From weaponized borders to “return hubs,” the European Union must reclaim its sovereignty without outsourcing it

Migration was long regarded as a consequence of war, poverty, persecution, or demographic imbalance. But it can also become an instrument of power. Some states organize, facilitate, or threaten to trigger population movements in order to secure financial, diplomatic, or strategic concessions.

The border then becomes a theater of operations. Migrants are not combatants. They are the involuntary hostages of a strategy that turns human distress into political leverage.

A Weapon Without Soldiers

The weaponization of migration does not necessarily require moving hundreds of thousands of people. Sometimes, it is enough to overwhelm a border crossing, disrupt reception services, and generate images capable of dividing public opinion.

The method is now familiar: visas are issued, flights or ground transportation are organized, false information is circulated suggesting that a border has been opened, people are taken to crossing points, and the security forces that might otherwise have stopped them are deliberately withdrawn. The state behind the operation can then deny any responsibility and portray the crisis as a spontaneous movement.

This strategy belongs to the realm of hybrid warfare. It uses neither tanks nor missiles. Instead, it exploits legal obligations, political divisions, and the moral sensitivities of the targeted country. It deliberately operates in a gray zone: aggressive enough to exert pressure, but not openly military enough to justify a traditional response.

American scholar Kelly Greenhill identified 56 episodes of “coercive engineered migration” between 1951 and 2006. According to her research, the instigators achieved virtually all their objectives in 57 percent of the cases and secured at least some of what they wanted in nearly three-quarters of them. Their effectiveness stems largely from their ability to exploit political and moral divisions within the targeted country.

Europe, the Ideal Target

The European Union is especially vulnerable because it has common external borders but remains politically divided over reception policies, the distribution of asylum seekers, and the enforcement of return decisions.

The objective of migration coercion is not merely to move people across a border. It is to provoke a political crisis: confrontation among European governments, conflict between humanitarian obligations and national sovereignty, the rise of protest parties, and the radicalization of public debate.

Turkey demonstrated the method in February 2020 when it announced that it would no longer prevent migrants from attempting to reach Europe. The Council of the European Union explicitly rejected Turkey’s “use of migratory pressure for political purposes,” while acknowledging the considerable burden Ankara had assumed by hosting approximately 3.7 million refugees and migrants.

In Ceuta in May 2021,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)