The headline might be bordering on the hysterical, but the big idea in German politics right now is to re-introduce the general draft. This is not happening because Germany expects to be at war. It is not about the military at all. Under the plans, young people, male and female, can choose between the Bundeswehr or a year of forced labour in the social services, essentially uncompensated. 

The main reason we see is that their fiscal rules have depleted them with the resources to fund the Bundeswehr and critical social services like old-age care. For example, there is a big row going on right now within the coalition currently between Boris Pistorius, the defence minister, and Christian Lindner, over Pistorius' demands for another €6bn for the Bundeswehr. The discussions on the reintroduction of the draft are at an early stage. They won't affect the current budget dispute. But it could go some way to fix the Bundeswehr's budget issues. 

The SPD leader Lars Klingbeil sugar-coated the idea as giving young people an opportunity to serve the state at one point in their lives. Another underlying assumption is that young people are infinitely stupid. German high school goes until the age of 19. This is higher than elsewhere because German children do not start school until they are 6. With a year of enforced military or social services, they won't start their studies or apprenticeship until they are 20. A Bachelor's degree takes three, but this is usually not sufficient. So they will be 24 or 25 when they hit the labour market. This puts them at a distinct disadvantage to young people elsewhere.

Germany introduced the general draft in 1956 and abolished it in 2011. West Germany sat right at the frontier between east and the west during the Cold War. Along with the abolition of the draft in 2011, the Bundeswehr turned into a low-quality employer. Recruitment became a social policy. We know of people who got refused because they were overqualified. The classic Bundeswehr soldier was a low-achievement school leaver. It is also unsurprising that the Bundeswehr became a breeding ground for the Junge Alternative, the youth organisation of the AfD. Germany depleted the Bundeswehr of its human and physical resources. They failed to turn the Bundeswehr from a conscription army into a modern professional army. 

We expect mass emigration as a result. Young Ukrainian men who try to escape the draft often do so at the risk of their lives. Romanian police have discovered bodies of young Ukrainians trying to swim through the Tisa river into Romania. Young Germans won't have to swim through the Rhine. They can just go anywhere within the Schengen area, and study where they like. For a country that is facing structural labour shortages, the re-introduction of the draft is about the worst policy decision imaginable. The smart people will leave.

The political support is strengthening. The FDP has called for it. The SPD is also now in favour. The CDU says it is open to a discussion. The AfD will naturally support it. The Greens and the Left Party are opposed, but that won't be enough to stop it. 

Rafah seems to be a real red line for Joe Biden. For the first time, his government publicly announced a halt of some military shipments if Israel were to proceed with a ground operation into Rafah. There are of course various shades of grey, and nothing is quite like it seems. Monday’s operation was not considered part of the invasion of Rafah, as it was at the outskirts of the city at the border crossing with Egypt. There are also various scenarios of what going into Rafah actually means. Amongst eight military plans for Rafah from which the war cabinet gets to chose options range from specifically targeted operations to full ground invasion.

A full-blown invasion is most certainly a red line for Biden. But what about those other options? Threatening a pause of US weapons for Israel and actually delivering on this threat are also two different things.

The threat is clearly part of a power play between the US and the Israeli government, with relations currently at a low point. Benjamin Netanyahu is quietly briefing the Israeli media that the US tricked him by promising Hamas that the war will end with a cease-fire. Israel now also accuses the US of undermining Israel’s strategy in the deal for a ceasefire and hostages return by witholding weapons.

For Biden, Rafah is becoming a liability ahead of the upcoming US elections. Democrats are increasingly in favour for this war ending, and they see Rafah as a turning point. Axios reports that a Rafah invasion would risk a rebellion amongst Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Biden will also have to think about the next generation of voters. After pro-Palestine protests at least 130 university campuses across the US, high school students are starting to mobilise too. They held sit-ins and walkouts in Chicago, Salem, Oregon, Austin, Texas and other places throughout Washington state to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and the end of US aid to Israel.

Congress took note, and some of the school directors had already been called to testify at the relevant GOP-led House committee. There, they had to rebuff accusations that they allowed anti-Semitism in their schools.

The urgency and pressure young people feel is to be understood not only as an expression of their age but also as a result of how they access information. While the older generations still rely on mainstream media for their information intake, the young generations gets their news from social media. Without the media filter or self-censorship, they have been seeing images from inside Gaza via Instagram and TikTok and are thus much more aware of what is happening there every day. For them those images do not add up with the inaction and diplomatic rhetoric of their government.

Israel may be using its tactics to win the war against Hamas, but they are about to lose the hearts of those young. If older generations were to watch those images on TikTok, Instagram or Twitter, would they still be unmoved in their position? It boils down to the question of who holds the narrative. And it looks like the younger and the older generations are seeing very different stories, one close-up to the ground the other focused on power-politics.

The next Opec+ meeting is not until 1 June. But that has not stopped there being a new round of speculation about what the cartel will do over the summer. Alexander Novak, Russia’s deputy prime minister, poured a bit more fuel on the fire, both literally and figuratively, yesterday when he talked about the possibility of increasing production. This seems a bit counter-intuitive, given that oil prices have not risen massively since the last round of Opec+ production cuts began in earnest. But this line of thinking may become more common in the future.

Opec+’s immediate difficulties are with trying to parse how oil demand and extra supply from non-Opec members will interact this year. Alongside this, the geopolitical risk premium for oil seems to have receded somewhat. We are, however, more interested in the long-term picture. The cartel will have a series of choices to make as road transport electrification begins to eat more into oil demand.

This point may be approaching. Electric car sales may be taking a hit in Europe and North America. But that is not the case in China, where they may make up 45% of new vehicle sales this year. The International Energy Agency still anticipates that around a third of all Chinese cars on the road by 2030 will be electric. This is already having an impact on the country’s oil demand. Bloomberg NEF expects its road fuel demand will peak this year, and that the global peak will happen by 2027.

At the moment, electric cars are cutting into oil demand to a more modest extent. Bloomberg NEF estimates it was 1.5m barrels per day on average in 2022, a small fraction of the more than 100m barrels per day of global demand. But this is a large enough figure to knock yearly demand growth figures, which are critical for oil producers, off-course. It will also only grow. Before we get to peak oil, whether that happens by the end of the decade or later, peaking oil will come first.

If you are Opec+, this sets up the long end-game dilemma: whether you restrict output further to protect prices, or pump what you can to crowd out higher-cost producers and make extra cash. For the rest of us, we will have to live with that decision for as long as we mostly rely on oil, even if the end is in sight. Especially if China leapfrogs us in the transition away from the internal combustion engine.

Israel continued its military operation in Rafah while Hamas accepted the ceasefire and hostage release proposal. Both statements together make no sense. But a closer look reveals that this is just part of twisted plot where both sides aim for something more while laying the blame for death and destruction on the other side. This haggling over the terms of a ceasefire while crossing the red line in Rafah is cynical, both to the people in Rafah and the families of the hostages. It will now be up to the US and other states to decide whether a red line is a red line, or whether the goal posts have changed yet again.

Yesterday could well turn out to be one of those watershed moments. An invasion of Rafah increases the risk of escalating violence on both sides and between their communities and protesters in the world. What is even more cynical is that increased violence between the two camps could be instrumentalised politically by both negotiation teams.

The sequence of yesterday’s events was that after Israel started the evacuation and bombing in Rafah, Hamas informed Qatar and Egypt that it agreed on a cease-fire proposal. The message was immediately celebrated by the people in Gaza, prematurely as it turns out, as bombing continued in the night. Hamas's intent was to signal to the Palestinians that they are not the obstacle to spare Rafah from the bombing, raising their hopes and pointing the finger at Israel. But the terms of this deal were bent to such an extent that they no longer were acceptable to Israel. The war cabinet decided unanimously to continue with its operation in Rafah to pressure Hamas for accepting Israel's conditions.

Benjamin Netanyahu had been oscillating between a hard stance of his government on achieving Israel’s war goals, and accepting negotiations over a military pause with Hamas in Egypt over the past week. Shortly after accepting the truce proposal from Egypt, Netanyahu promised to invade Rafah no matter what Hamas would decide. The Israeli government is always frank and upfront in what it is doing next. But where does it go from here? At the core of this is the incompatibility of Israel’s war goals, between annihilating Hamas and the return of the hostages. There will be a deal eventually. The question is who is going to pay for it. The people in Rafah are hostage to both Hamas and Israel in this game of chicken.

What will the US and Europe do in response? Rafah has been described as a red line several times before the operation started, including by Ursula von der Leyen last week. Now governments have to demonstrate what it means if this red line is crossed. Conditioning arms deliveries has been mentioned by the Biden administration, yet they have to prove that they can act on it. In the EU there are no plans on the table for how to respond to an invasion of Rafah. And despite the red line calls, we do not expect that Rafah will all of a sudden unite EU member states behind a common response strategy that seeks to penalise Israel.

There are some measures in discussion. Belgium, which currently holds the EU presidency, is pushing for a ban on imports of Israeli products from the occupied territories, like dates and olive oil. Under EU regulation, products from the occupied territories should be clearly labelled and are subject to less preferential customs arrangements. But these rules are lax and not enforced, according to Euronews. Spain and Ireland have also pushed for revising the bilateral trade agreement with Israel, which includes the proviso that both sides can suspend trade due to human rights violations. Both countries are also spear-heading an initiative to recognise Palestine unilaterally within the next months. But Rafah is unlikely to convince Germany and other more sceptical EU member states, other than to dial up rhetorical calls for restraint. Germany’s allegiance to Israel seems absolute. The only way for them to agree is for a post-conflict solution of what a two state solution could look like.

Rafah will matter for the protest movements, however. The sit-in protests that started in the US have been spreading towards Europe and the rest of the world last week. An escalation in Rafah would be like pouring oil onto the fire. Violent clashes between the two sides are likely, as some scenes at the university in Amsterdam suggest. Amid this form of escalation, how do we aim to square this with freedom of speech?

For us the question is who or what will in the end decide the terms of our engagement with Israel's government and the Palestinians, and how we will deal with the eruption of violence.

The EU commits €1bn to Lebanon as the latest third-country deal to prevent migrants from reaching Europe, in this case Cyprus, some 180km away from the Lebanese coast. We have been critical of these third-country deals since the first one was struck with Turkey in 2015. This one is of an much greater level of hypocrisy.

Lebanon is experiencing one of the world's worst financial and economic crises over the past five years with no end yet in sight. Politically the country remains stuck, without a president, governed by a caretaker government with limited powers and deadlocked between various factions. The security situation in the country deteriorated severely since 7 October, with a potential for escalation between Israel and Iran through its Lebanese militia Hezbollah.

During all those past five years the EU had pledged it would only support the Lebanese government conditional on substantial reforms. This has also been the line of the IMF. But the EU’s line changed when Cyprus asked the EU for help as more than 2000 migrants landed on their shores in rubber boats that departed from Lebanon since the beginning of the year. This is most likely not a one off. Migrant flows can be expected to rise if Israel’s war continues or even escalates in Lebanon.

The EU’s response to Cyprus’s request was quick. Ursula von der Leyen put the money on the table with basically no conditions attached other than to prevent the migrants from coming to Europe.

Where will this money go in a country that has no functioning political system? AFP reports that the bulk of the aid, €736m, would go to supporting Syrian refugees and other vulnerable groups in Lebanon, while €200m are to train and bolster Lebanese security services in enforcing border and migration control. How will we make sure that it does not stir up more divisions between the Syrian refugees and their host communities?

While the legal route towards Europe remains open, the question is what to do with illegal migrants. There had been talks amongst EU countries to recognise some parts of Syria as safe to return, which would allow them to deport migrants into those safe zones, despite reports of human rights violations in Syria. Human rights organisations have been vociferously warning against such a move ahead of the deal.

The message this deal sends is that once our borders are affected, the EU opens its purse. This is cynical also since the EU had reduced support for refugee programmes in Lebanon in the past years. Most recently, for very different reasons, the US and many EU countries cut the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) which provides assistance to 250,000 Palestinians in Lebanon. This has put even more strain on Lebanon’s refugee population.

It is discouraging that the EU will be known in this region more for these dirty third-country deals than for a principled position in its foreign policy. It signals that it takes a crisis like this for us to throw money at a problem, but from a fearful position, not one of strength. It sets incentives for a country to scapegoat refugees and use them as a bargaining chip to extract money from the EU. In the long run, it will be us who pays the price for a European stance that is acting like a fire-fighter, not a long-term strategic partner.

Why is the far right getting prominent in Mediterranean coastal regions? There are similarities and differences as featured in Politico’s election profiles in the Algarve and the Côte d’Azur regions. Immigration is a common issue for both, though with different flavours.

In Portugal, the turn to the far-right Chega comes from previous supporters of the left. The Algarve had been a traditional stronghold for the left with 62% voting for left-leaning parties in the 2019 elections compared to the national average of 57%. That support slowly eroded to 54% versus a 53% nationwide average in the 2022 snap elections. It completely flipped in this year’s elections where Chega came first in that region. This victory was backed by a campaign with anti-immigrant rhetoric, traditional family values, and corruption allegations against the Socialist government. Immigration is seen by locals as a threat to their way of living, be it local rules and the rise in house prices. There are two kinds of immigrants that threaten their traditional lifestyle. The good weather attracts wealthy pensioners to retire to the sea resorts, driving up house prices thanks to golden visa schemes and EU freedoms. The second type of immigration consists of workers from South Asian countries like India and Bangladesh, who come to Portugal’s costal region for seasonal work in the tourism sector.

In France, the turn towards Rassemblement National in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region comes from the right. Since the 2015 elections, the region is in the hands of Les Républicains, but there also had been a strong showing of the far-right Rasssemblement National. In the last regional elections in 2021, the race was between the two, where the conservatives got 57.3% of the votes against 42.7% in the second round, while in the 2022 presidential elections, Marine Le Pen won for the first time in this region.

The far-right party no longer instils fear, but a promise, especially for an ageing population. In this region, it is predominantly the French who retire there, rather than foreigners. The Rivera offers a luxury lifestyle in cities like Cannes or Nice, or in the surrounding hills with their vast villas and vineyards. The French seniors are much more receptive to Le Pen’s promises of stopping immigration. Nice had its history of terrorist attacks, and the protective gear at the promenades are a daily reminder that the threat is still there. Here the threat is mainly conceived coming from Africa and Arab countries. This wealthy region may be the missing piece of the puzzle for Le Pen to reach the upper-income echelon constituency.

Hamas has until tonight to respond to the Egypt mediated proposal of a hostage deal. If they agree to the deal, Benjamin Netanyahu would have no choice but to accept. But Netanyahu is also playing for his own political survival. After bowing to the pressures of members of Israel’s war cabinet to agree on a hostage deal with Hamas using the invasion of Rafah as leverage, Netanyahu flipped yesterday by assuring his far-right ministers Itamar Ben Givr and Bezalel Smotrich, who oppose the deal, that they will go into Rafah anyway, that this is not the end of the war, and that they will not accept any deal. The Biden administration is now floating the idea of suspending certain arms deliveries if Israel were to go into Rafah. There are also increasingly furious protests from hostage families to strike a deal with Hamas to return their loved ones. He could get the deal through even without the far-right, as opposition leader Yair Lapid has pledged to support one in parliament, according to Al-Monitor. So there is no way out for Netanyahu once Hamas agrees to the deal.

It is a tragedy that Israel’s attempt to teach Hamas a lesson caused such a collateral damage, not only for Palestinian lives, but also for how Israel is seen in the world. Rafah would cross the line for many countries. There is already talk of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, and Netanyahu’s plea to Joe Biden to prevent this as if the US could do anything about it. Student protests in the US also signal that US support for Israel may no longer be so steadfast in the future as it has been in the past. There is also a question of how much longer Arab states can hold on to the promise of normalisation if Israel crosses this particular red line. The moment of choice between realpolitik and ideological warfare is about to come.

European and Arab foreign ministers, meanwhile, met in Riyadh on the sidelines of a two-day World Economic Forum event to discuss how to join forces in advancing the two-state solution. As one of the organisers of this meeting, Norway’s foreign minister Espen Barth Eide, put it:

“If we want to move this two-state solution forward it will not happen from the parties. I do not believe that Israel is ready to negotiate at this point, and I do not think that the US is ready to take the necessary leadership.”

If this initiative were to take off, it would be a great success indeed. For Europe, it would also be a way to play a more constructive role in conflict resolution. Josep Borrell invited Arab leaders to present their proposals for a two-state solution, and wants EU countries to invite them to Brussels for discussions, writes Euractiv. His hope is that a proposal from the Arab states would force European countries to overcome their divisions and work towards a joint solution. Several EU member states are also expected to recognise the state of Palestine soon. So far, eight of the 27 EU member states recognise Palestine, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Sweden and Cyprus. France’s foreign minister linked the question of recognition to a strategy towards a two state solution.

The main reason why opinion in Washington has shifted over Ukraine is the assessment that the country will lose the war because it does not have enough troops on the ground. 

We saw a story in Bild yesterday that would confirm this story line. Of all German newspapers, Bild has been the strongest supporter of Ukraine, so we don't think we are dealing with a case of news selection bias. We know about shortages. This story goes further. Ukrainian commanders are saying that the bottleneck is no longer western weapons, but people who can use them.

We should not extrapolate that information. They may overstate their case to force a change in policy. For all we know, Russia may have the exact same problems, or worse.

Many young Ukrainian men have left the country to avoid the draft. President Volodymyr Zelensky has been hesitant to order a general draft of all Ukrainians. His government recently suspended consular services for Ukrainian males aged 18 to 60 years old, and reduced the age for the draft from 27 to 25 years. There is clearly more they can do. Only 15% of its male population is in active service. 

But what made us listen up is the assertion about bottlenecks. It quoted one brigadier general as saying that he used to think that the lack of artillery shells was the biggest problem, but now it was the lack of human resources. The question is whether the general mobilisation has been delayed for too long. The problem is not only the headline numbers. If you started a general mobilisation today, you would still not have the numbers of people trained to use the weapons.

Bild quoted Roderich Kiesewetter, a CDU defence expert and a former Bundeswehr general, as saying that the best-trained soldiers in Ukraine had been killed or injured, and those still active have been deployed without a break for two years. Exhaustion is becoming a factor in this war. He said Ukraine was lacking a predictable recruitment strategy. Another expert, from the Munich Security Conference, also believes that the right response is to start the draft immediately.

We are more sceptical. Young Ukrainians men who live abroad have means to resist a draft. EU countries cannot just deport them without recourse to legal processes. Nor will all EU countries want to do that. An army of draft dodgers who experienced the comfortable life abroad, and who are recruited against their will, are not going to win this war. Zelensky could lower the age of the draft to 18. But you would be training an essentially new army from scratch in the middle of a war.

So then, we ask, what is the strategy? That is also a question for the western countries that support Ukraine, who don't have any strategy whatsoever. 

Who can send migrants to where? This question is at the heart of a new diplomatic row on the British isles, between the UK and the Republic of Ireland, or more generally between the UK and the EU.

While the UK is preparing to send migrants to Rwanda, Ireland recorded a rise in asylum-seekers that came via the land border from the UK, now making up 80% of the total number of asylum seekers according to the Irish home secretary.

The Irish government is preparing an emergency law this week to send them back to the UK, its prime minister vowing that Ireland is not providing loopholes for any other countries migration challenges. The UK’s response is that they will not take back migrants from the EU as long as France is not willing to take back migrants that made their journey on rubber boats across the channel to reach the UK in the first place. The UK accuses the EU of double standards, while it is not clear at all how the UK could return migrants to France after Brexit. France has been managing the border for the UK since the Le Touquet treaty in 2003. In return, the UK has been paying for French police missions and reception centres. French efforts to prevent people from leaving are often not enough to stop people from crossing and even risking drowning on that journey.

The number of small boat migrants arriving in the UK through the channel has reached an all-time high of more than 7000 in the first four months of this year. Rishi Sunak vowed to bring those numbers down last year. But it seems like the opposite is happening. For Sunak, the fact that Ireland gets more migrants is a good sign that the Rwanda scheme is working, as people realise that they cannot stay in the UK. So rather than deterring migrants from coming to the UK it looks more like they are offloading the problem to Ireland.

This logic is also at the heart of third-country deals, paying countries cash for taking migrants the European countries do not want. But for this, the country has to be declared safe first to comply with international standards. How? Last week, the UK’s Safety of Rwanda act declaring Rwanda a safe country was adopted by MPs and peers and cast into law. It may still be hold up by court cases, but the government’s plan is to send the first group of migrants to Rwanda in about 10 weeks. Being a safe country usually means that the applicant has a genuine connection to that country where it can apply for international protection. But the UK government employs a deterrence narrative saying that any illegal migrant entering the UK could be sent to Rwanda with their asylum requests to be processed there and not in the UK. It is very unlikely that all those arriving on small boats have a link to Rwanda. Will the ambiguity about the application of the law may be enough to slow down the flow of migrants in the coming months? The UK and France may have to revise their arrangement too if not.

This Rwanda pact is similar to the ones the EU has been drawing up with Tunisia and Egypt, paying cash to those governments to take migrants we do not want. It poses moral questions over what a safe third country is for migrants and what incentives and precedences we set when paying others to take migrants we do not want to deal with. It is ultimately a question about taking responsibility.

In the aftermath of the 2016 Brexit referendum, one of the big spoilers was how differently Scotland voted to the UK as a whole. Voters north of Hadrian’s wall opted to remain by a solid two-thirds majority. It was a split that also transcended demographics. So-called left-behind industrial working-class towns in Scotland voted very differently from their northern English counterparts.

This led to a lot of speculation about whether Brexit would further boost separatism in Scotland, and accelerate a split. The idea would be that an independent Scotland would join the EU. It would gain a liberal-minded anglophone member, but one that was substantially smaller and therefore politically easier to handle. Now, however, it should be clear that if the UK ever rejoins the EU, it would be as one country.

Scottish independence as a cause has, for the foreseeable future, died. This is because the popularity of the main party supporting it, the SNP, has tanked. The latest sign of this is the Scottish Greens, the party’s coalition partner in Scotland’s regional government, withdrawing its support yesterday. Humza Yousef, the SNP’s leader and Scotland’s first minister, will face a confidence vote next week. He stands a good chance of losing it.

Based on current polling, a repeat Scottish election in the near future would see the SNP a large loss of its vote share, and power in Scotland’s regional parliament. Scottish elections use a parallel-voting system, with a Westminster-style constituency and proportional representation component. The SNP won almost 48% of this vote in 2021. Polls in the last couple of months put them at around 35% now.

In the PR component, they have gone from about 40% in 2021 to around 25-30% in recent polls. Some of the PR polls even show the SNP losing its lead to Labour. If you look at UK parliament election polling, Labour emerging as the largest party in Scotland in Westminster is a very real possibility. Labour’s own relative caution towards rapprochement with the EU under Sir Keir Starmer does not seem to be hurting it with the most pro-EU voters in the country.

What may be interesting, however, is what the SNP tries to do in order to claw back vote share if it is chucked out of power in Edinburgh and becomes the second Scottish party in Westminster. It is already the most ardently pro-EU big party in the UK parliament. This may become an even stronger feature of its pitch to voters. It will be one of the clearest dividing lines between it and a Labour government that, for the time being, is lukewarm on the EU. We will have to see how this plays out in the possible second term of a future Labour government if the party's overwhelmingly pro-EU base simultaneously launches internal rebellions against the leadership line.