Events in Ukraine and the expansionist policies of President Putin naturally raise questions about the defense of
Europe.
Whatever Russian aims might be, there is no doubt that a heavily armed
country with dwindling economic assets poses a threat, however
theoretical, to an affluent neighbor with only tenuous means of defense.
In the days of the cold war, when President Reagan took the North
Atlantic Alliance (
NATO)
seriously, an effort was made to counter the military might of the
Soviet Union, and to impress on the Soviet leaders that any attempt to
annexe the countries to the West of them would lead to the destruction
of their empire. The strategy worked, and eventually it became clear to
the KGB that it would be easier to give up the struggle, transfer assets
to Switzerland, buy a house in London and create a fake democracy back
home.
NATO’s
strategy worked because it was believable. It was clear to the Soviet
elite that President Reagan really did intend to introduce defenses that
would make the Soviet missiles ineffective. It was clear that America
was not only the backbone of the Western alliance, but also entirely
committed to its ruling doctrine, that an attack on one member is an
attack on all. The
Falklands war delivered a shock to the
KGB,
which had planned on the assumption that the Western powers would
relinquish territory rather than embark on so costly a defense of it.
Nor was this assumption absurd. Officer Putin and his fellow spies were
well connected with the Western European left, and knew how hostile the
European socialist parties were to the strategy of deterrence.
The
British Labour Party was committed at the time to nuclear disarmament(
CND),
the German Social Democrats were half-hearted members of NATO at best,
the Scandinavian socialists were more or less neutral and the French,
whether right or left, pursued an independent strategy whose only clear
meaning was that they didn’t take orders from America.
Since that time the Atlantic Alliance has become radically less
credible. Three factors are principally responsible for this. The first
is the growth of the European Union, and its policy of dissolving
national borders. The EU has set out to delegitimize the nation state,
to make it irrelevant to the ‘citizens’ of the Union whether they be
French, British, Polish or Italian, and to abolish the national customs
and beliefs that make long-term patriotic loyalty seriously believable.
The EU’s attempt to replace national with European identity has, however
failed, and is widely regarded with ridicule. Moreover the EU’s
inability to think coherently about defense, and its policy of ‘soft
power’ which makes defense in any case more or less inconceivable, means
that the motive which leads ordinary people to defend their country in
its time of need has been substantially weakened. Patriotism is seen as a
heresy, second only to fascism on the list of political sins, and the
idea that the people of Europe might be called upon to defend their
borders looks increasingly absurd in the light of the official doctrine
that there are no borders anyway.
Read more: Is Europe Still Defensible From Invasion?
