EU wrestles with awkward, stingy and defence issues

In Brussels this week, the Englishspeaking journalists are all speculating about which way British prime minister Boris Johnson will jump. He is there now, dithering over whether to cave in to the European Union’s terms for a post-brexit free trade deal.

Most people reckon it is his last facesaving show of defiance before he surrenders to the bitter truth that Brexit with no dealwould be brutal for Britain. But he might jump the other way. If Johnson thinks surrendering to reality would infuriate the fanatical

Brexiters in his own Conservative Party so much that it endangers his job as prime minister, hewill bluster some more about sovereignty and lead Britain out into the cold and the dark. His own future is all that matters, ever.

However, the EU’S leaders are not really holding their breaths about this any more.

A no-deal Brexit would causeminor damage to a couple of European economies too but the presidents and prime ministers, who are meeting in Brussels thisweek, have bigger fish to fry.

Top of their agenda is Poland’s and Hungary’s threat to veto the EU’S

€1.8 trillion budget (NZ$3T), which includes a desperately needed €750 billion (NZ$1.2T) post-covid recovery plan to rebuild Europe’s shattered economies.

The two Eastern European countries, both ruled by authoritarian governments on the extreme Right-wing of politics, are the ‘‘awkward squad’’ of the EU.

They face financial sanctions for their attacks on democracy in their own countries, so they are blackmailing the EU by vetoing thewhole seven-year budget, including the recovery plan.

That is what the EU summit in Brussels thisweek is really about but the leaders are probably not going to solve the problem there. There is a plan on the table, however, put there by Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who assumes the EU presidency next month.

Costa’s suggestion is that they split the EU to save it. Let all the ‘‘awkward squads’’ – the aspiring dictatorships, the other Eastern European states that just hate all migrants and refugees, and the so-called ‘‘frugal states’’, the Netherlands, Austria and the Nordic countries, that hate highspending and fiscal transfers to poorer EU members – just go off on their own.

There would still be an EU but it would be a two-speed Europe and they would be the slow-moving part. Germany, France, Italy, Spain and some others would stay in the core group, forging ahead with ambitious programmes such as the recovery plan and ‘‘ever closer union’’.

Costa did not mention it but this core group could also be the foundation for a more self-sufficient defence strategy as the United States gradually withdraws its old Nato security guarantee to Europe.

US President Donald Trumpmight have done it eventually, Joe Biden won’t do it, but it is bound to happen eventually. Thanks, Antonio, but no, thanks. Germany won’t play. It has a deeprooted horror of having to underwrite the debts of other EU members, all of whom it sees as spendthrift and improvident, so ‘‘no’’ to the two-speed Europe.

And ‘‘no’’ also to French President Emmanuel Macron’s ambition for a ‘‘global Europe’’, with an independent European defence strategy that matches the clout of the US and China. It would cost toomuch, the Germans think, and besides they would rather go on clinging to America’s skirts.

In the words of Germany’s defence minister, Annegret Kramp-karrenbauer: ‘‘The idea of strategic autonomy for Europe goes too far if it nurtures the illusion that we could ensure Europe’s security, stability and prosperity without Nato and the US. Germany and Europe cannot protect themselves without America’s nuclear and conventional power. This is simply a fact.’’

The hell it is. In the mid-1980s, Nato’s total population was about 675 million and the Warsaw Pact’s was about 390 million but almost half of Nato’s population was far away across the Atlantic so each side did pose a plausible threat to the other with the strength they had on the ground in Europe.

Now, it is 2020. The Warsaw Pact is long gone and all the former Eastern European satellites have joined Nato.

Even the Soviet Union’s 15 republics have broken apart, leaving 145 million relatively impoverished Russians all alone to face a Nato alliance now drawing on the resources of 870 million people.

The Nato-warsaw Pact population ratio used to be about three to two. Now the Nato-russia ratio in population is more like five to one. For wealth, it is about 15 to one. Local and limited clashes here or there are still conceivable but it is not possible to write a convincing scenario for a continent-spanning conventional war in Europe today.

As for a nuclear deterrent, the French one is big enough if you really feel you need one.

It is still a bit bigger than the Chinese one and that seems to work.

Grow up, guys.

Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa’s suggestion is that they split the EU to save it.