Media/Opinion pieces

Article co-signed by Ralph Thiele, President of EuroDéfence-Deutschland and Denis Verret, Vice-President of EuroDéfence-France, co-animator of the EDDeu/DEFr working Group dedicated to the relaunch of the Franco-German relations in Defence.
(The text engages only its authors)

Activities at EuroDéfense-France have resumed apace after the summer break and all the excitements of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, organised so brilliantly by the local team.

Belgian Ambassador to France on 16 June 2023, École Militaire, Paris

François de Kerchove began by touching briefly on the current unsettled geostrategic situation created by the war in Ukraine and the fundamental issues faced by Europeans and their NATO allies as a result, not least that of security, in the broadest sense of the term. While strategic security was of major concern, other aspects, namely economic, industrial, technological and energy sovereignty, were also at stake, to say nothing of EU structures in the face of large-scale enlargement and the inevitable ensuing paradigm shift.

By Eurodefense Netherlands
In the current shifting global security dynamics and the increasing recognition of the need for a cohesive defence strategy, we as Eurodefense have taken a proactive stance in advocating for enhanced European defence cooperation. Since the inception of our federation in 1992, we continuously have emphasized the importance of a united approach to defence across Europe.

The 1990s saw the collapse of the USSR and, with it, the disappearance of a potential threat. China, for its part, was enjoying economic growth but had yet to become a military power. At the time, therefore, the United States had a de facto monopoly over world power. The West dominated the world, and crises were managed through the UN. In the absence of any real existential threat, Europe relaxed its strategies and its defence went from being the State’s “main reason for existence” to a “necessary budgetary evil”. Even though a new threat, Islamic terrorism, emerged during this time, this state of affairs continued until 2010.

How is Europe adapting to today’s crises? To what extent has it presented a united front during recent conflicts?
Unfortunately, wars are being waged on a number of continents, in Europe as elsewhere. While we, in Western Europe, may consider that, overall, we have enjoyed decades of peace, other Europeans do not share this view.

During the Madrid Presidents Meeting in 2019, EDNL presented an article I had written on EU defence. The title was: “Europe’s security is Europe’s responsibility.” It emphasized the need for the EU to be able to defend itself against outside threats without the help of the USA, since the EU foreign and defense policy and US foreign and defense policy were not necessarily always identical but could one day even be contradictory. I suggested that the Eurodefense network should adopt this principle and develop concepts and recommendations to EU governments and institutions on how to develop the EU in that direction.

History, in its real or doctored version, is a vital factor in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. History was even one of the main reasons given by Russia when it declared war in 2022. However, history according to Vladimir Putin, President and Historian (two terms only applicable with a dose of sarcasm) or “President and History-maker” (Putin has repeatedly portrayed himself as a man on a historical mission), has remained the same since his speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, reiterated in his essay “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, published in 2021. It is fundamental to the ideology behind not only Russian propaganda but also its pop culture, a recurrent theme in its music, films and visual arts.

The war of aggression waged by Russia since 24 February 2022 by invading Ukraine, with no apparent reason other than the annexation of this country and its submission to Russian central power, has awakened people’s consciences in Europe and prompted the EU to take action, as COVID had done previously. The scale of the health crisis prompted the Member States of the European Union to take exceptional measures.