frozen island is it?

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Trump accidentally said Iceland for Greenland.

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I mean, basically, it changes nothing.

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It changes nothing, right.

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And they're still in Schengen and all of that.

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So, you know, no biggie.

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Do they contribute to Europe's coffers?

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They do.

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I mean, to a limited degree, yeah.

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And I think the knock-on effects of this is that since they said, no, we're happy to continue in the European economic area, which is fine.

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Since the enlargement to the Western Balkans, which is really on the agenda, is seen largely as a desire on the part of those countries to start getting EU money, it may lead to the European Union offering the European economic area as an alternative solution to EU membership.

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And in fact, you could continue with this saying, well, maybe even with Russia.

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with Ukraine.

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Is that kind of like being able to join the club and not being able to use the sauna?

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Yeah, that's a kind of Finnish Estonian way of putting it.

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You can go, but you can't go into the members bar.

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That's why people, countries want to join the European Union because they think of, oh boy, I'm going to get all that cash.

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Does this make the European Union look less attractive?

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The only thing why the EU actually looked at Iceland as something interesting is because someone, a rich country, might come in and then therefore help our coffers.

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But it's not that big a deal.

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I mean, it's 400,000 people, so they wouldn't be contributing that much anyway.

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And it also would have made it easier for maybe Norway to step in with its huge sovereign investment fund.

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I mean, we see some kind of interesting developments there.

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We'll see.

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I mean, they have more of a security problem.

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All right.

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Last week, we came up with a new section called Frog Watch.

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We recall it boiling the frog, but we shortened it to frog.

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You shortened it to frog watch, which I think works very well.

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Still watching the frog, the little bubbles of war that seem to be everywhere.

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It was Russia.

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But Merz didn't say it.

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In fact, he wasn't even in the room.

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It was a couple of lower guys who blamed Russia.

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It was the foreign minister and the minister of the interior, which in the EU always means the guys, the police.

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Does that, well, you listen, you were the president.

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Does that make a difference about who says it in the room?

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Well, I mean, you can, I mean, if you are the head of the government, it's, I mean,

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It's a lot stronger than if you pass it on to your subalterns.

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But the effect was, I mean, they actually took two steps.

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One is they are closing the consulate in Bonn.

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And it's kind of like closing the consulate in Richmond, Virginia.

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which is kind of a thing, but it's not that much of a thing.

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It was the last consulate left open because the bulk of the consulates were closed back in 2023 after the invasion.

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And the other step that was taken, which has caused this ongoing brouhaha, is the Russia House in Berlin.

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Which they should close.

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Well, I mean,

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It's a cultural exchange place, but more kind of an informational exchange place for the various FSB, GRU, and SVR agents that work out of the Russia house.

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I mean, it is a big step for Germany to actually say, yes, the Russians did it.

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But Germany has tried a very careful line with Russia.

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all along, basically.

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But certainly, that is also true of the period since the end of the Soviet Union, for example, even going forward with Nord Stream 2 after the Russians had occupied and annexed Crimea, violating the most fundamental rules of international rule.

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Law.

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Yes, that's frowned upon.

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You know, Merz has said for a long time, Germany is neither at war nor at peace.

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which meant that they wouldn't say who was doing this stuff.

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But when, I mean, the logical step would have been to have NATO consultations under Article 4, where you come to NATO and say, look, we have this problem and look like the Russians did it.

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The Germans decided not to call an article, to have Article 4, so that no bigger decision would be made because that would have forced a broader discussion.

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Why are they avoiding the broader discussion?

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I mean, this, this, I'm sorry, somebody's hurling drones filled with explosives into Germany.

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I would think.

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There were more events.

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I mean, there were also the rockets that, um, some of which went off.

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The power station.

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The power station.

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Which they called fireworks, but still.

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And on top of that, they discovered a weapons cache right outside Berlin, um, and, um,

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It turns out the people who did this, allegedly, but did this attack on Leipzig were two people.

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One had dual Latvian-Russian citizenship and the other one had Belarusian-Russian citizenship.

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So they came to Europe on a visa, a Schengen visa.

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but not to Germany, they came to Italy, which of course is as a very liberal, if not, I would say promiscuous visa policy towards Russia.

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So does that mean now that the Germans are going to start checking passports coming in from Italy?

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Well, I mean, it was Italy that...

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that in the case of the Ciuta migration, where none of the people could move on to Spain, decided to check not even Spanish password, anyone coming from Spain.

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But in any case, this does represent a step forward.

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toward a spine.

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It does.

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It does.

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You used a term the other day.

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The German term is Weichei.

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Weichei, soft boiled egg.

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Slowly, maybe we're seeing the egg congealing.

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And maybe like the ultimate goal will be a spine.

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I mean, everybody lined up like we got sport from France, sport from Italy, NATO.

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But in Finland, who has a very long border with the Soviet Union, Stubb was?

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President Stubb.

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President Stubb was circumspect.

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Stubb.

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Yes.

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Well, it's part of a tradition to be circumspect and up there.

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It's the Finnish and the Estonian.

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No, no, Estonians are not.

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This is why we have problems with Finland that we say what's what, and they say, well, we have to see.

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So, we have to see.

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But we have some sort of developments with

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We're talking about U.S.-European relations, which is that when we were talking last week and a number of times in the series about how the U.S. is playing around with what weapons you can get.

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Right, right, right.

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And now there's been a concrete result of that process.

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Right.

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which is that the Germans are going to start building, apparently, an all-European cruise missile, avoiding the U.S. parts, because as soon as you have parts from the U.S., then you have to get a special license, and then the U.S. can deny that, as they have in the past, which means that this idea of Europe developing its own defense

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separate from the United States, is moving forward.

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And as we've discussed in the past, there is this constant kind of internal contradiction, to be Marxist about it, between the United States saying, spend more, spend more.

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So Europe does spend more.

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But then when the Europeans decide, okay, we'll spend more, but we'll buy some stuff from ourselves, our own, then they say, no, you can't do that.

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You have to buy our stuff.

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But when you buy our stuff, then we also have a veto over whether how you can use it.

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It became clear in the past week that when the Ukrainians asked Elon Musk to be able to use Starlink in targeting in Russia, that President Trump said no.

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I'm telling you, I'm telling you.

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What was that?

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I'm saying he's an asset.

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He is.

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You know, all right.

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So this device is going to be European components, European supply chain produced on European soil.

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Yeah.

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So the U.S. can't tell us what to do with it.

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Or can they, because there's American money in it?

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Well, no, I mean, money's fungible.

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That means that you can, in fact, use it as you see fit.

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So what's Moscow's reaction going to be to this?

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It's got a 1,500-kilometer range.

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Well, it'll probably make noise.

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At the same time, Germany has not given, despite all that's happened, has not given its Taurus's

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to Ukraine, which is a currently existing German cruise missile.

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So beyond Germany, Sweden signed a contract to build four FDI air defense frigates.

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It's a big set.

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And there's a very interesting interview with the Swedish prime minister, who,

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on this issue because, see, Sweden has not had big warships like frigates throughout the Cold War because the entire Baltic Sea was so dominated by the Soviet Union, they had these, they figured they'd just be doing coastal defense and hit and run attacks on a massive Soviet fleet.

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But now they see the need, thanks to Poland,

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Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland now being in NATO and controlling the Baltic Sea much more, that they see that, well, we can sort of venture forth.

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It was a $4.7 billion deal to sell four frigates.

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Does this mean we're actually investing in a spine?

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Sweden has always had a spine, even during its neutral period, at least for Sweden.

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I mean, they're tough, and they were going to really fight if Sweden were attacked.

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But they didn't want to be in NATO.

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Same thing applies to Finland, by the way.

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I mean, they built up a very strong defense, again, on the principle that we're alone, so we're going to have to fight to the death.

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The issue is more that since they're also in the EU—

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that they're bringing some of that spine into the EU, along with the Baltic countries and Poland.

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And boy, does Poland have a spine, I'll tell you.

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But Germany building missiles, that's also part of the spine building process.

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So there's a little hope out there, which leads us to our next...

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item, the upcoming election this weekend in Saxony-Anhalt.

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And on Sunday, a state of two million people called Saxony-Anhalt, one of the 16 German federal states, are going to vote.

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And the man who used to sell perfume is polling around 42%.

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We should tell people what AFD is.

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Alternative for Deutschland, it is the hard, hard right party in Germany that advocates things such as deporting aliens, not having...

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invalids in classrooms.

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Really?

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Yeah.

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De-emphasizing the role of Hitler in German history and boosting the iron chancellor, Bismarck, very pro-Moscow.

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Now, it looks like we're at the hard, hard right party in

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in Sachsen-Anhalt is going to do very, very well in the elections.

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And of course, in the next couple of weeks, we have elections in two other German länder or states.

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in Berlin, which is a separate state, and in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

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All of them, in some way or another, can be considered the former East German.

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In the former East Germany, they're very pro-Russia.

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It is a subject of all kinds of speculation.

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I mean, mainly it has to...

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People think it has to do with the fact that the West Germans thought they were better.

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Well, the fact there was a big income differential.

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On that night in November, when the wall came down, I didn't see a real rush.

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Eastward.

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I saw a pretty big rush westward coming through the wall.

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But, I mean, people changed their mind and they began to feel what is the Germans call nostalgia, basically nostalgia for the East.

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Oh, my God.

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I want to line up for bananas at the store again.

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Well, people forget these things.

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So if you fall in love in 1987 and you happen to be in Eastern Germany, well, that presumably is still full warm about love.

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But you forget that there was a wall there.

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Yeah.

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And people died trying to get the wall.

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And everybody was informing on everybody else in East Germany.

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And the Russian is run by the mob state.

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Putin's a murderer.

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Yeah, let's have nostalgia for that.

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So what's to be done?

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I mean, what's the centrist message here?

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Well, I mean, what the German centrist parties have done is created this concept of the Brandmauer, which is a direct translation of firewall.

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That is that the centrist parties will not form a coalition

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with the hard right.

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So nothing will get done.

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It depends how many votes they get.

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Right.

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If they get 43, they don't need anybody else.

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There is no, yeah, that falls apart, but this is more at the national level that they refuse to enter into a coalition with the hard right.

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I don't get it.

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I mean, should they maintain the firewall?

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I mean, is there any chance of even working with them?

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Well, at the moment, they don't see it.

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The Social Democrats and the Greens have actually called, have been very strong on this.

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CDU, the conservative, kind of like old-style Republicans.

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pre-MAGA Republicans.

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There's some wavering there, but Marx is trying to hold it together.

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All right.

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So moving on to the next topic, the United States have decided to...

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spend money and to fund democracy programs in Europe.

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They called it, I mean, right-wing media.

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They're doing $4 million for right-wing media, so more air pollution.

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And this is a very rifty topic because, I mean, this is the U.S.,

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definitely interfering in European politics.

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Okay, let's put this in context.

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I mean, the United States has, under the justification of supporting democracy, supported the development of civil society in countries that have emerged from dictatorship.

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So there's a lot of money pumped into all of Eastern Europe by mainly two organizations funded by US Congress, the IRI, which is the International Republican Institute, and then the Democrats on their own.

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And the idea was to develop civil society, tell people voting is good and all those kinds of things.

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Right.

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Now, following that initial impulse, which I think a lot of people appreciated in Eastern Europe and other places that had emerged from autocracy and become democratic, this is now being used to mount the challenge against democracy.

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basically the way Europe is run.

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I think that's called interference.

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Well, I mean, this has to do with sort of assisting those people like the AFD that want to deport immigrants.

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And keep invalid people out of classrooms.

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Right.

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Good, nice values.

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Good, those were, suddenly those are American values now.

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Well, we'll see how this develops because here in Europe,

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You have to be able to demonstrate where your funding is from.

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And that makes, I mean, that notion of transparency is, I think, will be important as we move on.

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Who's going to enforce that?

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Well, we'll see.

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But it's being pushed and run by someone named Sarah Rogers, the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy.

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Apparently, the Princess of Darkness, she used to be an in-house lawyer for the tobacco firm.

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I mean, she became known last year when she came and started bashing Europe.

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I remember reading a tweet of her saying, I'm traveling to Europe on a diplomatic passport so I can say what I want.

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And it's like, I read that, I go, huh?

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What?

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I mean, who can't say what they want in Europe?

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And on top of which, since I have had a diplomatic passport for decades, I mean, if you are going to the country to which you are accredited, they can't look through your bags.

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That's it.

285
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You can say whatever you want with...

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an ordinary maroon EU passport.

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But that shows kind of an understanding of the way foreign policy works, to be able to say something like that.

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And then, of course, the other thing that sticks to my mind is that she posed for a picture together with the AfD's Herr Frommeyer, who is probably one of the most pro-Russians even within the AfD.

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So...

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We'll see.

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The French have a similar problem here with a guy who fancies himself sort of a French Rupert Murdoch.

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His name is Vincent Bolloré, and he owns the French right-wing news channel, C News.

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I don't imagine he would be a beneficiary of this.

294
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this money, would he?

295
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Well, the money should go to NGOs, so think tanks and so forth.

296
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I mean, the problem that it really comes down to is that the National Security Strategy of the United States, published last December, which says that the goal of U.S. foreign policy should be to encourage the...

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the breakup of the EU, essentially.

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It was somewhat more polite language, but basically they do not like the EU.

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If you wanna punish a country, as Donald Trump said recently, well, we're gonna just put 100% tariffs on everything from Spain.

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It doesn't work that way because all of Europe is under a single trade regime.

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And the goal of both countries

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the current U.S. administration and of the Russia regime is to weaken and break up the European Union.

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And we are not going to let them do that because we are going to stand up on our soapbox and yell.

304
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Anyway, listen, somebody who probably has more stones in the room than most anybody else in the EU is a friend of yours in power in the EU.

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is a friend of yours.

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And there's a lot of talk about her recently in the last several days, as a matter of fact.

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And that is Kaya Callas.

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What's happening with Kaya Callas?

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First of all, she is the vice president of the EU.

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One of, but more importantly, she is the high representative for common and foreign security policy, which is basically chief diplomat of the EU.

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She has been, unlike her predecessors, actually quite tough.

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We used to make fun for like 20 years about the EU, where all you could get out of the high representative was, we are gravely concerned, we are seriously concerned.

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I mean, that was kind of this...

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And suddenly we have this person who actually takes a tough stand.

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First, the idea that she takes a tough stand is something which irks people.

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Secondly, the fact that she has been tough on Russia, and especially with the Vychais, or the spineless people, and also the ones who want to make more money, I mean, I've been perturbed by her.

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Let me just ask you, why does a principled stand irk?

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People.

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Foreign policy is for so long has been a a national prerogative.

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President of France goes, we do this.

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The Chancellor of Germany says, no, we do this.

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And the EU is always like, no, no, we're just watching here.

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But now suddenly there is someone who says, well, from the EU point of view, we need to do this.

324
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She has coordinated the toughening of sanctions all this time.

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And so the French and the Germans have proposed a...

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submitted a paper that would change the way the EU foreign policy works.

327
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Did we put the word harumph in bold letters?

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And so that would be to make her an executive vice president of the European Union in the commission.

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Yeah.

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But it would also take away from her the diplomatic staff of 5,000 people.

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It's kind of like, we're going to kick her upstairs and take away the people who work for you.

332
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It's like a promotion with no more money.

333
00:29:16.450 --> 00:29:17.632
is it a promotion?

334
00:29:18.714 --> 00:29:26.145
Because this was like, give her more, more control of where money goes for foreign policy.

335
00:29:26.626 --> 00:29:28.428
But, but at the same time, um,

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not to really be able to coordinate foreign policy the way this role has been for the high representative for the past 25 years.

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The other way is to say it's a demotion, which, and in such, it is because it would give more power to the president of the commission, that is Ursula von der Leyen.

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Do Kallas and von der Leyen get along?

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No one's ever said anything bad about the other.

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So they present, I guess, a good front.

341
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And the third view of this is that the member states claw back some of the power that they had before Cayo Caldas started running the foreign policy of the EU.

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And suddenly what shocks everyone is A, U.S.

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There's a person who actually takes it seriously.

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B, knows what she is actually talking about.

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And third, she's from a small country from the East, my God.

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I mean, East Europeans did not get high-powered positions in the past.

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I mean, kind of typical of that situation was the statement of Franz Timmermans, who was previously the vice president of the commission

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who said that, oh, Kayakalas would be really good for NATO, but we can't let anyone from one of the countries bordering Russia become head of NATO, which was kind of strange.

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In addition to the obnoxiousness of that comment, it is utterly ignorant because he said that when the Secretary General of NATO was...

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from Norway.

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So anyway, that shows the kind of attitude that we have had to face if you're an Eastern European within the European Union.

352
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So it was a big step forward that someone like Kayakalas, a former prime minister and extremely well-versed in foreign policy, was appointed to that position.

353
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Yeah, we can't be too hawkish on a country that throws explosive-laden drones into the EU.

354
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That would be wrong, wouldn't it?

355
00:31:49.232 --> 00:31:51.292
Yeah, but you get that from countries that...

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don't have those problems.

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One final thing I do want to touch on is that they had the G20 meeting and apparently Trump invited the Russian finance minister.

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Scott Besant made, you know, kissy face with him.

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Apparently Europeans wouldn't even be in a photo with him.

360
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So is this more spine?

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So they ended up doing the group photo without the Russian.

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On the other hand, I mean, this whole sort of Russ affiliate on the part of the Trump administration meeting with the Russian finance minister looking for how we can improve our relations when we are seeing this major increase in bombing of Ukraine of civilians.

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Ukrainians are bombing sort of storage facilities and refineries that is not people.

364
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So Anton Selyanov, the finance minister of Russia, was invited to the G20 by the United States, which is hosting it currently.

365
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Besant had a one-on-one with Selyanov.

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talking about a peace plan when in fact there are no Ukrainians there.

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We're talking about Germans and Weichei.

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When it comes to Russia, the U.S. has been for the past year and eight months rather Weichei as well.

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All right.

370
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Well, I think that should just about wrap it up for this week.

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Oh, I should mention one more thing.

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Estonia elected a new president yesterday, Ulle Matisse, and it's our second woman president.

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Excellent.

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Well, our congratulations to Ulle Matisse.

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And that should wrap it up for this week.

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I want to thank everybody out there who has given us some of your time.

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We know how valuable your time is, so sharing some of it with us, we appreciate that.

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I want to thank my co-host, the former president of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

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I'm Andy Valvur.

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The Continental Rift is a Fresh Lens production.

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All rights are reserved.

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We'll see you again next week.