Fast, cheap and out of control: Europe’s passion for Ukraine
‘We see that the Europeans yet again favor institutional reforms rather than sending weapons to Zelenskyy, who is apparently happy to play the role of national hero this time’
No! They did not turn a hair; they did not bat an eyelash when there was still time to save Ukraine from this senseless and criminal Russian act of war. When the United States stealthily amassed man-portable air and land-defense systems after the illegal annexation of Crimea into Russia and the sham referenda were held in the Donbass region, turning two Ukrainianian provinces into so-called “People’s Republics,” what did the peace-loving, independence-worshipping Europeans do? They had excellent diplomatic tools at their disposal in the form of the Minsk Agreements, but did they use them?
France and Germany were part of these international agreements which sought to end the war in the Donbass region of Ukraine. The Minsk Protocol was drafted in 2014 by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, consisting of Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), with mediation by the leaders of France and Germany in the so-called Normandy Format. Extensive talks were held in Minsk, the agreement was signed by representatives of the Trilateral Contact Group ... and yet the efforts would go down in the annals as yet another European thrashing. After a year of border fighting, an updated agreement, Minsk II, was signed in 2015. Better worded than Minsk I, this agreement provided usable leverage for Europe to remove heavy weapons from the front line, exchange prisoners of war and came with a promise of constitutional reform in Ukraine, granting self-government in Donbass but the ability to restore government control in the region.
Once again, the noble heads of Europe went back to business as usual, leaving Russian President Vladimir Putin to declare people’s republics in the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces and recognize them by 2022. The U.S., on the other hand, saw a golden opportunity in Ukraine for a proxy war that could destroy the Russian Federation, and isolate Russia in Europe and Asia, thus pulling the only support China could have in the final armageddon of capitalism. They devised plans to flank Russia from the west and south; as usual, there would be no U.S. boots on the ground (they learned their lesson in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq), but Ukrainians, Georgian, Finns and Swedes would do the job.
However, French President Emmanuel Macron, in his typical European feet-dragging mode, and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with her usual skepticism of any and all American motives, did not play along. The Ukrainian application for NATO membership and the European Union fell on deaf ears. Till now, as in the race between hot swimsuit companies, the French, Spaniards and Italians are proposing new organizations, new European communities and new facades for the old ones so that all those countries can secure support and be a part of Europe. What about the EU? No, not that one, it is our backyard playground!
REFLECTIONS ON EU
Germany is still busy sorting out who is going to visit whom first after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy launched a scathing verbal attack on Germany, accusing new Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government of “making a mistake” in its stance on Russia. The Ukrainian leader has said the United Kingdom is “helping more” than Germany and France “because they are afraid of Russia.”
It seems that Germany, too, would welcome Ukraine not into the EU but “some other” European organization. Why do that?: They talk the talk but they do not walk the walk. Germany and France are not sending weapons to Zelenskyy. They didn’t take the bear by the tooth in 2015 when they had the opportunity to push Putin to implement the Minsk Agreements before he declared that they “no longer existed.”
Is there a reason for France and Germany to fear Russia, as Zelenskyy claims? France and Germany were divided from the U.S. and U.K. (the Anglosphere, as The Guardian puts it) even in their initial assessment of the nearing threat; and now, they differ on how to handle Russia. They did not want Russia to be estranged from Western Europe, not only because of their energy dependence on Russia (France is not dependent on Russian gas and oil, anyway) but because they won’t give the U.S. a permanent seat in any matter related to Europe. Not even in NATO.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump had seen that; he complained that the U.S. was paying for European security while being alienated by the Europeans. He said that to their faces, but neither Merkel nor Macron took him seriously. The French president even called Trump’s NATO “brain-dead” and suggested creating a fully European defense mechanism. Europeans see the U.S. pessimism as unwarranted: They do not want to hear the U.S. doomsayer’s predictions about Russia and China. For Europeans, they believe the Americans should learn to coexist with other big states, even the autocratic ones. After more than two months of this unwanted war, the Europeans do not see their stake in it as much as the U.S. does: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has no ideological bearings on the democratic nations of the world; the democracies are not going to lose any ideological ground against autocracies. The ideological and regime-related issues are not what this war or simply the unsuccessful Russian attempt to carry out a blitzkrieg invasion of Ukraine is about. Then what is it about? The Europeans say that it is something that they can handle among themselves; there is no need to blow it out of proportion and create a nuclear holocaust over a couple of hundred acres of Ukrainian grain fields.
But the U.S. conservatives and progressives, alike, think that their country has a stake in Ukraine’s victory. That is why U.S. President Joe Biden is willing to provide more resources to help Ukraine rather than fight the all-time high inflation in the country. That is why Macron’s speech on Europe Day about a sweeping proposal to redraw the political map of the continent with a new organization that would give Ukraine a closer relationship with the EU short of membership was given less space than Putin’s Victory Day speech.
Macron is not the first person to devise a plan for strengthening the EU’s ties to partner countries, including Ukraine, before granting formal membership. Last month, former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta proposed a “European confederation” with aspiring member countries, that would begin with a shared “economic area,” gradually adding commitments and eventually including a common defense clause.
We see that the Europeans yet again favor institutional reforms rather than sending weapons to Zelenskyy, who is apparently happy to play the role of national hero this time. Germany has changed its initial attitude about providing military aid to Ukraine and recently said – instead of the 5,000 military-grade helmets to help Ukraine defend itself against the Russians – it would send 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger anti-aircraft defense systems to Ukraine. The five scenarios put forward by the BBC about how the war may end all feature diplomatic solutions, short or long.
As it should. Simply because no one is a winner in war, especially when armies are not killing armies but innocent civilians as the Russians are. No one loses in peace.
A Pyrrhic victory won’t win Putin any friends in the world.