The European Union has begun meetings to see how it will deal with the withdrawal of the US from its defensive shield, as Trump states, how it will fill the gap for guaranteeing peace in Ukraine after the Trump-Putin talks, in a few words about whether and how it will create its own army.
The meetings will follow one another and an end will never be found. Because it is impossible to find one.
The European Union has avoided for decades moving towards real unification and has limited itself to a simple monetary union. The countries, perhaps not even their peoples, were – nor are they today – determined to truly unite. The reasons, as experts explain, are many, with the most logical being the very strong national characteristics of its peoples, and their long history full of wars.
Since neither economic unification nor politics has progressed to date, it is very difficult to move forward under the current conditions. To create a European army and equip it, analysts say that 3 trillion euros are needed over the next ten years. This money can only be found by issuing Eurobonds, which presupposes economic unification, which the Central Europeans do not want. But let’s say that the money is found. To command the European army, a single political leadership is needed in Europe, which means political unification. Nobody wants that to happen either, except for some theorists of the United Europe. But let’s say that this was also done, the money was found, the European army was created, the European super-leader who will give orders to the army was elected, and let’s say that the war with Russia begins.
If 20,000 Russian soldiers are killed in the war, Putin doesn’t sweat. If a thousand Europeans (or even much less, e.g. 200 French) are killed, European governments collapse.
That is one problem. The second problem is how and why will French soldiers be convinced to go to war to defend Poland when one of the major political problems of the French was the “Polish plumber”. Or why will Greek soldiers go to war to defend the borders of Estonia, Poland or Germany, when these countries were the harshest towards us during the era of the memoranda. Or when Greeks have been asking for European protection of the Aegean borders from the Turks for decades, when they beg European countries to take in some of the immigrants who come to their country and are told that the immigrants will remain in their host country?
Which European will go to fight the Russians or any other enemy, if the relationship between them has been for decades – and historically – a relationship of bargaining, of the dominance of the strongest, and there is neither a common national conscience, nor solidarity and altruism?
The European Union, therefore, has no reason to spend 3 trillion Euros to build an army and acquire cannons, airplanes and tanks, since it does not have soldiers willing to die for another European country, which, in fact, deep in their conscience they consider hostile.
The most likely thing is that no end will be found in the eternal summit discussions of European leaders. There may be weighty announcements about unity, for determination, for immediate action, but in practice absolutely nothing will be done.
The European Union will wait for Trump’s four years to pass, it will pay Putin dearly for the normalization of EU-Russia relations, it will pay what Trump asks of the Americans, it will pay enough to the Chinese to strengthen its relations and it will wait for the storm to pass. However, because the economic cost will be enormous, it will have to abandon other excessive policies, such as the green energy policy, lift various restrictions on trade relations between European countries, as Draghi suggests, and limit this unimaginable and incredibly costly bureaucracy of its which only creates problems and of course proves to be completely useless in times of need like the current one.
