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Matthew Karnitschnig is POLITICO’s chief Europe correspondent.
BERLIN — For a politician under fire, Josep Borrell was a picture of calm last month as he peered down the cameras at a live global audience eager to hear Europe’s foreign policy chief explain himself.
But then Borrell, not long back from a Moscow trip widely described as a humiliation, knew he had little to fear from his questioners this time around.
Though the veteran Spanish diplomat was speaking at an event dubbed “Front Page,” the appearance would be more accurately characterized as Fake News. Instead of a showdown with independent journalists, who have a nasty tendency to ask uncomfortable questions, Borrell opted to speak with a more quiescent bunch — think-tankers, whose main aim appeared to be to show the Spaniard how grateful they were he had agreed to appear on their program.
“You were instrumental in launching the new EU-U.S. agenda for global change in December of last year, which was an impressive initiative, an impressive first move shortly after the election of President Biden and it received much attention here in Washington,” Fred Kempe, the president and CEO of the Atlantic Council told Borrell in his introduction. (If you’ve never heard of the “agenda,” you’re not alone.)
While there’s nothing new about politicians speaking to think tanks, the pandemic-induced boom in virtual conferences has given the organizations unprecedented reach to a captive, homebound audience. The best part for politicians like Borrell? The events carry the veneer of a journalistic exchange with none of the risk. Just as conservative politicians in the U.S. can rest assured they’ll find a sympathetic interviewer at Fox News, Europe’s leaders know they’ll find refuge from critical queries in the safe space of a think-tank livestream.
Following a lengthy round of thank yous and declarations of admiration, Kempe’s colleague, Benjamin Haddad, got down to brass tacks and asked an actual question, of a sort:
“High Representative Borrell, you’ve been in the job now for 15 months, you’re the third high representative of the European Union. This is still, I would say, a new position and I would love first to hear your reflections about this mission you’re charged with…,” Haddad, director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, said.
By the time the think-tankers dared address the elephant in the room — Russia — 20 minutes had gone by.
And this was the question: “Do you think, first, that there is a consensus now in the European Union that Russia is not being a constructive partner to the European Union and has chosen a path of confrontation?”
Hard Talk it was not. At no point during the hourlong session did anyone muster the courage to ask Borrell what everyone watching wanted to know, namely why he had stood grinning in Moscow while Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Europe of “arrogance” and said the EU wasn’t a reliable partner.
In a written statement, Atlantic Council spokesman Alex Kisling said the think tank’s work was by its very nature distinct from that of a media outlet, adding that its “goal is to provide a platform for our global audience [to] hear from leaders on the issues making headlines, as well as the longer-term strategy questions most important to our 14 programs and centers.”
While it’s up to the moderators to formulate questions, the sessions focus on “agreed-upon topics,” he said. All the same, Kisling rejected the suggestion that the organization pulls punches when interviewing powerful people.
“The notion that our event guests are not asked substantive questions about the most important issues of the day is simply false,” he wrote, citing a recent talk with YouTube Chief Executive Susan Wojcicki, who revealed that the platform would let former U.S. President Donald Trump’s account return at some point.
Tanks for nothing
The Atlantic Council is far from an outlier, however. Tune into any of the myriad of think-tank online interviews with senior politicians and government officials, and you’ll be served a soupy mix of wonky shop talk and virtual genuflection.
In many cases, the think tanks do away with the pretense of interviewing their invitee and just provide a stage. On Tuesday, for example, the Washington-based Brookings Institution invited German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to speak about the transatlantic relationship and his country’s place in the world.
“Reason, reliability and responsibility must go hand in hand — only together do they make German foreign policy possible,” Maas said at one point.
Anyone curious about how Germany’s controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline project fits into that vision was left wondering to themselves because Maas didn’t take any questions.
Last month, the Munich Security Conference (MSC), an event organizer cum think tank, staged a virtual extravaganza headlined by Joe Biden, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, a lineup any news organization (not to mention think tank) would die for.
After his prepared remarks from the White House, during which he stood flanked by banners emblazoned with the MSC logo, Biden, who has yet to hold a press conference as president, took no questions. Nor did Merkel. Macron took one — from MSC Chairman Wolfgang Ischinger.
In the highly competitive think-tank world, where “convening power” is the coin of the realm, such events are crucial to both build and maintain a reputation as a serious player. That, in turn, helps to keep the money flowing from the donors who keep the lights on and pay the salaries of the legions of organizers, researchers and out-of-work government officials on their payroll.
The raison d’être of a think tank is to serve as a laboratory of ideas, not to help politicians with PR. Though ostensibly independent and free from the daily pressures of governing, the groups’ legitimacy nonetheless depends on their standing with the governments they aim to serve. Trying to be an outsider on the inside is rarely easy.
“It’s a balance — like with journalists — because think-tankers need access,” a senior fellow at a prominent international think tank told me recently. “But my instinct is that we go way too far in the kissing ass direction.”
The Atlantic Council, which says its mission is to create a “strong transatlantic bond,” is financed by a diverse pool of funders, including arms contractors such as Lockheed Martin, global banks like Goldman Sachs, national governments and even the European Union.
The EU, at least, is definitely getting its money’s worth.
“Are you the person Henry Kissinger calls?” Kempe joked with European Council President Charles Michel at the outset of another “Front Page” livestream in February, after asking him to describe “the most important skills in your job.” (Full disclosure: I know Kempe from his time as editor of The Wall Street Journal’s European edition, where I worked as a reporter in the early 2000s.)
Just a week earlier, the Atlantic Council scored an even bigger coup, when it aired a live chat with Macron.
“Mr. President, you’ve been a transformational leader for Europe, leading the way to a more sovereign Europe on the international stage to face these challenges and this is why we are so delighted to have you with us today,” Haddad gushed. The fawning went on for another 90 minutes, during which Haddad, standing alongside Macron in the Elysée, neglected to disclose that he previously served as the Washington representative for the French president’s En Marche movement.
Macron is known to have a soft spot for think tanks. In November, Le Grand Continent, a journal published by French think tank Groupe d’études géopolitiques, published a 12,000-word interview with him.
To be fair, Macron grants lengthy interviews to journalists too, especially when he knows he’ll be hitting softballs.
The same is true of Borrell, who recently spoke to Der Spiegel for his first sitdown since the Moscow fiasco. In all likelihood, the interview was approved ahead of publication by Borrell’s staff. The practice, known as “authorization,” is common in German media. (Der Spiegel did not respond to several queries seeking comment, nor did a spokesperson for Borrell.)
Either way, Der Spiegel let Borrell rewrite history in his favor. After a reporter for the magazine told Borrell he “should have fought back” when Russia’s Lavrov said the EU wasn’t a reliable partner, Borrell claimed he had.
The video of the press conference tells a different story. After Lavrov’s closing remarks, which included the jibe about the EU not being reliable, Borrell appeared to crack a little joke as the two walked out of the room, prompting the Russian to grin.
To understand why Borrell might prefer to avoid real interviews, one need only watch his 2019 chat with Tim Sebastian, the longtime BBC correspondent who now has a program on Deutsche Welle called “Conflict Zone.” At the time, Borrell was still Spanish foreign minister and Sebastian peppered him with questions about the imprisonment of politicians in Borrell’s native Catalonia.
Just minutes into the discussion, Borrell exploded, threatening to “stop this interview.”
“You are not interrogating me, you are interviewing me,” Borrell said. “You are not the police.”
At one point, Borrell got up and stormed off the set before returning. “You don’t know anything what you’re talking about,” he told the veteran foreign correspondent.
At the end, Borrell told Sebastian: “Next time I would appreciate if you could put the questions in a less biased way.”
His sign-off to the Atlantic Council last month was rather more polite.
“Thank you for this opportunity,” he told the interviewer. “I hope we will keep in touch.”
