I am not a fan of the European Union (EU). I’ve always seen the EU not as a free trade zone but as a protectionist racket looking after special interests. Rather than a community of nations, to me it always seemed more a welfare programme for southern and eastern Europe and a slightly imperial project for Germany.
Europe was the epitome of modern decadence: societies which pursued policies aimed at self-righteous moral grandstanding, countries where people couldn’t be bothered to reproduce, a fairy-tale land which lauded itself as the pinnacle of civilisation’s evolution.
All the while Europe made deals with China and Russia, it criticised the American military whilst benefiting from its protection, and it handed out money to every anti-liberty NGO in the third world that put the word “development” in its title.
Europe, it seemed, was a has-been, a place which in a world of America, China and India seemed destined to slowly fade from the world stage as a player of any real note.
All of that changed last week.
On the 24th of February at around 5:00 Kyiv time, Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation announced that the Russian military, after weeks of build-up around Ukraine, would be engaging in a “special operation” that would focus on de-nazifying and de-militarising the Republic of Ukraine. Within minutes missiles struck targets across Ukraine, and within hours it became clear that Putin had just ordered the first full-scale invasion of a European nation since 1945.
The initial response from the European Union was one of shock, but whilst both America and the EU had threatened the most aggressive sanctions that the world had ever seen in response to a Russian invasion, the first indications were that Europe was reluctant to follow through. Germany was widely reported to be opposed to cutting Russia off from the Swift payment system, as were a number of smaller EU members, and only the UK (no longer in the EU) seemed keen to strongly support Ukraine. It seemed for a moment as though Russia was about to succeed in all its objectives. Russian troops streamed in and many predicted the imminent collapse of the Ukrainian government.
However, things move fast in the social media age, and as the scale of the Russian invasion became clear, videos began to emerge from across Ukraine of dogged resistance. The Ukrainian government, in what must be one of the modern era’s most effective information and propaganda campaigns, quickly reshaped the narrative from one of Russian triumph into one of Ukrainian heroism. Social media videos showing destroyed Russian equipment, lines of volunteers joining the Ukrainian army, and mythical tales of heroic pilots and soldiers and personal and emotional videos from Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky began to unite the élites of the free world behind Ukraine.
In a speech to EU leaders, Zelensky, who stayed in the capital even as Russian forces advanced on it, reportedly told the attendees that he might well soon be dead.
What followed was one of the fastest 180-degree turns in foreign policy perhaps in all of history. One by one the countries opposing Russia’s exclusion from Swift dropped their opposition and finally Germany relented as well.
Germany however did not simply agree to harsh sanctions. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, gave a speech on Sunday 27th in which he announced a “historic” change in Germany’s foreign policy, saying that Germany had entered a new era.
In his speech Scholz announced that Germany would now massively boost its military spending with an increase of around $100 billion, raising it above the 2% of GDP per year NATO asks of all its members, after decades of neglecting its armed forces. (Just 3 days earlier a senior German military leader had decried the poor state of the armed forces). Furthermore, he said that such spending should be written into the German constitution so that Germany never finds itself in the same weak position. This reverses almost all Germany foreign policy since its reunification at the end of the cold war, where it had sought accommodation with Russia, opposed weapons shipments, and generally took a pacifist approach to foreign policy. What’s more, the number of Germans supporting such aggressive moves has gone from one quarter in the week before the invasion to three quarters this week.
The day before Scholz’s speech, Germany promised Ukraine 1000 anti-tank launchers and 500 anti-aircraft stinger missile systems, in contrast to only sending helmets (that Ukraine had to drive to Germany to collect themselves) before the invasion.
It is not only Germany that took such an aggressive stance. Latvia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Poland have all sent weapons systems and supplies to Ukraine. Even more amazing, the non-NATO-aligned countries of Finland and Sweden, after some menacing comments by the Russian foreign minister, have committed to sending weapons, and now these governments are considering joining NATO with what polling suggests is popular support ending decades of neutrality.
Furthermore, all of the EU has signed up to a package of sanctions which are of such magnitude that they could be called economic warfare. To my mind, there is no doubt that in a world where nuclear weapons did not exist, the EU would be considering sending its troops to Ukraine.
The quiet, pacifist Europe eager to let America take the lead in global affairs whilst it commented from the side-lines is gone. An aggressive and assertive Europe has taken its place. Ironically, Putin’s invasion, which no doubt was part of Russia’s attempts to establish a multi-polar world with great powers other than the U.S. has succeeded, but perhaps not in the way he intended. Europe is stepping back into the realm of hard power politics, and in this crisis at least, relegating the United States to being much more of a background player. Indeed it’s difficult to see many areas in this current conflict where the U.S. has led the anti-Russian side in anything. Almost every action it has taken has been following on from what Europe has already done.
What will the rise of an assertive Europe led by an assertive Germany mean for global politics? That very much remains to be seen. It will likely be another crack in the dominance of the United States, which has dictated global politics since the 1990s. A new world is emerging with regional super-blocs asserting themselves, and battle lines are being drawn for future conflicts. Whatever the result of the war in Ukraine, we are now living in a very different world from the one we lived in just a week ago.