An hour before the official start of the sixtieth Munich Security Conference (MSC), a greeting arrived from the Kremlin. Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in prison. His widow Yulia Navalnaya took to the stage in tears shortly afterwards and called for justice and for the world to unite and “fight against this appalling regime”. The next day I listened to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader, who told us that she had not heard from her imprisoned husband Sergei for over a year. “I feel that dictators are testing their limits,” she said in response to Navalny’s death, Anna Wieslander, director of Northern Europe at the Atlantic Council and chair of the board of the Stockholm Institute for Security and Development Policy, wrote for the Atlantic Council.
At the 2022 Munich Security Conference, just days before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the discussions were marked by a mixture of Western naivety and arrogance. One year later, four fears prevented action and coherent response. This year was characterized by soul searching and a brutal awakening for Europe. “Are we doing enough?” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz asked rhetorically, devoting his entire speech to Russia’s war in Ukraine. He stressed that the threat from Russia is real and could spread if NATO’s deterrence and protection is not reliable and if military support for Ukraine fails.
French President Emmanuel Macron did not attend the MSC, but his words from Paris at a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi were telling. Instead of worrying that Russia would be “crushed,” as he did last year after the MSC, he called Russia a “revisionist power” that has become increasingly aggressive “against all of us” in recent months. He warned that a new phase was beginning and that more and more countries had reasons for concern. For allies close to Russia, this was old news, but still noteworthy, coming from France.
Zelensky, speaking in person in Munich, also asked a rhetorical question about Russia: “Don’t ask Ukraine when the war will end. Ask yourself why Putin is still able to continue it?”
The heightened awareness of Russia as a threat in Berlin and Paris and Europe’s inadequacy to counter it comes at a time when Russia is advancing on the battlefield, as evidenced by the fall of Avdiivka. The Ukrainians are short of ammunition from the West and do not have enough air defenses to protect their ground forces. Illustrating its commitment to the war against Ukraine, Russia has shifted to a military economy – supported by closer ties with China, North Korea and Iran – and is devoting almost 30 percent of its fiscal spending to the military in 2024. The West has failed to dealt with loopholes in its sanctions, a flaw that benefited the Russian war machine. This month, France revealed a massive Russian disinformation campaign prepared for European countries ahead of June’s European Parliament elections. Sabotage of critical underwater infrastructure in the North Atlantic and Baltic Sea has become so common in the past year that NATO has created special units to deal with it. In addition, US intelligence has indicated that Russia plans to place a nuclear anti-satellite weapon in space.
Meanwhile, the United States faces major challenges in its leadership of the war in Ukraine. A consistent message at the MSC, from European politicians to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to the bipartisan congressional delegation, was that Congress urgently needs to pass the military support bill for Ukraine. Although US Vice President Kamala Harris took the floor and stressed that failure to provide critical weapons to Ukraine would be “a gift to Vladimir Putin” and that “America will continue to lead”, the credibility of the United States was often called into question in the discussions throughout the conference.
Former President Donald Trump’s outburst that he will tell Russia to do “whatever the hell it wants” with European allies that are not spending enough on defense has sent shockwaves through European capitals. That Trump is leading US President Joe Biden in some pre-election polls made the statement all the more frightening.
In the corridors of the Bayerischer Hof Hotel, there was even a fear that at the MSC in 2025, Europe would be sandwiched between a fascist Russia and an unreliable United States – a Europe that would be almost alone. When the big players from the Global South took the MSC stage, it became clear that they were not particularly concerned about Russia and had little involvement with the fate of Ukraine.
In light of such a future, after years of somnambulism for a rapid return to a world in which Russia will once again be a trusted partner, 2024 appears to be the year of a brutal awakening for Europe. In 2024, only eighteen of thirty-one allies are estimated to spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, still a modest level compared to the Cold War era. Despite the fact that NATO agreed at the 2023 Vilnius summit that 2 percent should be the floor, not the ceiling, for defense spending, Germany has signaled to the MSC that 2 percent is its upper limit for the foreseeable future , and France just recovered to 2 percent after a dip in 2023.
The recipe of the day at the MSC was to strengthen the “European pillar” in NATO, a concept that has been proposed for many years but with little progress. At a side event where I spoke about how to rethink Western policy towards Russia, I was asked whether a European pillar was a realistic proposition. My answer was Yes, as long as European allies not only urgently increased defense spending, but also spent it to fill identified gaps in military capabilities and invest in funds necessary for Europe to operate without the United States if necessary.
Germany, France and the UK will have to come together and lead. The UK clearly understands the Russian threat, but is less influential in Europe after leaving the European Union. Therefore, the key to successful change lies in Berlin and Paris. If Germany and France see the true face of Russia and realize that it is a serious threat to them too, then this will be the defining moment for European defense. Europe must reliably counter Russia, no matter who wins the US elections in November.
2024-02-22 17:47:48
#Europes #Brutal #Awakening
