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One of nine thinkers on the continent’s future without America’s embrace.
Germany’s domestic intelligence chief, Thomas Haldenwang, likes to say Russia’s war against Ukraine is the storm whereas China’s quest for global dominance is climate change. What Europe is facing today is nothing less than a geostrategic firestorm.
Russia is not only on the offensive in Ukraine but also waging a hybrid war on Europe through weaponized corruption, assassinations, cyberattacks, espionage, disinformation, election interference, communications jamming, and sabotage of critical infrastructure. China, too, sees Europe as a strategic prize: It is buying up physical and digital infrastructure, preparing to conduct economic warfare by flooding European markets with electric vehicles, and maintaining quasi-police stations on European soil to surveil and coerce dissidents. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s choice of France, Serbia, and Hungary for his European trip in May was the clearest signal yet of Beijing’s strategy for Europe: divide and rule.
For Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tehran, the war in Ukraine is merely the front line of a larger global conflict with the United States—with Europe and its environs a key theater in this conflict. In the Middle East, the Israel-Hamas war could yet explode into a larger regional conflagration, possibly setting off mass migration to Europe. Russia has opened another front in Africa, helping to push European and U.S. peacekeeping troops out of the Sahel region, stabilizing authoritarian regimes, and giving the Kremlin yet another vector for putting pressure on Europe.
All of this marks the end of Europe’s holiday from history and geopolitics. It is also a colossal failure of policymaking—above all, of Germany’s strategic bet on hyperglobalization, based on the assumption that trade and economic interdependence would ensure peace and cooperation.
Whether it is also the birth hour of a geopolitical Europe remains very much to be seen. The most tangible proof that Europeans have understood the gravity of the moment is that they have ransacked their budgets and weapons stores for Ukraine, are ramping up defense spending, and are upgrading territorial defense and regional deterrence for the first time since the Cold War. There have been drastic policy shifts in key capitals: Paris now wants European Union and NATO enlargement; Berlin says it wants to build the continent’s strongest conventional force; London wants to work with the EU; and after eight years of an anti-EU government, so does Warsaw. Neutral Finland and Sweden have joined NATO; even the Swiss are quietly weighing their options.
These shifts are real because they are driven by fear. And because the causes of that fear are real, the shifts are here to stay.
Yet many serious obstacles remain. National governments have not yet found ways to overcome ponderous institutional processes, budgetary constraints, and the increasing fragmentation of political decision-making; few are capable of articulating strategy and following through on it. Europe’s large powers are terrible at working with one another. The smaller ones resent their larger neighbors for being overbearing or selfish but rarely challenge them with proposals and coalition-building of their own. Overcoming deep north-south, east-west, and center-periphery divides would require ideas and leadership; both are currently in short supply.
When French President Emmanuel Macron gives yet another passionate speech about the future of Europe, other EU leaders may roll their eyes—but they do not offer an alternative vision. Very few politicians have the courage to say that steering the continent safely through this dangerous period will not be cost-neutral but will require sacrifices—not just in terms of resetting spending priorities but also very literally, in terms of increasing deterrence by getting ready to fight. As for Ukraine, its European supporters regularly congratulate themselves on what they are doing—but fear of escalation keeps them from doing what is necessary for Ukraine to push Russia back on Europe’s behalf. They know Ukraine’s defeat would be catastrophic for European security and require even greater efforts to deter Russia in the future, but they cannot bring themselves to follow through on what they know to be true.
These failures not only keep Europe from acting on its own without relying on massive support from the United States. They also risk a splintering and renationalization of European politics based on each country’s view of Russia and other threats. It would make the continent even more vulnerable to its enemies than it is now.
Meanwhile, Europe’s hard right dreams of a white, illiberal, Christian Fortress Europe; these movements are receiving support from Moscow and Beijing. This hard right is praying that a second Trump administration, run by committed and well-organized ideologues, will join forces with them—even though they are more likely to be treated as vassals. Liberal, democratic Europe can only hope to survive the continent’s worst geostrategic turn since 1945 with a combination of pragmatic integration, generous joint financing of defense and other costs, EU enlargement, and enlightened, unselfish leadership by a critical mass of the union’s most powerful states. Otherwise, a European firestorm may be upon us.
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The post Europe in a Geostrategic Firestorm appeared first on Energy News Beat.
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