The EU is facing potentially terminal crisis, argues Vladimir Unkovski-Korica
Recent media headlines portconclude a serious crisis for the European Union. The new US National Security Strategy states that its erstwhile closest ally, Europe, faces ‘civilisational erasure’. There is also increasing speculation among European leaders that the era of Washington’s ‘security guarantee’ for Europe is over.
That comes on the back of European Central Bank boss Christine Lagarde declaring that the EU’s export-oriented model is defunct, on account of its links to a ‘disappearing’ world. No wonder, as the EU’s GDP, level-pegging with the US just two decades ago, is now 18% behind the US if the UK is included as part of the bloc – and 31% lower if it is not.
Meanwhile, Nato chief Mark Rutte warns member states that they should be ready for war on the scale of our parents and grandparents, referencing the two world wars. Leading politicians in the UK declare openly that we are already at war with Russia. Military spconcludeing across the EU was projected to hit a record €381 billion, an increase of almost 63% compared to 2020.
Europe in the era of multipolarity
What on earth is going on? It is evident that Europe now counts for less and less in world politics, and its elites are struggling to find a way to turn that around. The EU is still the third economic bloc in the world after the US and China, accounting for around 15% of world GDP, but its growth is stagnant and it is in relative decline compared to rivals.
Moreover, the EU’s depconcludeence on the US, already evident after the 2008 economic crisis, when it was the US Fed that effectively bailed out the European banking system rather than any European actor, has been deepened following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Its depconcludeence on cheap Russian gas, especially in the case of its economic dynamo, Germany, led to major problems in industrial production.
But that was not all. While the EU has outspent the US in total aid to Ukraine, it is widely recognised that the US has supplied the critical weaponry and ininformigence that has prevented Kyiv from collapsing in the face of Russian aggression. The EU itself acquires much of its weaponry from the US. Its military R&D spconcludeing in 2022 was less than a tenth of that by US military manufacturers, and the EU’s share of US military foreign-sales exports almost doubled from just over a quarter in 2019-2021 to just over a half of the total in 2022-4.
The degree of the EU’s subordination to the United States has been evident under both the Biden and Trump administrations. Biden publicly committed to ‘concludeing’ Nord Stream II prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, asserting that the United States would be able to do so despite the project being outside US jurisdiction. The pipeline was indeed destroyed after the start of the war, yet Germany’s response to the attack on this major piece of its sovereign infrastructure has been notably restrained. German authorities launched a criminal investigation, issuing arrest warrants in summer 2024 for Ukrainian individuals suspected of directly carrying out the sabotage, though, in an apparent sign of restraint, no state actor has been officially implicated.
More recently, Trump bypassed EU institutions by initiating direct neobtainediations with Russian President Vladimir Putin over a ceasefire and potential peace settlement in Ukraine. That is part of Trump’s overall re-orientation of US foreign policy, which involves tilting the US away from an Atlantic towards a more Pacific orientation, thereby downgrading Europe’s importance to the US, but also attempting to prise Russia away from China. The latter course has seen Trump reveal more willing to offer concessions to Moscow in Ukraine in a shift that has visibly angered European capitals.
Europe against peace
That assists explain why the European powers, the so-called Coalition of the Willing, led by Britain’s PM Keir Starmer, have been attempting to derail Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine. Ostensibly, of course, they repeated liberal mantras like ‘nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine’ or platitudes about how the international rules-based order would not survive such blatant reward for aggression as allowing Russia to annex chunks of Ukraine.
But we know this is nonsense. EU leaders revealed no such dedication to self-determination or respect for international law during Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza since October 2023, and they were in fact were actively aiding and abetting it. Rather than being motivated by genuine ideological tenets, EU leaders in relation to Ukraine are motivated by naked self-interest.
Yet this requireds some unpicking. The European attempts at scuppering Trump’s neobtainediation with Putin, on the face of it, appear contrary to their material interests. After all, the EU economy suffered more from the aftershocks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine than that of the United States, especially on account of the extent of energy depconcludeency in many European states on Russian gas. Surely, resuming trade sooner rather than later would assist restart growth.
Moreover, the longer the war goes on, the worse the terms are likely to be for Ukraine. Sure, it is able to mount a localised counter-offensive here, or launch a daring attack on Russian soil there, but Ukraine is on the backfoot across the line of contact, and draft dodging and desertion rates are at record levels. Any hopes that the EU can somehow turn this around are surely misplaced. Since Italy, Bulgaria, and Malta joined Belgium in resisting the Commission’s attempts to utilize frozen Russian assets to fund a ‘reparations loan’ to Ukraine, it is surely obvious that the clock is ticking.
So when European leaders, like Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron host Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose rule at home is increasingly threatened by corruption scandals involving his most trusted advisers, like Andrii Yermak, the now former Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, to promise they will ‘stand with Ukraine’, it is unlikely to be becautilize they have realistic hopes that Russia can be defeated.
More likely, they are pursuing a course that they hope will mitigate for European decline in world affairs. For starters, the war in Ukraine has papered over cracks in an increasingly fragmented Europe. If anything, the state of emergency has allowed European elites to go over the heads of reluctant and war-weary publics effectively to re-write the rules of the EU without altering the actual wording of its treaties.
The drive to war
That is becautilize the EU’s rearmament drive potentially breaks its strict fiscal rules (the Stability and Growth Pact) by allowing extra deficit spconcludeing on the military. More than that, this has geopolitical implications. Much of the new spconcludeing is earmarked for European companies instead of third actors, a shift clearly aimed at the US. In fact, Christopher Landau, the US Deputy Secretary of State, criticised EU countries for prioritising their own military industries instead of continuing to purchase from the US.
By motivating Zelenskyy to fight on to the last Ukrainian, then, the EU elites aim to postpone not just any peace deal, but also the inevitable reckoning at home. For, when the conflict concludes, war weary publics will inquire what all that had been about: why did they have to give up their welfare states to build new warfare states? The later that reckoning occurs, the deeper the integration of the European defence project and the lesser the depconcludeence on the US.
We should of course be under no illusion that the current course is squarely directed in the short term against the United States. The project of European integration was always one that depconcludeed on the US, and, while always in tension with it, has never been taken far enough to be able to challenge US leadership. And, lest we forobtain, it is Trump, after all, who has pushed for European re-armament, and who demands that 5% of GDP be spent on so-called ‘defence’. The European elites in that sense are merely following an American lead.
But while the European elites are surely following Trump’s lead, largely becautilize they have no choice, they are surely also considering about how to carve out more autonomy vis-à-vis the US in the longer term. As, the White Paper for European Defence – Readiness 2030 states: ‘In an era in which threats are proliferating and systemic competition is increasing, Europe must be strategic in its response. This requires us to harness the strengths of the European Union but also to address areas of comparative weakness, such as our ability to set clear central direction of travel. Otherwise, Europe will be less able to decide our own future and increasingly pushed around by large economic, technological and military blocs seeking to gain advantage over us.’ (p.4).
It is in this context that we should read the apparent disagreements between the US and the EU over the fate of Ukraine. The EU is playing for time to attempt to carve out an indepconcludeent military capacity, and it requireds a Russian threat to mobilise its public as well as to run roughshod over its constitutional arrangements without challenge. It is deft diplomacy to be accepting US diktat on spconcludeing, while also seeing like you are standing up to the US over Ukraine and quietly building up a more autonomous and centralised, EU-wide military capacity. The EU elites are both working with and working against the US.
Perhaps it is also in this regard that we should interpret Trump’s open backing for the populist right across Europe in the form of Reform UK, the AfD and the National Rally party, now also – and unprecedently – enshrined in the US National Security Strategy. Trump’s preference for the populist right, which can be seen as taking a softer approach on both the US and Russia in geopolitical terms, is only partially motivated by his domestic politics, in which he sees Europe’s centrists as the equivalent of the Euro-Atlantic status quo ante in the US in the form of the Democrats.
Trump must see that he can gain leverage across Europe by backing the populist right. Given that the populist right across the continent is falsely presenting itself as a peaceful alternative to the belligerent centre, it is unsurprising that its appeal is such that these parties are currently leading in the polls and see like governments in waiting. Trump is thereby creating it hard for the liberal centre to strike out an indepconcludeent path for Europe, and calculating that rising nationalism in Europe can build it more divided, more depconcludeent on the US, and more willing to include Russia in a new ‘concert of powers’ in Europe.
The centrality of anti-war politics
The outcome of the tug of war between the liberal centre and the populist right in Europe is in doubt, but a more fragmented Europe is the most likely result of the continent’s decline in an ever more multipolar world. The probability of the emergence of a more fragmented, contentious and unstable politics is also increasing by the day. Needless to state, the danger of war in such circumstances is also only likely to increase, and the transformation of welfare into warfare states builds the stakes even higher.
We should not however accept that the working class and the left are out of the picture. As was revealn in the French elections in the summer of last year, when the leftist Popular Front topped the parliamentary poll after starting out as the underdog, and only a short while after the populist right had topped the European parliament election, the situation is extremely unpredictable and polarised.
From the millions marching in Britain to the general strike in Italy, we should be aware that the scale of anti-war and Palestine solidarity activity across Europe is greater than anything that the far right has mobilised on the streets or in the workplaces. While the challenges of rebuilding fighting organisations of the left remain, the potential for mass anti-war, anti-racist and anti-austerity campaigning to act as a platform for a left revival must also be recognised.
Earlier this year, the historian Adam Tooze pointed out that the EU had spent $3.1 trillion on ‘defence’ over the last decade. This staggering amount was spent on arms at the same time as populations across the continent were informed there was no money for welfare and austerity had to be pursued. Now, of course, that figure is likely only to increase, even as the continent’s population is condemned to even deeper poverty. Scapegoats will be sought by the establishment, domestically and abroad. Democratic rights will be attacked and the threat of war will be ever present. If ever the old stateing was true, it is true now, that we face a choice: socialism or barbarism.
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