We have been at war for a week in Europe. During these days of shrinking in the stomach, tanks and destruction much more has happened in the process of decision making European than during the last decade, or perhaps it is the general perception.
For years there has been talk in Europe of strategic autonomy. Of the need to have its own framework of action outside of Washington. The 2016 EU Global Strategy defined it as the “ability to act autonomously when and where necessary, and with partners whenever possible & rdquor ;. And there are many European leaders who have defended it: Mogherini, Merkel and more recently Borrell, who also added the need for Europe to learn to speak the “language of power.”
And this was where the EU was when it woke up to the nightmare of war on its most immediate borders. Ukraine invaded and on fire. Faced with the escalation of tension that was experienced during the months, weeks and days prior to the invasion led by Russia and Washington, in a corner, sad Europe was waiting to receive instructions from Washington on the future of the European security architecture. France and Germany acted as proxies for an EU that not only had no voice of its own, but also did not speak the language of power. The diplomatic route in which many of us believed had a resounding failure. The result, war.
From that moment on, the great bureaucratic machine was set in motion with the sole objective of stopping an invasion that no one believed. There are several measures that have been adopted so far. On the one hand, via sanction packages, fundamentally of a financial nature, which seek to stifle the possibility of financing the war. On the other hand, it has also been adopted the controversial decision to send weapons to the Ukrainian resistance so that it can exercise its legitimate right to resist the invader. The combination of both strategies would muddy Putin in a war in Ukraine thought to be lightning, a situation that, prolonged in time, would be very complicated to maintain economically and to explain to his citizens. The ultimate hope would be that of achieving a palace coup to end the Putin regime.
This would be the ideal plan, but what if this doesn’t work? What is plan ‘b’? What will happen to the weapons delivered to the civilian population after the conflict? We must be aware of the risks that a prolongation of the conflict for a long time also has for the EU. The economic effects that these sanctions packages, not counting the counter-sanctions that Russia could impose, could be devastating for the potential recovery that the Europeans hoped for. Will European societies withstand the pressure, the scarcity, the rise in prices and the threat? Even when? No one can answer these questions with certainty.
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Let us hope, for the time being, that this strategic move by the Kremlin is the beginning of the end of the regime. But do you know what will happen the day after? That no one will self-criticize the mistakes made. No one will recognize that it was the complicity of the West that kept a satrap in power for 22 years, that the West and its interests grew rich thanks to economic and commercial ties related to the oligarchic networks that support Putin in the Kremlin and that nobody said anything when for years the human rights of the Chechens were systematically violated. We will all blame the imperial desires of a madman for what happened without ever accepting our own responsibility in have been feeding a monster over the years.
No, Europe will not come out of this war stronger, nor more united. From this war, the EU will emerge more dependent on the US, more militarized, less social and with less voice in the world. The strategic autonomy thought with so much care has ceased to exist without being born. Don’t be fooled what we are seeing these days is a mirage, reactive actions that do not necessarily mean more cohesion among the Member States, but it is a closing of ranks in the face of fear.