European soft power learns to pull its teeth

Overnight, exactly one year ago, the Russian bombing of the Ukraine forced Europe to do something that until now had resisted it: pull out its teeth and exercise not just as soft power, but as an economic and commercial that defends human rights in the world, but also as the harshness of a hard power.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
24 February 2023 Friday 15:26
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European soft power learns to pull its teeth

Overnight, exactly one year ago, the Russian bombing of the Ukraine forced Europe to do something that until now had resisted it: pull out its teeth and exercise not just as soft power, but as an economic and commercial that defends human rights in the world, but also as the harshness of a hard power.

The Byzantine discussions typical of Brussels about the sex of angels ended suddenly. That is to say, on how to launch a European defense of that name within the framework of the current treaties, which provide that this is a national competence. Or about whether the concept of strategic autonomy coined by Emmanuel Macron is adequate or not, how to create a stable cooperation framework with the Atlantic Alliance or whether it is time to open the doors to Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova.

The European Union simply – or as simply as possible in an organization made up of 27 countries – has done it. Faced with the paradigm shift that the outbreak of a war on the eastern border of the continent entails, the unidentified political object, as Jacques Delors called the European Economic Community in the 1990s, born on the ashes of two world wars with the purpose of to consolidate peace, has taken unthinkable steps to help a neighboring country resist an aggression that many feel is their own.

It has not been necessary, for example, to change the European treaties to decide to make joint purchases of arms to donate them to Ukraine through the European Facility for Peace, an instrument designed to help distant third countries mainly with non-lethal equipment. There are 3,600 million euros invested through this platform. Military training has been given to more than 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers. National defense budgets have skyrocketed. Tanks are starting to arrive in Ukraine. And there is already talk of sending combat planes.

It is the European defense in action. On paper, it remains a national competence, but the firm consensus on the European response to the war – Hungarian daydreams aside – has made it enough to rely not on treaties, but on something that has not always been there on other occasions: the will policy. EU cooperation with NATO, a US-dominated military organization, is no longer an option, but an obligation to make support for Ukraine more effective. Both organizations are becoming more alike: Finland and Sweden, two neutral countries until now, have asked to join the Atlantic Alliance. What Vladimir Putin has achieved is not the "Finnishization of Europe", as he intended, anticipating an apathetic response to his attack on the neighboring country, as happened in 2014, but a "natoization of Europe", said President Joe Biden. The Atlantic Alliance had never been so relevant since the end of the cold war.

Western unity in the face of the Russian war of aggression is one of the points on which European leaders have had the most influence in their speeches in recent days: Vladimir Putin was also wrong in thinking that European unity would soon break down. That consensus on the European response to the war, underpinned by the determined reaction of the Biden Administration in the United States, has allowed the Twenty-seven to unanimously carry out nine rounds of sanctions against Russia.

They are the strongest ever adopted by the club. It was known that they would not have a coup effect, but the initial resilience of the Russian economy, helped by exorbitant energy prices during the first months of the conflict, surprised the EU, which is reaffirming the strategy. “Sanctions are a slow-acting poison like the one made from arsenic. They take time to produce their effects, but they do, and irreversibly”, says the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell.

The restrictive measures, including a deal with the G-7 that has capped the price of Russian oil, are paving the way for structural changes in bilateral trade relations. The concept of economic security is becoming increasingly relevant. The disconnect with Russia goes beyond energy, the main economic battleground this year, which has so far resulted in an (expensive) victory for the EU.

Each new package of sanctions has been more difficult to approve than the previous one, and this morning – in extremis, because the objective was to have them adopted by the time the anniversary arrived – the European ambassadors will meet to approve the tenth. Despite Hungary's eternal reservations and her anti-sanctions speeches, in the end, after some concessions, she has never vetoed its approval.

Although completely isolated, Viktor Orbán is the only remaining ally of Vladimir Putin in the European Union. It is another of the consequences of the war: the Russian invasion of the Ukraine blew up the so-called Visegrad Group, made up of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The closeness between Orbán and Putin became unbearable for these countries, especially for Poland, the country that has assumed the leadership of the Eastern bloc on all issues related to Ukraine, omnipresent on the other hand in all aspects of the European agenda. .

This reality is also part of the new European landscape: the Union's center of gravity has pivoted and moved to the East. Among the consequences of this change, a more tense relationship in the Franco-German axis, which was nevertheless able to agree on the decision to recognize Ukraine and Moldova as candidates for the EU. It is likely that, in December, the Twenty-seven will make good on the reception they gave President Volodimir Zelensky in Brussels, when they welcomed him “home”, and agree to open accession negotiations.

If Ukraine's path towards the European family is uncertain, the security order that will come out of the war is no less uncertain, with the changes that a possible intervention by China in favor of Russia would entail, for example. Wherever it goes, the Union will be starting from a very different place than it was just a year ago.