With the war in Ukraine entering its third year, more and more voices advise taking a step back and taking a perspective on the historic challenge facing Europe. From Estonia, one of the most exposed countries, to Donald Tusk's Poland through NATO, the calls follow one another to shake the conscience of European leaders and public opinions. The tone of the messages from the European Council next week will be more urgent than ever in this regard to show a united front if, as feared in Brussels, in April or May Russia launches an attack that Ukraine is unable to contain.
“We are at a critical moment and it would be a serious historic mistake to allow Putin to prevail. We cannot allow authoritarian leaders to get away with resorting to the use of force, it would be dangerous for all of us,” warned the Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, yesterday in the presentation of his annual report, which concludes that In 2023 the world became a more dangerous place but the military organization became “stronger.”
Last year, NATO's European partners increased their defense spending by 11% and in 2024 two thirds of the organization's members (18 out of 32) will reach the target of 2% of GDP while 10 years ago they only reached it three, recalled Stoltenberg, who revealed the data in advance after Donald Trump said that he would let Russia do “whatever it wants” with countries that do not reach this threshold. But while “allies are providing unprecedented help to Ukraine to survive as a sovereign and independent country,” they are not doing enough. “Ukrainians are not running out of courage. They're running out of ammunition. Together, we have the ability to give Ukraine what it needs. It is time to show that there is political will to do it.”
Kusti Salm, number two in the Estonian Ministry of Defense, does not mince words when describing the situation of the conflict or the urgency for the European Union to adopt a “position of strength” against Vladimir Putin. “Strategically, Ukraine has never been closer to its potential defeat than it is now and that is a terrifying prospect. But things will get worse before they get better. And they will only get better after they get very ugly,” she adds.
“History is full of fleeting episodes, of opportunities that only arise once, of weekends when brave leaders decide to do the right thing, instead of what seems more convenient in the short term,” says the Secretary General of the Ministry. of Defense of Estonia. “How will our leaders react? What position will they take and what will the history books say about them? The challenge for us is that when darkness falls, people do not run away in terror, but that there is a brave proposal on the table to turn things around," Salm defended this week in a meeting with journalists in Brussels, where the Estonian government has presented a plan to help Ukraine.
Until now, the European Council has limited itself to saying that the EU will support Kyiv for as long as necessary to defend itself from Russian aggression, but has never said that Ukraine “must win” the war and the draft conclusions of the next summit. , to which La Vanguardia has had access, does not do so either, although it does emphasize that “Russia must not prevail.” Salm insists: “At some point this will have to be articulated. In the Second World War the change came in 1942. It was then that the British and Americans said that Germany must be defeated, three years after the conflict began. And it still took a year and a half to realize that vision.”
Historical flashes follow one another. “The times of blessed calm are over. The postwar era is over. We live in a new, pre-war time, although for some of our brothers it is no longer so,” warned the Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, at the congress of the European People's Party held in Bucharest last week. “It is not our fault if our daily vocabulary is now full of words like fighting, bombing, missile attacks or genocide,” he said. And he warned: “Either we defend our borders, our territory and our principles or we will sink.”
It is the message that Tusk will take today to Berlin, where he will meet with the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the French President, Emmanuel Macron, after the interview between the two to talk about Ukraine. Faced with the deliberate ambiguity shown by Macron to the Kremlin – not without controversy – with his suggestion that Europe could send troops to Ukrainian territory, Scholz's eternal doubts and the vacuum left by the United States, the Polish leader calls on Europe to take its destiny in his hands: “Let's not be delusional. No one will defend our security and our future if we do not do it,” says Tusk.
The conclusions of the next European Council dedicate a large section to defense and the need, without calling it so, to move to war economy mode as other countries, such as Russia or China, have already done, which will imply, for example, giving priority to defense industry in access to certain critical raw materials. “Now everyone is aware that we are the only ones who have not done it, because we are the only ones who were waiting for the war to end,” explain European diplomatic sources. More than half of European leaders “are convinced that Putin will not stop in Ukraine,” they add.
Specifically, the leaders will underline their commitment to “intensify” the delivery of military material to Ukraine, “advance without delay” in the European Strategy for the Defense Industry presented by the Commission and improve “military and civil preparedness”, through actions that involve “the whole society” in the face of new threats. “It is necessary to increase public awareness of the fact that we are in a new time and it is necessary to invest again in defense. but without spreading panic,” explain the aforementioned sources.
The idea of putting “possible additional sources of financing” on the table, which appeared in brackets in previous texts, has completely disappeared from the latest draft of conclusions. Estonia, France and Poland are committed to launching a joint debt issue to quickly have capital to make military investments, but the idea is far from generating unanimity. The Estonian Government estimates that it would be enough to launch Eurobonds worth 100 billion euros (one seventh of what the EU raised to finance the post-pandemic fund). His plan to defeat Russia also involves the EU dedicating 0.25% of its GDP to supporting Ukraine and accelerating the shipment of ammunition to the front.
Again, it's all a matter of perspective: "Ammunitions crises are nothing new in the history of wars," explains Sven Biscop, an analyst at the Egmont Institute, a Belgian think tank specializing in international relations. “In the First World War, after a few months of fighting, in 1915, the great powers realized that they had spent everything they had and were not prepared for a long war. The same thing happened as now, it is nothing strange and it can be solved, it's just that we should have solved it a year ago and we are not very advanced.”
