Europe is reinventing itself in impressive ways in the five months since its launch by Russian President Vladimir Putin invasion of ukraine,
The coming weeks will show whether the task of building a more resilient EU to new security challenges in the future will continue. Or, instead, the rewiring will short-circuit before working in the face of growing economic adversities and Putin’s grinding war.
Until now, the European Union has been integrated with the United States and others. unprecedented set of restrictions on Russia. In addition, it has begun to consolidate its rigid power through increase in defense spending, and it has moved swiftly to reduce its shameful energy dependence on Moscow. Recently the Group of Seven Nations is ready to announce import ban on russian gold,
The European Union has committed itself to Ukraine as a democratic, independent and European country in a way that Putin never imagined when he waged his war billions of euros in financial aid, Unprecedented weapons deliveryand now a membership candidature offer to Ukraine and Moldova.
Yet as impressive as the EU’s rewiring project has been, it is likely to be short-circuited in the coming months unless political confidence around this historic moment becomes even stronger. It will demand faster implementation of new defense and energy policies and greater support for Ukraine.
As Putin gains ground in Ukraine, it is almost certainly time to coincide with the G-7 meeting in Germany with new attacks on Kyiv today, all the political will European leaders will have to mobilize. They will face more public pressure to end the war, with benchmark gas prices rising 15% in the past week double whammy Russian cuts and fires at Freeport LNG in Texas, With inflation reaching 8.1% In the euro area in May, and the dangers of an economic downturn are mounting, given the threat of Russian gas cutoffs this winter.
On another front, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde called her colleagues for an emergency session Last week in Frankfurt, which was designed to build solidarity around moves to pre-empt any threat of a new euro area debt crisis reaching Italy from the twin blows of rising inflation and slowing growth.
Putin is relying on the general fatigue and political divide that establishes among Western democracies when he must weigh growing domestic concerns Against international threats. He has seen enough to encourage them, including the newly elected Emmanuel Macron. Failure to secure a majority in the National AssemblyFor the first time in 30 years the French president has been rejected.
And for all the impressive arms shipments and economic support the Biden administration has delivered to Ukraine, fearing an extension of the war, the nearly 50-mile arms firing range is insufficient to stop Russian carpet-bombing.
Furthermore, Putin knows that US midterm elections could further weaken Biden amid Supreme Court domestic disputes. overturning cry v. Wade abortion protection and the gun law controversy. Even as Putin’s War turns uglyAmericans are seeing less of it on their TV screens.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is also looking weaker than in his first days in office, as he leaves this weekend. Hosted G-7 leaders in the Bavarian Alps.
scholz faced such a storm of criticism that it is dragging its feet on the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine that its Defense Ministry was forced to publish a Complete list Completed and planned deliveries, including seven self-propelled Panzerhaubitze 2000 howitzers, which have long arrived in Ukraine.
It is worth remembering that the greatest moments of Europe’s further progress usually come in times of crisis, as happened again after Putin’s war in Ukraine. It is at such times that member states manage their divisions better and work more effectively around the mind-bending bureaucracy of the EU.
The problem is that the current European divide which seems to be the hardest to fix There is a fundamental disagreement over how important a Ukrainian victory is. And what needs to be done to get it.
The closer you live to Russia as an EU citizen, the more you argue, as did I in this space On June 5, that Putin needed not the diplomatic off-ramp being offered by Macron, but the dead-end that could only be brought about by a more effective Ukrainian counterattack backed by tougher sanctions and long-range weapons. Is.
Russia’s closest know That a bad peace where Ukraine leaves the new territory may only provide a respite before Putin resumes his imperial efforts to take Ukraine and eventually other former Soviet territories.
In Western Europe, the desire is greater for a peace that will now end the war, even if the result leaves Putin in power and, as said by macroavoids humiliating him.
“Despite the celebratory rhetoric in Brussels about the EU’s surprisingly strong response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” Ioan Dria writes In Foreign Policy this week, “the war has not united the bloc in any unprecedented or transformative way. In fact, it is having the exact opposite effect. Below the growing vista of Ukraine lies a more muscular and geopolitically dominant Deeply lies the EU as a catalyst for division, shifting allegiance, and a far more complex reality.”
Countering that sadness, Macron of France, Scholz of Germany, Italian President Mario Draghi and Romanian President Klaus Iohannes visited Kyiv on June 16. Shortly after his return, the European Parliament voted with 529 votes 45 against and 14 votes to adopt a resolution Calling on heads of state or government for Ukraine to grant EU candidate status to the Republic of Moldova, which they have now done.
That symbolism must now be complemented by even greater substance. The rewiring of the EU has just begun to strengthen its security, diversify its energy sources, strengthen its transatlantic links and ensure Ukraine’s survival as a sovereign, free European state.
To stay the course, European leaders and citizens must recognize that what they are doing is not just for Ukraine but more so for themselves. The lesson from the two devastating world wars and the Cold War is that being united for victory is a pre-requisite and that appeasing dictators is always self-defeating.
, Frederick Kempe He is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Atlantic Council.