Conflict in Ukraine has changed Europe
HELSINKI — A year ago, the day Russia invaded Ukraine and set in motion a devastating European ground war, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto declared: “Now the masks are off. Only the cold face of war is visible.”
Niinisto, in office for more than a decade, had met with Russian President Vladimir Putin many times, in line with a Finnish policy of pragmatic outreach to Russia, a country with which it shares a nearly 835-mile border. Suddenly, however, that policy lay in tatters, and, along with it, Europe's illusions about business as usual with Putin.
Those illusions were deeprooted. The 27-nation European Union was built over decades with the core idea of extending peace across the continent. The notion that economic exchanges, trade and interdependence were the best guarantees against war lay deep in the postwar European psyche, even in dealings with an increasingly hostile Moscow.
That Putin's Russia had become aggressive, imperialist, revanchist and brutal — as well as impervious to European peace politics — was almost impossible to digest in Paris or Berlin, even after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. An increasingly militaristic Russia might swim, quack and look like a duck, but that did not mean it was one.
“Many of us had started to take peace for granted,” Niinisto said this month at the Munich Security Conference after leading Finland's abrupt push over the past year to join NATO, an idea unthinkable even in 2021. “Many of us had let our guard down.”
The war in Ukraine has transformed Europe more profoundly than any event since the Cold War's end in 1989. A peace mentality, most acute in Germany, has given way to a dawning awareness that military power is needed in the pursuit of security and strategic objectives. A continent on autopilot, lulled into amnesia, has been galvanized into an immense effort to save liberty in Ukraine, a freedom widely seen as synonymous with its own.
“European politicians are not familiar with thinking about hard power as an instrument in foreign policy or geopolitical affairs,” said Rem Korteweg, a Dutch defense expert. “Well, they have had a crash course.”
Gone is discussion of the size of tomatoes or the shape of bananas acceptable in Europe; in its place, debate rages over what tanks and possibly F-16 fighter jets to give to Kyiv. The EU has provided about $3.8 billion in military assistance to Ukraine.
Overall, European states, as part of the union or individually, have pledged more than $50 billion in various forms of aid to Kyiv, imposed 10 rounds of sanctions, absorbed more than 8 million Ukrainian refugees (nearly the population of Austria), and largely weaned themselves off Russian oil and gas in a sweeping shift under acute inflationary pressure.
“Zeitenwende,” or epochal turning point, is the term German Chancellor Olaf Scholz used almost a year ago in a speech announcing a $112 billion investment in the German armed forces. He meant it for Germany, a country traumatized by its Nazi past into visceral anti-war sentiment, but the word also applies to a continent where the possibility of nuclear war, however remote, no longer belongs in the realm of science fiction.
The post-Cold War era has given way to an uneasy interregnum in which great-power rivalry grows. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia,” U.S. President Joe Biden said this past week in Warsaw, Poland. He spoke as China and Russia held talks on their “no limits” partnership and Putin suspended Russian participation in the last surviving arms control treaty between the two biggest nuclear-armed powers.
It is the Age of Reordering, and Europe has been obliged to adjust accordingly.
“The war has sent Europeans back to basics, to questions of war and peace and our values,” said François Delattre, French ambassador to Germany. “It asks of us: Who are we as Europeans?”
Without the United States, the heroic Ukraine of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may not have had the military means to resist the Russian invasion. This is a sobering thought for Europeans, even if Europe's response has exceeded many expectations. It is a measure of the work that still needs to be done if Europe is to become a credible military power.
So, as a long war looms along with a possibly protracted stalemate, the EU will grapple with how to reinforce its militaries; how to navigate tensions between front-line states intent on the complete defeat of Putin and others, including France and Germany, inclined toward compromise; and how to manage an American election next year that will feed anxieties over whether Washington will stay the course.
In short, the war has laid bare the path before Europe: how to transform itself from peace power to muscular geopolitical protagonist.
“Even if the war ends soon, there will be no going back,” said Sinikukka Saari, a Russia expert and research director at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. Not on Finland's decision to join NATO, and not to Europe's status quo ante.
Before the war began Feb. 24, 2022, the idea of a wealthy and complacent Europe, sapped by consumerism and bureaucracy, had gained traction as hard-line nationalists, often with financial and other links to Moscow, attacked the EU.
But the Russian invasion has had a galvanizing and generally unifying effect. For Putin, the unintended and undesirable consequences of his war have multiplied.
Finland is a case in point. Its fears of Russia run deep. From 1809, for more than a century, it was part of the Russian Empire, albeit as an autonomous duchy. In World War II, it lost 12 percent of its territory to Moscow.
If compulsory military service was maintained throughout the postwar years, as most European countries abandoned conscript armies, it was not, as former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb said, “because we were afraid of Sweden.”
“Every family has war memories, and history tells us of the danger,” said Emilia Kullas, director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum. “Yet we were hesitant. We thought being neutral served Finland best.”
Even in January 2022, a month before the Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Sanna Marin, the Social Democratic prime minister, told Reuters it was “very unlikely” that Finland would apply to join NATO during her term. Opinion polls consistently showed that support for joining the alliance was no higher than 20 percent to 30 percent.
The curtain came down on all of that within days of the Feb. 24 attack. “Popular sentiment led the way,” said Janne Kuusela, policy director at the Finnish Defense Ministry. “Usually, politicians change and people follow. This time, the people led.”
Flanked by Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, Marin said this month at the Munich Security Conference that Finland had asked itself, “What is the line that Russia will not cross?”
The answer was clear: “That is the NATO line.”
As for NATO membership for Ukraine, it seems inconceivable so long as Ukraine is at war with Russia.
“I don't think any NATO country thinks that a country fighting a war in Russia can join NATO,” said Petri Hakkarainen, chief diplomatic adviser to Niinisto, the Finnish president.
Here lies a European problem that seems likely to grow. “A frozen conflict suits Putin,” said Delattre, the French ambassador to Germany. “A partially occupied, dysfunctional Ukraine cannot advance toward Europe. So of the three possible outcomes to the war — a Ukrainian victory, a Russian victory and a stalemate — two favor Putin.”
“Russia is not willing to lose, and human life does not matter to Mr. Putin, so they can keep the war going for a long time,” Kuusela said. “Ukraine, in turn, will remain in the fight as long as the West supports it.”
He paused before concluding, “It will be a hard stalemate to break.”