Thank you for your invitation.
Let me just add a quick couple of words to what Dan just said about the threats to liberal world order. As we have talked about this a lot in the last few years both in the United States and Europe, it's important to define the words that we're talking about because we sometimes talk about democratic backsliding or the rise of the liberalism. I think what we're seeing is the rise of an alternative liberal model that is defined by authoritarianism, assault on the rule of law, a sort of direct connection between the leader and the people circumventing parliamentary power, civil society and NGOs. We see this all over Europe.
I really want to stress one of the points that Ambassador Fried put forward, the idea that a lot of the causes for this are self-inflicted, and it's true that we have maybe not been reactive enough to some of the economic inequalities that have been on the rise, a very high youth unemployment that you see all over Europe, as well as the ripple effect of what is seen by many in Europe as uncontrolled immigration and the effect on the transformation of national identity. To respond to those challenges, it is very important to be able to differentiate the illiberal measures taken by some leaders from maybe legitimate differences in policy, such as the reaction to immigration.
I want to come especially to the question of European politics in the last few years, especially since the refugee crisis of 2015. There maybe has been confusion sometimes between, once again, some measures taken that are antithetical to the values of the European Union and the attachment to the rule of law and what could be seen as constituting legitimate policy disagreements about how to treat the immigration crisis. I think this difference has been exploited by leaders, especially in Poland and Hungary, saying that the voters didn't have a choice but to side with them including when they took measures that were seen as threatening the rule of law.
I think it's really important to make this point because, as you see the European Union, you have countries that come with very different historical cultural traditions, very different relationships to the notion of sovereignty and national identity. These are linked mostly to dramatically different experiences in the 20th century. Western European countries, like France and Germany, joined the European Union—created the European Union—to a large extent as a way not to reproduce the ills of the first part of the 21st century, nationalism and border-strong identity. Countries that are left behind the Iron Curtain to a large extent saw the integration in the European Union and NATO as a way to protect their national identity and sovereignty. From this you can have very different reactions to issues like immigration that need to be understood and not confused with legitimate criticism over the rule of law.
Once again, understanding the concerns of voters on these issues without giving in to illiberalism is a key element, in my view, to respond to what we're talking about today. I'd be happy to expand this in a conversation a little later.