Europe’s strategic autonomy : that obscure object of desire
Words are not sufficient. For too long, the EU has satisfied itself with a diplomacy of words, often moralistic and idealistic, but powerless in front of chaos and atrocities, as we saw in Yugoslavia and in many subsequent instances, with consequences, which Europe is the first to suffer from. The reason is that Member States, rather than integrating defence into a democratic construction where they would have a say, prefer to accept the humiliation and subservience that
are the price to pay for American protection. Doing so, not only do the Union and its Member States earn the contempt of other powers, but they also lose the respect of their own citizens.
The citizens of Europe are tired of the strategic babble of their leaders and the alphabet soup of acronyms they have been throwing around over the years under the pretence of building a “Europe of Defence”. They should stop talking and start acting. If they truly mean it, they should lose no time in creating the much-touted “European Defence Union”, another word for the “common defence” heralded in 1992 in the Maastricht treaty, for which Europe has been waiting for too long. Only then will they finally conquer the strategic autonomy they confusedly aspire to.
