But the failure of the EU enlargement process in Turkey and the rise of a revanchist Russia have shown that the EU model is unlikely even to encompass all of Europe, let alone the whole planet. I believed that the EU’s model of international cooperation would spread osmotically to all corners of the world. In the early 2000s, I wrote a book titled Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century. Earlier generations of Western leaders were wrong to assume that only their countries would ever be strong enough to override others’ sovereignty.Ī fourth issue is the supposed universalism of the European project. And, of course, many worry that China will adopt similar reasoning to launch an invasion of Taiwan. Saudi Arabia has used a similar doctrine to justify its interventions to protect Sunnis in Yemen, as has Iran with respect to Shias in Syria. The Kremlin believes it can decide unilaterally to intervene in other countries to protect members of a loosely defined Russian civilization. The Russian variant of the “responsibility to protect” is not postmodern but pre-modern. In the 1990s, Europeans advanced the “postmodern” idea that if there were massive abuses of universal human rights (those recognized by the United Nations) taking place within a sovereign country, the international community had a duty to step in to protect the victims from their own government. But faced with an aggressive revisionist power, they now recognize that sovereignty must be protected before it can be pooled.įor its part, Russia has perverted the post-sovereigntist rhetoric used by Europeans during the Balkan wars to justify its own invasion of Ukraine, which it cynically describes as a mission to protect Russian speakers from genocide. For the past few decades, Europeans were mainly focused on taming this impulse in the name of supranational cooperation. It follows that Europe’s decoupling from Russian energy will also be accompanied by efforts to make Europe less dependent on China.Ī third question involves the concept of sovereignty. This realization came hot on the heels of worries about “ mask diplomacy” and “ vaccine nationalism” during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many countries found themselves wholly reliant on others for critical supplies. The hope was that even if economic links between countries did not make war impossible, they would at least prevent a dangerous escalation in tensions.īut Russia’s invasion made a mockery of this idea, demonstrating that interdependence can also enable one party to blackmail the other. That was the idea behind the original European Coal and Steel Community (the precursor to the EU), which turned former enemies into friends by merging the national industries that had produced the munitions for World War II. European integration previously reflected the belief that economic links between countries would create a foundation for political reconciliation. Moreover, the EU has fashioned its economy into a weapon to use against Russia, and it is now planning for a war economy, where security will take priority over efficiency.Ī second major change is that Europeans must rethink interdependence. ![]() Taboos have been broken, with European Union member states sending heavy weapons to Ukraine and the EU’s “peace facility” pledging €2 billion ($2.1 billion) to arm that beleaguered country. There has been much discussion about German rearmament, Denmark’s decision to participate in European joint defense arrangements, and Sweden and Finland’s bid for NATO membership. Most obviously, they now must concern themselves with hard power. ![]() The peace project has given way to a war project, and this fundamental shift is forcing European governments to reconsider some of their longest-held principles. But since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Europe has found itself unifying in response to war. Or seven decades, European integration has been driven by the quest for peace.
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