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“Europe must take charge of its own defence,” says the new geopolitical cliché, but that doesn’t make much sense. “Europe” consists of countries whose interests differ unrecognisably depending on their distance from Russia. Donald Trump’s turn to Moscow is restoring the geography of the cold war. We’re seeing the return of “eastern Europe” and “western Europe”.
European geography changes periodically. Take the exiled Czech writer Milan Kundera’s 1983 essay “The Kidnapped West”. At the time, the Soviet satellites Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were referred to as “eastern Europe”. In fact, said Kundera, they were “central Europe” — part of the west until the Red Army “kidnapped” them in 1945.
“What is central Europe?” asked Kundera. “An uncertain zone of small nations between Russia and Germany.” And what was a “small nation”? “One whose very existence may be put in question at any moment; a small nation can disappear, and it knows it.”
Central Europe’s small nations joined “eastern Europe” in 1945. After 1989, when communism fell, they joined “Europe”. In 1999, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic entered Nato and got a geographical upgrade: they joined the transatlantic west, which stretched from San Francisco to Warsaw.
Last week, Trump seems to have dissolved the west. “This starts to look like the end of Nato,” says Steven Everts, who runs the European Union Institute for Security Studies. Nato’s Article 5 commits member states to defend any member that is attacked. The most likely location of attack is the Baltics. Asked by a journalist about Nato’s eastern flank, Trump said, “I’m very committed to Poland.” Asked next about the Baltics, he sidestepped making a commitment.
Where are Poland et al located now? They’re probably not in a single military entity called “Europe”. After all, neither western Europeans nor Americans have ever gone and died for eastern Europeans — not for Danzig in 1939, for Budapest in 1956, nor Prague in 1968. Western Europeans lived well while the Soviets ruled eastern Europe, and they could live well if Putin does. That means the notion of “European defence” is like an insurance scheme for people living in a hurricane zone, in which the people expected to pay most into the scheme don’t live in the zone.
A senior French official told me that Putin’s aggression, though deplorable, ultimately wasn’t France’s problem. “We have our nuclear umbrella,” she shrugged. Putin could theoretically attack France or Britain, but that’s very unlikely given his weak army and the historic limits of Russia’s “Near Abroad”, its zone of influence. Southern Europe is even safer. The Sunday before Russia’s invasion in 2022, I sat in the sun by a lake in Madrid, amid lunching families, and realised: Russia isn’t Spain’s problem.
Germany is less secure. Putin probably couldn’t invade it either, but since Germany doesn’t have nukes, he can try nuclear blackmail. Germans and other Europeans are now enquiring about sharing France’s nuclear umbrella. That would expose them to a friendlier form of blackmail, as France would extract lots in return. But France surely won’t extend its umbrella to the Baltics — the countries most likely to need it, but which have little to offer. France won’t risk nuclear war with Russia for Lithuania.
Suddenly eastern Europe is re-emerging, with Finland and Sweden tacked on to the old Soviet bloc. These countries are building their militaries fast. Even several extra points of GDP on defence don’t weigh against the risk of Russian invasion.
A study by Bocconi University’s Catherine de Vries and Stephanie Hofmann of the European University Institute shows that the closer countries are to Moscow, the more they endorse the statement, “EU defence spending should be increased.”
I suspect Europeans will find the money to fund Ukraine. We can outspend Putin. But his edge is his willingness to shed Russian blood. Good societies value their citizens’ lives, but that’s a handicap in war. The opportunity cost of dying is extremely high in today’s Europe, where 20-year-olds can expect to live past 80. If European troops are ever sent to Vilnius, pro-Putinist far-right parties will immediately demand “peace” (meaning surrender).
I put it to a major eastern European politician that western European states care little about wars in eastern Europe. He replied, “We know. That’s why some of our countries are asking, ‘Why don’t we attack Russia now, instead of sitting waiting for it to attack us?’” Small nations that can disappear have everything at stake.
Email Simon at [email protected]
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