Europe has to drop its self-pity over the transatlantic rift and urgently prepare to defend itself against Russia. The clock is ticking.
By Jan Macháček, for CEPA
I almost cried last week, much like those who became emotional at the Munich Security Conference. Not because the US started negotiations with Russia — that makes some sense if there is no way to win the war militarily — but because the talks should have started from a position of strength, with tough criticism of Russian aggression. Instead, the opposite happened with the apparent gift of territorial concessions to Russia even before the negotiators arrived.
Worse was to come. On February 19, we heard President Trump blaming Ukraine for starting the war, openly siding with Russia, referring to Zelenskyy a dictator and demanding he call elections even before the war ends. On February 24, the US joined its old enemies and rivals in Russia and China to oppose a UN resolution referring to the Kremlin’s aggression.
As Stephen Bush of the Financial Times wrote on February 25: “When the US is voting differently to both the UK and France at the UN about the defence of Europe, NATO is in big, big trouble.”
My fear is that these events may have marked the end of the Atlantic alliance. There are certain things which, if said, are hard to take back.
We knew that Trump never uses the word allies. It is not in his vocabulary. We know he is tough on small and weaker countries like Panama, Colombia or Denmark that present no threat to the US, but apparently has respect and admiration for strongmen like Putin. Now, Tulsi Gabbard, who openly repeats Russian talking points, is the coordinator of US intelligence services.
NATO, as an alliance, still exists. But as a technical institution, an organizational structure, as a system of command, like a contract. But for any alliance to function, there must be a certain ethos, there must be a strong moral motivation, sense of purpose and conviction. If you are supposed to send troops into action in another country, they have to know what they fight for. And what are the values we Europeans share with the US leadership these days?
But crying helps no one. It does nothing for a now-imperiled European continent and the idea of mutually supportive democracies. There is now a threat to our way of life from a deeply hostile Russia. Europe is now in a situation akin to the late 1930s.
So here’s a to-do list of the tasks ahead for Europeans.
- The European Union must redirect spending priorities from all these green deals, and next generation plans, post-covid growth packages and so on into military investments and spending. Much of this money is already contracted, but an emergency is an emergency.
- The bloc must immediately relax its so-called Maastricht criteria, its fiscal rules, which regulate debt and deficits. Defense spending must be immediately excluded from these criteria.
- The EU must immediately issue common war bonds. The defense of Europe must be an absolute priority.
- The UK and other capable and critical non-EU members, like Norway, must be intimately involved in every aspect of this new European security model. The time for peacetime squabbling is over.
- Europe should immediately relax its environmental, social and governance (ESG) rules, which make it complicated for defense producers to access loans and access resources on capital markets.
- Rules should be established for common defense procurement, which aids military cooperation and lowers costs.
- Europe must rethink its integration and focus on integrating only those areas which are crucial now. Defense and security is important, banking and capital market union is also important. Deregulating and promoting economic growth and innovation is also important. Anything else is not.
- National budget cost cutting is necessary, but must be done sensitively, because otherwise voters will turn to extreme and nationalist parties, many of which are pro-Russian.
There will be complaints that that this and that is too complicated and perhaps even impossible. But there is no other way. We must all understand the scale and immediacy of the crisis now facing us. Either we meet the challenge and tackle all these tasks quickly or we are finished.
It is true that changing the course of the European supertanker will be complicated. At the moment Ukraine cannot effectively fight the war without intelligence (satellite, electronic surveillance) provided by the US. NATO joint command center is fully integrated with the US. Many of NATO’s 10,000 officers are American.
Countries like the Czech Republic have meanwhile contracted large amounts of their defense spending for American equipment like F-35 combat aircraft. but the issue is not just military; the EU does not even control SWIFT (originally a European invention), the nuclear button of the world financial system. We are very vulnerable.
But the US is also economically vulnerable. There is a lot of European money in US capital markets, there is $4 trillion of US investment in the continent and we hold a lot of American debt. So Europe wouldn’t be the only loser in a historic rift. The US economy, the dollar and capital markets would also be affected.
Yes, everything will be complicated. Given the current state of the EU (with two states — Hungary and Slovakia — fully in a Russian camp) it makes sense for France to organize a coalition of the willing that prevents Kremlin interference.
It is time to make a calculation. Which is going to be easier: to disentangle the European part of NATO from NATO, or start to build a European army from scratch? Of course we can hope that the US comes to its senses and remembers who its friends are. But old assumptions won’t keep us safe.
By Jan Macháček, for CEPA
Jan Macháček is a visiting fellow of Globsec, president of Strategeo Institute, and member of the board of foreign policy advisors to the Czech President Petr Pavel. He is a former dissident, musician and university lecturer. A heating stoker during communism, he founded the weekly publication Respekt after the 1989 revolution.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
