WILL THIS FAILED WEST COUP ATTEMP FORCE THE EU TO HAVE THEIR OWN MILITARY.
EU DICTATOR (WORLD LEADER)
1 THESSALONIANS 5:3-7
2 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
6 Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
7 For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.
2 THESSALONIANS 2:3-4
3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed,(EU WORLD DICTATOR)the son of perdition;
4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
REVELATION 17:12-13
12 And the ten horns (NATIONS) which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.(SOCIALISM)
13 These have one mind,(SOCIALISM) and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.
REVELATION 6:1-2
1 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
2 And I saw, and behold a white horse:(PEACE) and he that sat on him had a bow;(EU DICTATOR) and a crown was given unto him:(PRESIDENT OF THE EU) and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.(MILITARY GENIUS)
2 THESSALONIANS 2:9-12
9 Even him,(EU WORLD DICTATOR) whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion,(THE FALSE RESURRECTION BY THE WORLD DICTATOR) that they should believe a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
GENESIS 49:16-17-POSSIBLY A JEW FROM DAN KILLS THE DICTATOR AT MIDPOINT OF TRIB
16 Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel.
17 Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward.
REVELATION 13:1-10
1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.(THE EU AND ITS DICTATOR IS GODLESS)
2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.(DICTATOR COMES FROM NEW AGE OR OCCULT)
3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death;(MURDERERD) and his deadly wound was healed:(COMES BACK TO LIFE) and all the world wondered after the beast.(THE WORLD THINKS ITS GOD IN THE FLESH, MESSIAH TO ISRAEL)
4 And they worshipped the dragon (SATAN) which gave power unto the beast:(JEWISH EU DICTATOR) and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?(FALSE RESURRECTION,SATAN BRINGS HIM TO LIFE)
5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.(GIVEN WORLD CONTROL FOR 3 1/2YRS)
6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God,(HES A GOD HATER) to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.(HES A LIBERAL OR DEMOCRAT,WILL PUT ANYTHING ABOUT GOD DOWN)
7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints,(BEHEAD THEM) and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.(WORLD DOMINATION)
8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.(WORLD DICTATOR)
9 If any man have an ear, let him hear.
10 He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.(SAVED CHRISTIANS AND JEWS DIE FOR THEIR FAITH AT THIS TIME,NOW WE ARE SAVED BY GRACE BUT DURING THE 7 YEARS OF HELL ON EARTH, PEOPLE WILL BE PUT TO DEATH (BEHEADINGS) FOR THEIR BELIEF IN GOD (JESUS) OR THE BIBLE.
DANIEL 9:26-27
26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come (ROMANS IN AD 70) shall destroy the city and the sanctuary;(ROMANS DESTROYED THE 2ND TEMPLE) and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
27 And he( EU ROMAN, JEWISH DICTATOR) shall confirm the covenant with many for one week:( 7 YEARS) and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease,( 3 1/2 YRS) and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent.James Paul Warburg appearing before the Senate on 7th February 1950
Like a famous WWII Belgian General,Paul Henry Spock said in 1957:We need no commission, we have already too many. What we need is a man who is great enough to be able to keep all the people in subjection to himself and to lift us out of the economic bog into which we threaten to sink. Send us such a man. Be he a god or a devil, we will accept him.And today, sadly, the world is indeed ready for such a man.
No one will enter the New World Order... unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation.- David Spangler Director of Planetary Initiative United Nations.
THE WORLD DICTATOR
REVELATION 6:1-2,13:1-3,7-9,16
1 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
2 And I saw, and behold a white horse:(EU WORLD DICTATOR) and he that sat on him had a bow;(PEACE) and a crown was given unto him:(WORLD LEADER) and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.(THIS IS THE EU DICTATOR)
1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.(7 HEADS ARE THE 7TH WORLD EMPIRE IN HISTORY (THE EU) AS WELL AS THE VATICAN WHICH IS BUILT ON 7 HILLS. 10 HORNS ARE 10 KINGS THAT ARISE FROM THE EU, THEN #11 COMES ON THE SCENE BECOMES THE HEAD OF 3 OUNTRIES AND THEN THE EU DICTATOR, COMES FROM 1 OF THE 3 COUNTRIES THAT RULE FOR THIS TERM. I BELIEVE THE 3 COUNTRIES RULING AT THE TIME ARE SPAIN AND 2 OF THE ORIGINAL 6 THAT STARTED THE EU. FROM 1 OF THESE 3 COUNTRIES COME THE FUTURE EU DICTATOR PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION WHO GUARENTEES ISRAELS SECURITY FOR A LAND FOR PEACE 7 YEAR TREATY.
2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.(THE JEWISH EU DICTATOR GETS HIS POWER FROM SATAN,HE COMES FROM THE OCCULT).
3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.(THE DICTATOR HAS A FALSE RESURRECTION. JUST LIKE JESUS HAD A LITERAL RESURRECTION THIS DICTATOR GETS MURDERED AT THE 3 1/2 YR MARK OF THR 7 YEAR TREATY AND COMES BACK TO LIFE. THIS IS HOW HE CAN CLAIM TO BE GOD AND GET AWAY WITH IT AND CONTROL THE WHOLE EARTH.
7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
9 If any man have an ear, let him hear.
16 And he (FALSE POPE) causeth all,(WORLD SOCIALISM) both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
DANIEL 11:36-40
36 And the king shall do according to his will;(EU PRESIDENT) and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.
37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers,(THIS EU DICTATOR IS A EUROPEAN JEW) nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.
38 But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces:(HES A MILITARY GINIUS) and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things.
39 Thus shall he (THE EU DICTATOR) do in the most strong holds (CONTROL HEZBOLLAH,AL-QUAIDA MURDERERS ETC) with a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory: and he shall cause them to rule over many,(HIS ARMY LEADERS) and shall divide the land for gain.
40 And at the time of the end shall the king of the south(EGYPT) push at him:(EU DICTATOR PROTECTING ISRAELS SECURITY) and the king of the north(RUSSIA) shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.
We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent.James Paul Warburg appearing before the Senate on 7th February 1950
Like a famous WWII Belgian General,Paul Henry Spock said in 1957:We need no commission, we have already too many. What we need is a man who is great enough to be able to keep all the people in subjection to himself and to lift us out of the economic bog into which we threaten to sink. Send us such a man. Be he a god or a devil, we will accept him.And today, sadly, the world is indeed ready for such a man.
No one will enter the New World Order... unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation.- David Spangler Director of Planetary Initiative United Nations.
EUROPEAN UNION ARMY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI5_pMvLZd8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytWmPqY8TE0&feature=player_embedded
DANIEL 7:23-25
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast (EU,REVIVED ROME) shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth,(7TH WORLD EMPIRE) which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.(TRADING BLOCKS)
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings(10 DIVSION REGION WORLD GOVERNMENT) that shall arise: and another shall rise after them;(#11 SPAIN) and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.( BE HEAD OF 3 NATIONS)
25 And he (EU PRESIDENT) shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.(3 1/2 YRS)
DANIEL 8:23-25
23 And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king (EU DICTATOR) of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences,(FROM THE OCCULT-NEW AGE MOVEMENT) shall stand up.
24 And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power:(SATANS POWER) and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.
25 And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes;(JESUS) but he shall be broken without hand.
DANIEL 11:36-39
36 And the king (EU DICTATOR) shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.
37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers,(THIS EU DICTATOR IS JEWISH) nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.(CLAIM TO BE GOD)
38 But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces:(WAR) and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things.
39 Thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange god,(DESTROY TERROR GROUPS) whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory: and he shall cause them to rule over many,(HIS ARMY LEADERS) and shall divide the land for gain.
REVELATION 19:19
19 And I saw the beast,(EU LEADER) and the kings of the earth, and their armies,(UNITED NATIONS WORLD TROOPS) gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse,(JESUS) and against his army.(THE RAPTURED CHRISTIANS)
SINCE THE WEST KNEW ALL ABOUT THE ATTEMPTED COUP AGAINST PUTIN BY WAGNER PRIGOZHIN. I BELIEVE BIDEN AND HIS RUSSIA HATER DEMOCRAPS COLLUDED WITH WAGNER P. TO TAKE POWER FROM PUTIN WITH A COUP. BUT NOW SINCE IT FAILED BADLY. BIDEN AND HIS DEMOLIBNUT COLLUDERS AS WELL AS NATO AND WHOEVER ELSE COLLUDED WITH P INCLUDING FRANCE AND MACRON I BELIEVE. NOW THE WEST WILL HAVE TO DO FALSE FLAGS AGAINST PUTIN IN UKRAINE. SUCH AS DOING A FALSE FLAG ON THE NUCLEAR SITE IN UKRAINE. PILL ADDICTOR CRACK HEAD PUPPET OF THE BIDEN-WEST ZELENSKY WILL GLADLY WORK WITH THE WEST TO BOMB UKRAINES NUKE SITE. BLAME IT ON PUTIN. AND SAY SINCE WE NATO CAN NOT GO AFTER RUSSIA. SINCE THE UKRAINE IS NOT PART OF NATO YET. THE EUROPEAN UNION MUST HAVE ITS OWN ARMY. SO IT CAN GO AGAINST PUTIN ON THEIR OWN. AND FAREED ZAKARIA JUST HAPPENED TO HAVE FRENCH PRESIDENT MACRON ON. AND HE WANTS AN EU ARMY TO STOP DICTATORS AND KEEP THE EUROPE PEACEFUL.
Europe’s Real Test Is Yet to Come-Will the Continent Ever Get Serious About Its Own Security? By Radek Sikorski-Published on June 20, 2023
It is not yet clear if Ukraine will win the war, but Russia is definitely losing. On every metric of national power, Moscow’s position has worsened since the invasion began, and that change has already shifted the position of other global powers. The United States and NATO have grown more credible. China has gained a Russian vassal and is now the clear leader of the autocratic world. The European Union has done much better than many anticipated, but it may yet be the biggest loser, thanks less to an overaggressive Russia than to an overconfident China. The EU can likely weather the fallout from this war, but it could be critically challenged in the next one. Most Americans think of the EU as a free trade area with frills. Nothing could be further from the truth. Forged in the aftermath of World War II, the institutions that would become the EU were designed to bind the continent together so tightly that another war among Europeans would become unthinkable. In this, the bloc has succeeded brilliantly, helping deliver Europe’s longest period of peace in centuries.But Europeans made a mistake in assuming that others shared their worldview. Neither Russia, nor Middle Eastern powers, nor China ever believed that war was impossible, a position that most European leaders found hard to accept. Eastern Europeans who warned their friends in western Europe about Russian President Vladimir Putin were haughtily dismissed. Since February 2022, the reality of the Russian threat has become clear, as has the weakness of the European defense. Although Europe has made significant military and humanitarian contributions to Ukraine, from German tanks to Polish and Slovak fighter jets, the United States has been the main organizer and coordinator of the response to Russia’s invasion, providing intelligence and managing the operation in support of Kyiv. That Washington has mounted such a spirited defense of Ukraine is partly a matter of luck: if Donald Trump had been in office when Putin invaded, the U.S. president might have made a triumphant trip to Moscow instead of Kyiv. But even with Joe Biden in the White House, the United States might not have reacted so forcefully if its withdrawal from Afghanistan had been less humiliating. Ukraine was not, after all, a formal ally. The United States could easily have dismissed the war as Europe’s problem—and in the future, it still could. Trump might well be the next U.S. president. But even if he is not, the isolationism he has encouraged among American voters will influence U.S. policy regardless of who wins in 2024. There is no guarantee of future U.S. support for Ukraine. And even if there were, China might one day carry out its official policy and attempt to reintegrate Taiwan by force, leaving the United States without the political bandwidth or the resources to come to Europe’s assistance in a crisis. The Pentagon has formally abandoned the goal of being able to fight two major wars at once. Next time, Europe might be on its own. For that reason, the EU must get serious about defense. As a confederation of sovereign states that have often pursued their own defense and foreign policies at the expense of the union’s—and have very different perceptions of the threat posed by Moscow—the EU still lacks a strong defense capability and a common approach to security. As long as that is the case, the bloc will remain a hybrid power: an equal to the United States and China in regulating trade, standards, and investments but a bit player when it comes to defense and security. It will remain a toothless superpower—which is to say, not a superpower at all.ALL BARK AND NO BITE-Europe has been here before. At the start of the wars of Yugoslav succession in 1991, Luxembourg’s foreign minister, Jacques Poos, announced, “The hour of Europe has dawned.” But it took more than 100,000 deaths (mostly of Bosnians) and a belated U.S. intervention for the slaughter to end in 1995. Four years later, EU members declared that by 2003 they would be able to deploy a force of up to 60,000 troops within 60 days and sustain it for at least a year. But nothing of the sort materialized. Although soldiers have served under the EU flag in dozens of countries, they have mostly conducted low-intensity operations that did not prepare them for anything more ambitious. Perhaps the EU’s most successful operation was an aerial strike against Somali pirates in 2012, which deterred hijackers in the Horn of Africa for a while. For the most part, however, the up to 4,000 personnel serving in EU civilian and military missions help monitor borders, train military and police forces, and observe elections—mainly in Africa.Europe’s real punch was supposed to come from so-called battle groups: reinforced battalions of roughly 1,500 troops capable of being deployed to hot spots on short notice. The trouble was that EU member states had shrinking expeditionary capacity and more urgent commitments during NATO’s long mission in Afghanistan. Moreover, the subunits of the battle groups had to come from and be paid for by EU member states, which led to shirking, particularly by smaller countries. And the battle groups ultimately remained under the political control of contributing member states rather than the EU itself, so it proved impossible to reach a unanimous decision to act, even in dire emergencies such as the 2011 crisis in Libya. The first battle group became active in 2007, but none have ever been deployed, and the concept seems to have gone into hibernation.Another attempt to get serious about European security was the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) mechanism, EU-speak for a coalition of the willing. In 2009, Poland and France proposed creating a vanguard group of countries willing to act when the rest of the EU would not. The group would welcome only countries that spent two percent of their GDP on defense, agreed to common rules of engagement, and deployed their soldiers under joint command. The history of the EU contains plenty of examples of pioneering groups of countries establishing areas of integration that others eventually joined: the common travel area known as Schengen, the EU prosecutor’s office, and, indeed, the euro currency. This is arguably the main way the bloc evolves. But PESCO did not turn out to be a groundbreaking initiative. Thanks in part to pressure from Germany, the program that launched in 2017 included almost all member states. That meant the convoy would move at the pace of the slowest ship, or not at all, given that some EU member states consider themselves militarily neutral. PESCO has now shriveled into a joint spending program on military capabilities and technologies.In the next war, Europe might be on its own.In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU adopted a Strategic Compass for Security and Defense, which aims to enhance military mobility within the EU, facilitate live exercises on land and at sea, and, above all, establish a so-called rapid deployment force of roughly 5,000 troops. The initiative promises a “quantum leap forward” in European security, building on the European Peace Facility, a defense fund worth a little more than $1 billion per year. Originally conceived as a mechanism for paying for the common costs of EU operations, mostly in Africa and the Balkans, it has evolved into the European equivalent of the U.S. Foreign Military Financing program, bankrolling the purchase and repair of weapons for Ukraine as well as military assistance for Nigeria, Jordan, and North Macedonia, among others.By delivering such assistance, the EU crossed an important barrier. Two years ago, it would have been unthinkable for the bloc to buy lethal equipment and deliver it to nonmembers at war. Now that it has done so, the main limiting factor is money. Aid to Ukraine has eaten up most of the fund’s annual allocations, necessitating tough decisions by the European Council. But even if the European Peace Facility is expanded and the rapid deployment force becomes operational, Europe will hardly be able to defend itself if the United States is otherwise engaged. The EU could perhaps secure a Libyan port if it fell to human smugglers. It could sort out a Balkan warlord or a small rogue state. It could probably even deter Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko from sending saboteurs, terrorists, and migrants across the EU’s eastern border. But the bloc could not deter Putin.That, of course, is NATO’s job, and Biden’s forceful reaction to Putin’s aggression has restored the credibility of an alliance that French President Emmanuel Macron not long ago dismissed as brain dead. Washington’s courageous use of intelligence to warn the Ukrainians of Russia’s impending invasion has wiped away most of the stain of its misuse of faulty intelligence to make the case for the Iraq war. And Putin’s criminal megalomania has reunited the West. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, U.S. contributions to Ukraine total more than $70 billion—roughly equivalent to overall EU contributions (those of EU institutions and member states added together). But it remains to be seen how long that unity will last and what will happen if Europe is less lucky next time around.DIVIDED WE FALL-One would think that the sight of apartment blocks and power stations being hit by missiles would galvanize Europeans to demand more action, but it hasn’t. Defense companies have had to wait for over a year just for contracts to replenish Europe’s dangerously low ammunition stocks. They have not even begun to produce new weapons systems. And despite appeals by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, to create a defense union worthy of its name, progress has been glacial. The reasons for this are not personal but historical, geographical, psychological, political, and, above all, constitutional.Unlike the continental United States, which is pretty evenly secured from foreign threats, the European Union is much more vulnerable in some regions than in others. Residents of Narva, Estonia, for instance, live across a narrow river from the Russian town of Ivangorod, established by Ivan the Terrible. They know that Narva has changed hands a dozen times: Denmark, tsarist Russia, Sweden, Germany, and the Soviet Union have all ruled it at various points. They know that it looks the way it does—sprinkled with modern buildings that clearly replaced older ones destroyed by bombs—because of a vicious battle between occupying German forces and the Red Army. And they worry that Russia never fully acquiesced to “losing” Estonia in 1991 and that it might try to take it again, which is why Estonia supplies one of the biggest per capita contributions to Ukraine of all the NATO allies.By contrast, residents of Lisbon, Rome, and Brussels have never seen a Russian soldier in their cities who wasn’t invited—and neither have any of their ancestors. Soviet communism was an ideology with global ambitions, but Russian nationalism is not a product that travels well. So most Portuguese, Italians, and Belgians support efforts to halt Putin’s trampling of postwar taboos, but they hope the conflict between Russia and Ukraine can be resolved through compromise. They think Putin is a criminal, and they pity and admire the Ukrainians. But they are not willing to change their way of life on account of a distant threat. In Germany, however, it is a different story altogether. The Russians came to Berlin as conquerors within living memory and even ruled a quarter of Germany by proxy until 1991. Yet the Germans mostly refused to recognize Russia as a threat until 2022, perhaps out of gratitude for peaceful unification, which they credited to the moderation of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. Back in 2018, I had surreal conversations with German journalists, think-tank analysts, and politicians after Russia finished upgrading its nuclear forces in the Kaliningrad exclave, gaining for the first time the ability to strike Berlin. “Aren’t you worried?” I asked. They weren’t, because they had persuaded themselves that it wasn’t NATO, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, the Polish Solidarity movement, or the pope that won the Cold War but their Ostpolitik, or opening and dialogue with the communist bloc. What worked with the much more powerful Soviet Union could work with Putin’s Russia, they thought: strategic patience, persuasion, and trade—cars and turbines for oil and gas—would eventually convince Putin to mellow.European politicians must have known that public attitudes toward Russia would shift when the first bombs fell on Kyiv, but they declined to adopt the clear language of power politics that Putin might have understood and respected. Even after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made his historic speech spelling out the transformation of Germany’s defense posture, it took many months for the German political establishment to accept that there was no going back to business as usual with Putin. Some Germans probably still hope there might be.If it wasn’t enough for Europe’s largest country to be ambivalent about defense, the EU’s structure and lack of a constitution also militate against collective security. This is something that Americans should grasp, since their own war of independence was fought under the Articles of Confederation, before the United States adopted its constitution. Without a central budget or an executive authority that could force states to provide the necessary men and provisions, the war was sometimes shambolic; the colonists just barely won their independence.Europe could become a cross between a theme park and a hospice.The EU is a confederation, not a federation. Its members are bound together by treaties and joint decisions, but ultimate power lies with the member states. If a country does not fulfill its obligations to the bloc, it can be criticized, have its funds suspended, or even be taken to the European Court of Justice, but it cannot be compelled to do anything. This is especially true when it comes to intelligence, internal security, and defense. In theory, the EU has a common foreign and security policy. Article 26 of the Treaty on European Union, signed in Lisbon in 2007, says, “The European Council shall identify the Union’s strategic interests, determine the objectives of and define general guidelines for the common foreign and security policy, including for matters with defense implications.” In addition, the article states, “The common foreign and security policy shall be put into effect by the High Representative and by the Member States, using national and Union resources.” The idea was that EU foreign ministers would coordinate their national interests at the monthly meeting of the bloc’s Foreign Affairs Council, and the EU’s highest officials would then implement their joint positions. Unfortunately, the reality has been that on issues that matter—Iran, China, Russia, Ukraine—groups of self-appointed countries make policy on their own and treat joint EU policy as an afterthought. The ill-fated Minsk process initiated after Russia’s initial 2014 invasion of Ukraine is a prime example: Germany and France usurped the role of the EU and not only failed to resolve the crisis but also sowed mistrust across eastern Europe. Ignoring the Treaty on European Union undercuts the effectiveness of EU foreign policy. When Macron and von der Leyen both visited China in April 2023, the French leader received a state banquet and military parade, whereas the European Commission president was given a lukewarm welcome. The EU has the legal and institutional basis for a common defense and security policy, but key member states cannot bring themselves to act in unison. Perhaps Washington would face a similar problem if Texas and California had been major powers for centuries before they joined the United States.THE NIGHTMARE SCENARIO-Putin is unlikely to win militarily in Ukraine, and Western sanctions will probably prevent Russia from building a new army capable of threatening Europe for half a decade or so. But even that outcome would not protect Europe from its worst nightmare: a conflict between the United States and China that consumes Washington and leaves Europe to defend itself. The European People’s Party’s position paper on China, which I drafted, envisages a testy cohabitation between Europe and China: collaborate where possible, compete where needed, and confront where necessary. Such a policy could persist indefinitely for mutual benefit. It is also the U.S. policy, minus the bellicose rhetoric. But the EU cannot control its future relationship with China. European countries are status quo powers, whereas China is a revisionist one that will decide if, when, and how it will upend the existing order. Europe has no intention of taking any Chinese territory; it is China that is threatening to take what it does not control today.Europe is aligned with the United States in recognizing the nature of the challenge posed by China, and the EU is already working with Washington to prevent Beijing from acquiring sensitive technologies, for instance through the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council. But for the EU to be able to defend itself and thereby free up most U.S. forces for a possible conflict in Asia, it will have to make the difficult decision to invest serious resources in defense—and soon. It takes about a decade for a new weapons system to progress from conception to contracting and production to use on the battlefield. If China is preparing to take Taiwan by force by the end of the decade, as some analysts claim, Europe is already way behind the curve.The scenario that should keep Europeans awake at night is a Chinese assault on Taiwan that forces Europe to make a choice between its largest trading partner in goods and its most powerful ally. Macron was widely criticized in April 2023 for saying that Europe faced a “great risk” of getting “caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy.” Yet he was only expressing out loud what many Europeans whisper. A war between the United States and China over Taiwan would be a disaster for Europe. According to Santander Bank, the cost of Putin’s war to the EU’s economy has been the equivalent of roughly $190 billion, or between 1.1 and 1.4 percent of the union’s GDP in 202 Russia was always a relatively small economy on which Europe depended mainly for a little more than a third of its oil and gas needs. But abruptly replacing those supplies has depressed growth, caused a spike in inflation, and delayed Europe’s recovery from the pandemic. A sudden decoupling from China would be many times more expensive because Europe is much more dependent on China than it was on Russia before the war. Not only is China the EU’s largest source of imported goods, but it is also a leading destination of European exports across the board. The combination of having to buy more expensive natural gas from Qatar and the United States and losing access to China’s lucrative market for European cars, machinery, and luxury goods could cause Europe to deindustrialize. The continent could become a cross between a theme park and a hospice—not in a matter of generations, as demographers have long warned, but in a matter of years. Macron correctly expressed Europe’s anxiety, but he was wrong to think that Europe could remain on the sidelines of a hot U.S.-Chinese conflict. True, the EU has no legal obligation to back the United States in such a scenario; mutual NATO guarantees only apply to the North Atlantic area. But politics and economics would likely trump all. Regardless of who was president, the United States would do what it always does when faced with a monumental challenge. It would ask, Are you with us, or with our enemies? And when faced with such a choice, could Europe really remain on the sidelines for long? Would the majority of European states risk the loss of the U.S. alliance and the U.S. market? Would Europeans continue to trade with China as American soldiers were dying in defense of friendly democratic states in Asia? I doubt it. If nothing else, Europe would risk splitting along the east-west axis, as it did over the ill-conceived Iraq war. Europe cannot be united on the basis of anti-Americanism or even aloofness from the United States. Europe can become strategically relevant—and more integrated—only in alignment with the United States. France’s vision of a more united Europe should be appreciated, but it needs to be cured of its Gaullist fantasies.To prepare for the nightmare scenario, Europe must not only augment its defenses but also find closer sources of raw materials and reshore its industries and supply chains. Such “de-risking” will be incredibly difficult to enact. It will not be easy, for example, to find new markets for half the luxury cars that Germany produces each year. Moreover, Europeans must ask themselves how they will be able to afford to ban new cars with combustion engines by 2035, as they have pledged to do, when China has gained the upper hand in making affordable electric vehicles. Only the rich can play the role of a global conscience on climate change. And Europe will need to meet these economic challenges while also managing its enlargement, porous external borders, and authoritarian-leaning member states. A conflict with China is not inevitable, and Europe should do its utmost to prevent it. The country has already peaked demographically and might finally have the debt crisis that analysts have predicted for years. It might also withdraw its support from Russia (or Russians might get rid of Putin and withdraw from the Ukrainian quagmire altogether). Judging by the paltry results of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow in March 2023, the alliance of autocracies is not as solid as previously thought.Russia can choose to be an ally of the West or a vassal of China.China is happy to give Putin political and propaganda support while denying Moscow the military supplies it craves. It is a safe bet that Russian capabilities in East Asia, which were never sufficient to take on China, have deteriorated further. China, by contrast, is arming itself at a breakneck speed, including in the nuclear sphere, where Beijing must reach parity with Moscow and Washington to credibly deter the United States from defending Taiwan. Military capabilities built for one scenario can usually be used in others. The Chinese government has kept quiet about it, but Radio France International reported in March 2023 that China’s Ministry of Natural Resources had issued new guidelines for maps, requiring the addition of old Chinese names alongside Russian geographical names in eight places along the Russian-Chinese border, including Vladivostok, which should now be referred to as Haishenwai. As if bowing to Beijing, Moscow has said it will open the port of Vladivostok to Chinese transit trade for the first time in 163 years. Russia gained control of the bay on which it built that port and the rest of Outer Manchuria in 1860 during the Second Opium War while threatening to torch Beijing. Xi might well conclude that Chinese honor could more easily be restored—and his place in history assured—by recovering a province lost to Russia than by risking a world war over Taiwan.Great powers have made similar calculations in the past. In 1939, imperial Japan fought the Soviet Union in the battle of Khalkhin Gol at the confluence of Mongolia and Manchuria. Commanded by a then obscure general named Georgy Zhukov, Soviet forces roundly defeated the Japanese, finally agreeing to a cease-fire on September 15. Only then did the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin give the order to fulfill a pact with Nazi Germany and invade Poland. But the most significant consequence of the battle was that it convinced Japan that the Soviet Union was stronger than it seemed and that Japan had better try its luck to the east instead of to the north. The eventual result was the attack on Pearl Harbor.This time, it could be Russian weakness, not strength, that is exposed. Putin’s reckless decision to invade Ukraine has revealed Russia to be much weaker than many believed and accelerated the divergence between Moscow’s and Beijing’s trajectories as world powers. China is already taking Russia’s discounted energy and raw materials. If Russia continues to decline at the present rate, Beijing may eventually buy Moscow’s gold reserves and ultimately make claims on its land. Putin thought he would gain Kyiv but might instead lose Vladivostok. As the former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski used to say, Russia can choose to be an ally of the West or a vassal of China. Putin chose not what was good for Russia but what was good for him and would most likely preserve his dictatorial power. Many patriotic Russians, and not just those in exile, already anticipate disaster at the hands of China. A post-Putin Russia might reverse his disastrous course. But as long as he remains at the helm, Russia will remain a problem instead of part of the solution.Europe’s post–Cold War illusion of having reached the plateau of eternal peace has sadly been shattered. The continent’s strategic outlook, both in its near abroad and globally, has darkened. Its future security, power, and prosperity now depend on whether, and how quickly, it acts to address its vulnerabilities. The scale of the challenge is certainly beyond the capability of any European country acting alone. It can only be met by acting together and finally getting serious about defense. To survive and prosper in a world of battling giants, Europe must transform itself from a militarily weak confederation into a genuine superpower.RADEK SIKORSKI is a Polish Member of the European Parliament and has served as Poland’s Defense Minister, Foreign Minister, and Speaker of Parliament.
Is an EU Army Coming? Russia’s war in Ukraine is turning the European Union into a serious military player.-By Elisabeth Braw, a columnist at Foreign Policy and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.March 20, 2022, 1:38 PM
The war in Ukraine, politicians and pundits agree, is the European Union’s sudden birth as a serious military player. Germany has announced that it will dramatically increase its defense spending and is sending weapons to Ukraine—a previously unthinkable development. The European Union, heretofore mostly known as an outfit that voices concerns about military aggression but does nothing, has already sent Ukraine military aid worth more than half a billion dollars.Russia’s War in Ukraine-Understanding the conflict one year on.But what exactly the EU’s military role should be remains painfully unclear: Member states have widely different opinions on the matter, and European security is of course already being looked after by NATO. What, exactly, can the EU do to grow its military muscle without causing affront to its Brussels neighbor? Severe crises below NATO’s Article 5 threshold, in a way, pose an opportunity for the EU to make a real military contribution. Its Military Committee—composed of member states’ defense chiefs—has the daunting task of mapping a course. At the center sits its chair, Gen. Claudio Graziano.Graziano, who spent the first part of his career within Italy’s elite Alpini mountain infantry, was previously Italy’s chief of defense and chief of the army. He also served in Afghanistan as commander of the Kabul Multinational Brigade and commanded the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. He assumed his EU post in 2018 after being elected by his fellow EU defense chiefs. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.Elisabeth Braw: The EU has suddenly emerged as a serious actor in the security of Europe, and EU governments are increasing defense spending. Is the EU militarily stronger now than it was two months ago? Claudio Graziano: Absolutely yes. Russia has brought war back to Europe, which was something so serious and dangerous that it wasn’t even considered possible. Even for people who had read about the risk, it was impossible to believe it would happen. When it did happen, it was a shock of immense magnitude that provoked a huge common response from the European Union.“A defense union is really the only possible answer to this crisis.”At the Versailles meeting [on March 10-11], the heads of state and government discussed how the European Union can live up to its responsibilities in this new reality. Doing so requires a clear political will, and now the European Union is more united than ever. This gives an incredible push to building a more concrete and credible European defense union. And a defense union is really the only possible answer to this crisis.We know that’s a long path, but we know that we have to do it now because later will be too late. As part of this effort, we’ll start developing an EU Rapid Deployment Capacity that will give us the chance to deploy a modular and multidomain force of up to 5,000 troops that can intervene in nonpermissive [hostile] environments.This force will also have strategic enablers that have in the past normally been provided by the United States—for example, command and control structures, strategic airlift, strategic transport, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, cyberdefense, unmanned air vehicles, space communication assets, electronic warfare systems, anti-missile defense, and I hope in the near future main battle tanks and next-generation fighter jets.EB: But the EU already has battlegroups that have never been deployed. How can you be sure that this deployable force will be successful when the battlegroups have not?CG: The EU battlegroups are designed to be used for stabilization management [crises less severe than war], and it’s true that they’ve never been used. That’s because we never reached an agreement among the EU member states on certain issues, such as cost and who was supposed to lead the effort. The other complication was that they shouldn’t compete with NATO. In the past, I served in NATO missions for many years, including in Afghanistan, and NATO does foreign deployments well. It also has at least nine rapid reaction corps, and they’re much bigger than the EU battlegroups. Our new EU Rapid Deployment Capacity is an effort to answer a security need without competing with NATO. But to be a real answer, the Deployment Capacity must also be used in exercises. And having it on the roster will send a message of European unity to Russia and others.EB: Speaking of unity, Poland wants to give Ukraine its MiG-29 fighter jets but doesn’t want this to be just a Polish initiative. The United States said no because it didn’t want to be drawn into the war in the active way that sending aircraft from Ramstein Air Base in Germany would mean. Can the EU step in to help Ukraine now?CG: The provision of combat aircraft is currently not on the agenda. But you have to remember that on Feb. 27, only 72 hours after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU adopted an unprecedented aid package to help the Ukrainian armed forces defend Ukraine’s territory and population. This aid package included lethal weapons. That’s a milestone! It’s even more than a historical moment. Remember that in 2013 we weren’t able to provide anything to Mali. [Editor’s note: Despite having monitored the 2012 Islamist takeover of the country’s north closely, the EU failed to intervene militarily. Instead, France launched an intervention in which it was assisted by Germany, Denmark, and other EU member states.]Regarding lethal weapons, we’re sending whatever the Ukrainians need most—for example, ammunition and anti-tank weapons. This will help the Ukrainians fight for freedom, and their will to do so is the most important surprise in this war. Neither the Russians nor we probably understood how far the Ukrainians would go to defend their freedom. It’s so different from Afghanistan this past summer, when we saw the Afghan armed forces melt away.EB: What is your own role in this growing military role the EU is taking on? Does the Ukrainian government come to you directly with requests for military assistance?CG: It works a bit differently. The Ukrainians tell us what they need, the EU member states check what they have and can give to the Ukrainians, and we—through the EU military staff —function as the clearinghouse.EB: One idea that keeps being floated in every discussion about the EU and its military capabilities is the prospect of an EU Army. It’s clearly not feasible, especially considering that it has taken Germany and the Netherlands years of painstaking work to establish their joint panzer division. Short of complete military integration, what can the EU do to strengthen its military capabilities, beyond increasing defense spending, of course? As we know, countries like to spend money on weapons made by their own companies.CG: Integrating armed forces really is extremely difficult, but it’s not impossible. It starts with the political will. But what we can do first to strengthen our military capabilities is to improve interoperability. After this war, we need to conclude that life won’t be as it was before and that we’ve made a backward leap of at least 70 years.How do we improve interoperability? Consider this: The U.S. Army, and even the Russian army, uses only one type of main battle tank. We Europeans operate 17 different kinds. That creates enormous problems of maintenance and supply and of training together. Our navies and air forces have similar problems. We’re talking about a total of 180 different platforms, while the United States has 30. This really is anachronistic and unacceptable, especially considering that we collectively spend more than 250 billion euros [about $276 billion] a year on defense, which is much more than what Russia spends. Yes, we need to spend more, but we also need to spend better by avoiding such duplication.
Macron urges Europe to develop its own air defense systems and not rely on the US-By Sylvie Corbet | AP-June 19, 2023 at 10:02 p.m. EDT
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron called on European nations Monday to seek more independence on airspace defense and advocated against relying too much on the U.S., a long-divisive issue that takes on new urgency because of Russia’s war in Ukraine.Macron made his case for Europeans building their own airspace protection strategy in the closing speech of a conference in Paris gathering defense ministers and other representatives of 20 European countries.The talks included anti-drone combat and ballistic missile defense, French organizers said, noting that Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has shown the importance and effectiveness of such equipment. Nuclear weapons deterrence was also on the agenda.“We need to know what the threat situation is … And then, what are we, Europeans, able to produce? And what do we then need to buy?” Macron said.He warned against purchasing immediately “what’s on the shelves.”Among nations who took part in the meeting were Germany, the U.K. and Sweden as well as Ukraine’s neighbors Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. Representatives of NATO and the European Union also attended.Macron pushed for European defense equipment manufacturers to build independent military systems and relocate production on the continent. He also called for enhanced European standards.“Why do we still need to buy American too often? Because Americans have standardized much more than we have, and they themselves have federal agencies that provide massive subsidies to their manufacturers,” he said.The one-day meeting took place on the sidelines of the Paris Air Show, the world’s largest event focusing on aviation and space industry that opened Monday.France has been openly critical of German-led plans for improved European air defense capabilities. The so-called European Sky Shield project, launched at the end of last year, is made up of 17 European nations including the U.K. — but not France. It’s meant to be integrated within NATO air and missile defense systems.The French government believes the project doesn’t adequately preserve European sovereignty, because it’s expected to be largely based on U.S. and Israeli industry. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius attended the Paris meeting.“With the European Sky Shield Initiative, we are bringing together European states to jointly increase protection against ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at a news conference earlier Monday in Berlin with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.The German-led plan is expected to feature the Israeli Arrow 3 system and build on existing U.S. Patriot missile capabilities.Scholz made no reference to Paris’ objections to the initiative.Defense has been a recurrent bone of contention between the two countries, with France complaining that Germany wasn’t doing enough in the area for years — until the war in Ukraine led Berlin to announce a major boost to military spending.Macron said Monday that the Mamba anti-missile system developed together by France and Italy “is now deployed and operational in Ukraine, protecting key installations and lives.” The delivery of the system to Kiev was announced by Paris and Rome in February.“It really is Europe protecting Europe,” Macron said.The Mamba system is part of NATO’s integrated air and missile defense.With the help of Western weapons and growing experience, Ukraine’s air defense systems have made great strides since the war started last year, saving infrastructure and lives and preventing Russia from achieving air superiority.___Associated Press writer Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
Macron’s Army: Towards a European Defence Force? By Contributor to The London Financial February 2, 2022-European Army-By Amber Bereznyckyj, History and Creative Writing student at the New College of the Humanities
On New Year’s Eve, Emmanuel Macron commenced his six month presidency of the European Union, following from Slovenia. His general aims are to create a EU minimum wage and to increase both carbon taxes and regulations on big tech. However, in the months leading up to that, Josep Borrell, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, began to advocate the ‘need’ for an EU army in a meeting with defence ministers in Slovenia. The removal of US troops from Afghanistan meant that Borrell suggested a “rapid response force” of 5,000 soldiers in order to stabilise the situation. Additionally, with the building conflict between Ukraine and Russia; Paris and Berlin see the US, China and Russia as credible threats to the EU. Macron’s address on the French agenda for the EU stated that ‘we must move from a corporation, to a powerful Europe’. This has certainly opened up the decades old debate about whether the EU will build an army. For example, when Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac signed an agreement to build a European army in 1998, the Clinton Administration pushed back stating that NATO would become ‘a relic of the past’, increasing the chance of conflict between American and European states. It appears that the Franco-German alliance has opened up the conversation once again as many of their policies seem to be building a military force. The three main EU defence agencies are PENSCO (military equipment supplier), Frontex (border control of the Schengen area) and NATOs Framework Nations Concept. Allies to Germany have already agreed to the integration of forces. The Czech have given the Bundeswehr Forces their fourth Rapid Development Brigade who served in Afghanistan. However, the Economist’s defence editor Shashank Joshi argues that this integration is only because previous units were “lacking in key capabilities”. He also states that an EU army would ‘probably be impossible without the UK if the US is absent’. Given Macron’s concern about the US, it is safe to assume that Brussels would want to cooperate with the UK despite Brexit, particularly concerning the Ukrainian situation. Due to the popularity of an EU armed forces among the French public; Macron may possibly be using the policy as a tool for public approval heading towards the French general elections. Ergo, joint EU armed forces are still very unlikely, especially considering that twenty PESCO projects had still not received funding by July 2021 and that six out of fifteen active projects have been severely delayed by the pandemic. On the other hand, the integral changes to Frontext are pushing it further into the frames of being a neoliberal militia. Recently, it has (through its own initiative) aimed to target pre-frontier areas such as Turkey. It has also started to guard Gibraltar without Spanish police. Additionally, its spending sky-rocketed from €280 million in 2019 to €400 million in 2020. Consequently, its annual budget (2021-2027) has increased to €800 million. Remarkable, considering that Germany only spends 1.2% of GDP on EU defence despite the 2% requirement by NATO although by 2024, France is said to reach its 2% requirement and Germany will reach 1.5% respectively. The dramatic funding increase is due to Frontext being given the power to hire their own people and buy their own equipment rather than leasing them from member states.On 11th January, Frontext tweeted: ‘For the first time, the European Union has its own uniformed service,’ ultimately solidifying its position as the EU’s new first-line of defence. If strategic autonomy was to be achieved; Frontext would be the force to do so.
France and Germany Are Beefing Over Air Defense Batteries-Story by Sébastien Roblin • Fri JUN 23,23
At a conference at the Paris airshow earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that the first of France and Italy’s powerful Mamba air defense batteries are now deployed operationally in Ukrainian service, where they are “protecting key infrastructure and lives.”Like the comparable medium-range U.S. Patriot system, the Mamba (known less evocatively by the acronym SAMP/T and built by French-Italian consortium Eurosam) is effective against both aircraft and cruise and short-range ballistic missile threats. It thus constitutes an especially valuable addition to Ukraine’s battle-tested air defenses against daily Russian attacks.The French president also announced both Belgium’s status as an interested party in the French-German FCAS stealth fighter program and a half-billion-euro sale of French short-range Mistral M3 man-portable air defense missiles by Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, France and Hungary.But Macron was primarily there to launch a broadside at German plans for an integrated European missile defense system announced last October. Called the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI), it has already been allocated 5 billion in funding from Berlin and attracted 17 partner countries, including the UK, the Baltics, Finland and Sweden.It does not, however, include France and Italy, nor Poland, Germany’s bulwark against Russian attack. (Poland is pursuing bilateral projects with the UK and U.S.) Paris’s fundamental objection to Sky Shield is that France’s ostensible partner in EU leadership is choosing to source two of three kinetic components from Israel and the United States, rather than use made-in-Europe SAMP/T and Aster missiles.Germany and France have often talked about the need to keep Europe as self-sufficient as possible in terms of defense industrial capability, and Macron’s complaint arguably carries weight beyond simple commercial self-interest.A report by Berlin-based security think tank SWP says that the current plan“…does not take European security interests sufficiently into account, has failed to convince partners…” and is“…at odds with the goal of strengthening Europe’s industrial and technological defense base.”Germany reasons that it can import U.S.-built Patriot missiles and Israeli Archer III anti-ballistic missile interceptors off the shelf in comparatively short order. Meanwhile, the short-range layer of the defense system will be provided by the IRIS-T air defense system built primarily by Germany—to which Italy, Sweden and Greece also significantly contributed to development and production.Germany argues that Sky Shield is intended to be a platform-agnostic network, meaning that its choice of foreign missiles would not prevent pooling radar coverage with users of SAMP/T or other systems. Air defenses require a mix of layered short-, medium-, and high-altitude weapons, and Germany Arrows would provide top layer defensive umbrella in exchange for smaller nations chipping in lower layer defenses within their means.Nonetheless, Germany plans to spend 4 billion euros on the Israeli Arrow 3 alone—none of which will go to Europe’s defense industry. European Missile Defense: Why Now? European states have abruptly become very interested in missile defense—ever since Putin invaded Ukraine and expended most of his country’s stockpile of cruise and ballistic missiles. Occasionally, these were used on targets of military value, but they were more often used for blasting residential areas in the hearts of Ukrainian cities.While Russia’s offensive capacity is temporarily depleted, expanding missile production shows that the country believes in the coercive value of such conventional strategic strikes, hinting at how those may be employed in a battle with NATO. Admittedly, Russia may devote more of its missiles to military targets in a NATO fight, particularly hitting airbases.But, even scarier, many of the weapons used against Ukraine are dual-capable. This means that they could also deliver Russia’s large arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons.The German capital of Berlin has long been just within range of nuclear-capable Iskander ballistic missiles in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Germany has limited access to around 20 nuclear gravity bombs shared by the United States, and France controls both its own air- and submarine-launched nuclear missiles to provide deterrence against nuclear attacks. From Germany’s vantage, Sky Shield may obviously seem more urgent.Macron is arguing that European defense requires a more deliberate assessment of which kinds of air defenses are effective against a broad array of threats—including drones—and that Germany’s rapid, off-the-shelf buys create long-term dependencies on third parties that leave the country “subject to timetables, priorities and sometimes even authorizations…” outside of European control.Mamba Vs. Patriot-When it comes to Germany’s Sky Shield, France believes that its newer SAMP/T system (including the Aster missile and Arabel radar) should provide a reasonable substitute for the U.S. Patriot system—a system that has been continuously evolved over four decades of service.PAC-2 and PAC-3 Patriot missiles deployed to Ukraine rapidly achieved prominence by shooting down supposedly unstoppable Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles apparently targeted at the Patriot battery. Patriot missiles near the border were likely involved in an ambush that simultaneously downed four Russian aircraft over Russian airspace. Time will tell how SAMP/Ts transferred by the Italian Army fare in Ukrainian service.While Patriot and SAMP/T are in the same weight class, their specifics differ. For example, Patriot batteries are priced at over $1.1 billion each, while a Mamba battery supposedly costs around half of that.Bear in mind, a battery isn’t just a collection of launchers and missiles. It entails multiple mobile radars, generators and command vehicles intended to integrate together and, ideally, network with other radars and defense batteries in the region.An Aster battery typically numbers 4 to 6 truck-based launchers (each with eight missiles ready for launch), is controlled via a command truck, and is guided by a Thales Arabel 90 engagement radar on another truck with a generator. French and Italian Mambas use different 8x8 trucks by Renault and Iveco.Thanks to greater automation, a Mamba battery requires just 14 operators (supposedly, the battery in Ukraine has 20). That compares favorably to around 90 personnel in a Patriot battery, which has two types of towed launchers, electrical generator trucks, towed radar arrays, and a truck-based control station.In terms of sheer range, Patriot batteries using role-specialized missiles retain a modest edge over the Mamba. Patriot PAC-2 missiles with proximity warheads are effective against aircraft-style targets up to 100 miles away, while kinetic hit-to-kill PAC-3 and PAC-3 MSE missiles can swat tactical/short-range ballistic missiles out to between 21 and 37 miles away.By contrast, the Mamba’s Aster 30 Block 1 missiles can down planes 75 miles away if they’re flying high (or 31 miles when flying low) and missiles out to between 15 and 21 miles.However, while a Patriot battery must be oriented to defend against attacks from a specific arc (until new GhostEye MR radars enter service), the Mamba’s jam-resistant Arabel radar provides 360 degree coverage over a 37 mile radius while spinning at 60 rpm. (A queued, narrow-focus scan is required for the 75 mile maximum range.)That helps when defending a city like Kyiv, which has been assailed by Russian drones and missiles approaching from the north, east, and south.A Mamba battery can simultaneously engage 16 targets at a time, with eight missiles released in just ten seconds, compared to 8-9 engagements for a Patriot battery.An Aster 30 missile accelerates to up to 4.5 times the speed of sound in under four seconds, closing towards its target using inertial guidance and radioed-in course adjustments from the battery. Thrust-vectoring controls in its first-stage rocket and lateral thrusters in the second-stage body give the missile extreme maneuverability leveraged by a built-in radar seeker used for terminal accuracy.Of course, the ground-based Mamba has a much smaller userbase made up of just the militaries of France, Italy, and Singapore. The Patriot system, on the other hand, is used by sixteen (and counting) operators—including the German Army.That said, the Aster has an extensive presence at sea on the warships of Algeria, Egypt, Greece, Morocco, Qatar, Singapore, and the UK’s Royal Navy, as well as the French and Italian navies.Arrow 3 Vs. Aster-While Aster 30 and PAC-3 missiles can intercept short-range Iskander missiles, they’re not designed to tackle faster, higher-flying medium- to intermediate-range missiles like those that could be ground-launched from Russian soil outside Kaliningrad and still hit targets in Western Europe.The Arrow 3 system is built for this task, having been co-developed by the U.S. and Israel with an eye to intercepting ballistic missile attacks from Iran hundreds of miles away.It’s hit-to-kill interceptor missiles can attain Mach 9—twice the maximum speed of an Aster 30—and intercept targets up to 62 miles high. Each trailer-based battery relies on a huge EL/M-2080 Green Pine radar that can detect objects up to 500 miles away, which would allow systems based in Germany to defend neighboring countries.Germany is an important defense partner of Israel’s. They are the suppliers of Dolphin-class submarines used by the Israeli Navy to carry nuclear-armed cruise missiles. Thus, the relationship for a buy from Israel already exist.However, an improved Aster Block 1NT is under development to better defend against short-to-intermediate range ballistic missiles. This retains the same form factor, but benefits from a higher-resolution fire control system and new built-in Ka-band radar seeker, allowing it to intercept targets out to 373 miles away and intercept medium-range missiles with a range of 932 miles.The navies of France, Italy and the United Kingdom are all planning to deploy Block 1NTs to their destroyers, so this is not a case of a paper project. (Incidentally, French submarine thriller The Wolf’s Call on Netflix depicts sea-based nuclear missile defense.) Further down the line, the conceptual Aster Block 2 would involve a bigger missile with effectiveness against even faster intermediate-range missiles launched from over 1,800 miles away. It likely would involve the GS-1500 long-range radar and a built-in infrared seeker for terminal guidance. A French analysis estimates that developing and testing a demonstrator would require $200 million over five years, while actually deploying Block 2 might cost $2 billion.While Macron argues that “Europe should protect Europe,” France and Germany’s sparring over Sky Shield reveals their continued inability to consolidate defense procurement. France is a feisty defender of its diversified defense industry, while Germany prioritizes nearer-term domestic and security considerations over coordination with France.Unfortunately, the conflict in Ukraine has shown that having multiple systems available reduces the risks that either procurement bottlenecks or surges in demand for a particular platform could drain away availability of a vital capability when more is needed.
EL PAÍS-International-US intelligence suspected Wagner chief of planning revolt against Moscow-Washington’s greatest concern in the face of a possible rebellion led by Prigozhin centered on control of Russia’s nuclear arsenal-M. J.Washington - Jun 25, 2023 - 06:12 CDT
U.S. intelligence agencies suspected the head of the mercenary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was planning an armed rebellion against the Russian government, according to various U.S. media, which cited anonymous sources. The information was shared not only with military and government officials but also with some lawmakers, according to these sources.U.S. President Joe Biden has been closely following the rebellion since Friday. He is staying informed from Camp David, in Maryland, where he is spending the weekend, and has been in contact with U.S. allies.CNN revealed that, earlier last week, U.S. intelligence services briefed the leaders of Congress — known as the Gang of Eight — about the movements of the Wagner Group and the build-up of material near Russia. Members of U.S. and Western intelligence services saw signs that Prigozhin was preparing for a revolt, such as the stockpiling of weapons and ammunition. The information was confirmed later by other means.According to The Washington Post, the intelligence services collected information in mid-June indicating that Prigozhin was planning an armed attack against the Russian defense establishment and urgently informed the White House and other government agencies so that it would not would catch them off guard.Is this the beginning of the end? U.S. intelligence services did not have precise information about Prigozhin’s concrete plans or when a rebellion could take place. On Friday, Wagner’s forces took control of a Russian city and on Saturday, they began to move towards Moscow. However, U.S. intelligence was aware of both the discontent and instability of the mercenary group.According to The New York Times, intelligence officials informed senior military and administration officials on Wednesday that Prigozhin was preparing a military action against senior Russian defense officials.Unlike last year, when Washington chose to make public the information that the secret service had collected on Russian aggression in a bid to prevent it the invasion of Ukraine, this time they shared what had been found with a restricted circle. This decision was taken to avoid being accused of orchestrating a coup in Russia and because the government had little interest in helping Putin avoid the crisis, according to The New York Times.The newspaper reports that during the last two weeks there has been “great concern” about what could happen in Russia, and in particular about what instability could mean for the control of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.In recent months, the intelligence services have been analyzing the growing tension between the Prigozhin and the leaders of the Russian Defense Ministry, in particular Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Problems adequately supplying Russian troops added to that tension.A key trigger for the crisis was a June 10 Russian Defense Ministry order that meant all volunteer detachments would have to sign government contracts. Although the order did not mention the Wagner Group by name, it did involve the absorption and subordination of Prigozhin’s mercenary troops, which have proven essential to Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine and have helped secure some of its most notable tactical victories.After seizing official buildings in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don — which borders Ukraine and is an important logistical hub for the Kremlin’s war effort — and launching a column of armored vehicles towards Moscow, Prigozhin announced Saturday evening that he was halting the march towards the capital and that his soldiers would retreat to their camps “to avoid bloodshed.”U.S. President Joe Biden spoke Saturday with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, about the situation in Russia. The group also affirmed their “unwavering support” for Ukraine. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made similar calls to their counterparts from allied countries.In a statement, the Pentagon said that the United States will remain in close coordination with its allies and partners as the situation continues to evolve. Biden has avoided making any statement and is following events from Camp David.The national security team informed Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of the situation on Saturday before the president left the White House. The meeting was attended by the National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan; Secretary of State Antony Blinken; Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley; Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines; the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), William Burns, and the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Wagner’s military revolt: Russia lifts restrictions, while Prigozhin’s whereabouts remain unknown-Life in Moscow and the southwest border with Ukraine has returned to normal after the mercenaries stopped their march towards the Russian capital, but the security crisis has called into question Putin’s strongman image-María R. SahuquilloLuis de VegaJavier G. Cuesta-Brussels / Kyiv - Jun 25, 2023 - 08:56 CDT
On Sunday morning, when the sun was already timidly warm in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, the streets were almost empty of tanks and uniformed men. Wagner’s masked mercenaries, who seized control of the city’s official buildings on Saturday, left overnight, some to applause from the public. The mercenary group’s leader, businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led the rebellion against the military leadership that put the Russian security apparatus in check, also left Rostov-on-Don to cheers, as though he were a celebrity. Meanwhile, the military column that Prigozhin sent to advance towards the capital, Moscow, turned back to avoid what he called “Russian bloodshed.”The revolt was the biggest challenge to the Kremlin in decades. Prigozhin has left Rostov-on-Don, supposedly to travel to Belarus, according to an agreement to put an end to the attempted military coup, which was made with the Kremlin and mediated by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko. But while he may have left the city, it is clear that he has left a very different Russia in his wake. The rebellion of the foul-mouthed Prigozhin, whose whereabouts are currently unknown, who had always remained loyal to Putin and Putin alone, has seriously called into question the Russian president’s strongman image. What’s more, it has revealed the cracks in a state devoured by infighting, exhausted by the war in Ukraine, angry with the elites, beset by inflation, with the economy nearly paralyzed by Western sanctions and the exodus of foreign capital. The immediate consequences, a Western intelligence source warns, is a renewed campaign of massive attacks on Ukraine in a bid to show force.Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov confirmed the deal with Prigozhin. “There was a higher goal — to avoid bloodshed, to avoid an internal confrontation, to avoid clashes with unpredictable consequences,” Peskov said Saturday evening. “President Putin made the appropriate decision.”Consequences-The Kremlin has promised to drop the criminal charges against Prigozhin for rebellion — punishable by between 12 and 20 years in prison — and has offered him unspecified “security guarantees” through the Belarusian president. “The guarantee that Prigozhin will be able to leave for Belarus is the word of the Russian president,” Peskov said. Meanwhile, Prigozhin, whose rebellion was hindered by the lack of support from Russia’s elites, said Saturday night that his “march for justice” against Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had achieved its objective. Shoigu and Prigozhin have maintained a fierce rivalry for years. Recently, Shoigu issued an order that would require all military contractors, including Wagner mercenaries, to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Military before July 1. Nothing has surfaced about a possible change in the leadership or the operation of Defense. Any reorganization, Peskov stressed, is “the sole prerogative and within the competence of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief [Putin] in accordance with the constitution.”The Kremlin promised that the Wagner mercenaries who participated in the uprising would also face no consequences due to their “merits at the front.” Those who did not join the riot will be able to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry, according to Peskov. For now, the Wagner revolt and Prigozhin agreement means that the Wagner Group will be dismantled and integrated into the Russian army, just as Shoigu has wanted to do for a long time.But several analysts point out that what happens to the mercenary group — which has a presence as the unofficial armed wing of the Kremlin in Syria, the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali — may have global repercussions. Western intelligence sources point out that it is not clear if the mandate for military contractors to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry also includes mercenaries abroad. And this could be a point of the agreement with Prigozhin, who, according to U.S. intelligence sources, quoted by various media, had been preparing to take some kind of military action since Wednesday, and brought the move forward on Friday afternoon.Streets return to normal-Russian cities and regions have begun Sunday to lift the restrictions imposed on Saturday following the Wagner revolt. And while Moscow remains under the “anti-terrorist operation” regime and will keep Monday as a non-working day, state television channels are broadcasting their usual programs. But behind that appearance of relative normality, there is a feeling that the impunity with which Prigozhin’s defiance has been met may impact the Putin regime. What’s more, it may affect how the Russian president is seen abroad, not only in the West but from allies such as China and India.The agreement with Prigozhin “is a short-term fix, not a long-term solution,” stated the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, which highlights that the Kremlin now faces a “deeply unstable equilibrium.” “Prigozhin’s rebellion exposed severe weaknesses in the Kremlin and Russian Ministry of Defense,” the ISW added in its daily report.Prigozhin’s rebellion and Lukashenko’s mediation to stop the military advance — which may have been a blow for Putin and ensured certain benefits for the Belarusian president — has called into question Putin’s image as the “guarantor of the stability of Russia.” But it does not leave Prigozhin in a good position either. Although he has won the support of an important part of the population with his criticism of the corruption in the army and bureaucracy, it will now be difficult for him to lead the Wagner Group, which has been instrumental in the offensive against Ukraine.Russia, through various sources, has been quick to emphasize that Wagner’s armed rebellion has not affected the Kremlin’s forces in Ukraine. The rebellion, however, has highlighted Russia’s lack of reserves in the rearguard and the fact that Russia depends on inexperienced recruits to defend the country’s borders — a point that was made clear when the soldiers quickly surrendered to Wagner Group’s forces, which were able to advance without opposition.Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Saturday that he believes that the crisis would lead to the end of the current power structure in Russia. He argued that even though the armed revolt fizzled out, it will have serious consequences, including the “destruction” of Prigozhin. “That order will be executed for sure,” Podolyak said on social media.
Spain Plays Key Role for West in Relations with China-June 02, 2023 12:26 PM-Graham Keeley
Madrid — Spain will be looking to leverage its 50-year-old relationship with China to bring a peaceful resolution to Russia’s war on Ukraine when it assumes the rotating presidency of the European Union next month.The presidency will give Madrid a prominent role representing the West in efforts to put an end to the conflict on terms that do not reward Russia’s aggression.In the run-up to taking the baton to represent the EU, Spain is throwing its weight behind Kyiv’s appeal for admission to the NATO alliance.Ukraine must be given a strong message of support regarding its NATO membership bid, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said Thursday at a meeting of the military alliance in Norway, Reuters reported.During a meeting in Beijing in March, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss his nation’s peace plans with Kyiv directly.The Spanish premier was also keen to let the Chinese communist leader know that he believes no peace agreement should be imposed on Ukraine without its consent.Analysts said the Beijing summit, timed to celebrate a half-century of diplomatic ties between the two countries, took on added significance because of Madrid’s looming position representing the broader Europe Union.Observers said Spain will play a key role in the months ahead seeking to forge a united European approach to the war and how best to defend Ukraine.Mario Esteban, senior investigator on Asia and the Pacific at the Real Elcano Institute, a think-tank in Madrid, said apart from its involvement in any peace talks over Ukraine, Spain will also have to build consensus within Europe over how to deal with China, which is an official ally of Russia.“Spain is less hard-line towards Russia. It is not like Poland or other countries. Therefore, there is not the same level of political tension between Spain and China over Ukraine,” he told VOA.“It is also less economically dependent on China [than] Germany or France, therefore it is freer to negotiate. This gives Spain more ability to build diplomatic consensus within the European Union towards China on questions like the war in Ukraine.”Esteban, who has spent five years of his career in China, said relations between Beijing and Madrid are “good” despite the ambitions of the current Spanish government to attain economic independence from China in sectors like pharmaceuticals.The leadership of both countries are hardly strangers.Esteban said Sánchez met Xi at a G-20 conference in Bali in November and Albares spoke to his Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang, in New Delhi in March.The two countries’ relationship has gone through a cooling off in recent years, said Esteban.Spanish exports to China almost doubled to reach $6.6 billion between 2011 and 2018 when Xi visited Madrid.However, for Spain, Chinese investment is not as attractive as it was in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, said Esteban in a recent analysis of their diplomatic and economic ties.Beijing has found other European countries, like Greece and Hungary, which are closer to the Chinese position on disputes over the South China Sea and human rights in China.Sánchez refused to sign a memorandum of understanding on Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative during Xi’s 2018 visit to Spain.Esteban believes this started a more “nuanced and selective” approach by Spain to ties with China.“All this has ushered in an era in which Spanish-Chinese relations will be increasingly influenced by geopolitical considerations and third parties, primarily the EU and the U.S.,” he wrote.Ruth Ferrero -Turrion, an expert in European relations at Complutense University in Madrid, said China is trying to act as a global mediator in the Russian war on Ukraine.“Spain will not make substantive changes (to its foreign policy regarding China). Traditionally, it has followed the majority view of the European Union,” she told VOA.
The Europe that has been created by another war: a 1,700-mile-long journey through a rattled continent-From Ukraine to Ireland, EL PAÍS takes a look at the future of a region that has been shaken by conflict. “We will never be what we once were,” says Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament-Marc BassetsSamuel Sánchez-Jun 25, 2023 - 17:32 CDT
There is no escape. No matter how far we venture from the front — and until the last day of the journey from east to west across the continent — the war doesn’t stop sending signals. It refuses to let go — it wants to destroy the illusion of a Europe in eternal peace, a Europe in which words such as “trenches” or “nuclear bombs” are relegated to the history books. Now, it’s as if we’re beginning to look at a different future: that of a permanent post-war era.We traveled from war-torn Ukraine to the western tip of Ireland. When we reached our goal, one day in the middle of April, we had breakfast while reading a five-column headline on the front page of The Irish Times: “Achill Island man killed battling Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. Finbar Cafferkey was a military volunteer with previous combat experience in Syria.”The echoes of the fighting have reached the cliffs of Achill Island, which was home to Cafferkey. There are more sheep than humans on this island, which lies off the west coast of Ireland, on the Atlantic. In the last village before the final mile of road, Gielty’s Bar and Restaurant bills itself as “the most westerly pub in Europe.” The yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flag flies in the parking lot. The frontline is 2,500 miles away.War breaks out one day and nothing is ever the same. The Russian invasion of Ukraine — which began on February 24, 2022 — is shaping a new continent, with new landscapes. This journey begins in Eastern Europe — where air raid sirens go off several times a day — and it ends on Achill Island. EL PAÍS covered six countries and 1,700 miles from one end of the continent to the other, in search of the Europe that will emerge from this war.“Everything has changed. Completely.”The speaker is a local Polish politician, a 46-year-old man who unexpectedly found himself in charge of Rzeszów’s city hall two years ago — the last city before Poland’s border with Ukraine. The previous mayor left office for health reasons and elections were called. He — Konrad Fijołek — won the vote. In his office in the neo-Renaissance building that is the municipal hall, he explains that, back then, neither he nor the city were prepared for what was to come. His expectation of elected office was modest: oversee the administration of the municipality, which doesn’t even have 200,000 inhabitants. But after Russian President Vladimir Putin attacked the neighboring country, he — without meaning to — transformed Rzeszów. Following the invasion, the city welcomed 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. At the small airport — which is protected by American missiles — Western weapons are arriving, before heading to Ukraine by road.Rzeszów is a city that’s booming. The hotels are full and there are no apartments left to rent. Steakhouses and barbecue restaurants dominate the historic center. Mayor Fijołek hasn’t stopped working since the invasion, holding daily meetings with foreign politicians, diplomats and journalists. “We’re at the center of a new historical cycle,” he notes.“A little like 1989”The same thing that has happened to Rzeszów and its mayor has happened to Europe and Europeans. Roberta Metsola — a 44-year-old citizen of Malta, who is married to a Finn — is the president of the European Parliament. At a stop in Brussels on this transcontinental trip, she clearly states: “We will never be the same again. We will never be what we were before February 24, 2022.” As Dutch essayist Luuk van Middelaar points out, 2022 was “a little 1989… it belongs to these great events that alter the balance within the continent.”In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and, with it, the pro-Soviet dictatorships in Central and Eastern Europe. Liberal democracy had triumphed; Europe was reunified. In 2022, the situation is quite different. In a world that has seen the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan — along with the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic — the nuclear power that lost the Cold War has invaded Ukraine. War returns to Europe, as does the authoritarian threat.“History goes round and round. The place you’re heading to is very strong. It reminds us that conflicts start in small towns and spread across borders, and that we must always be vigilant. Let’s not forget history.”On the phone from London, Philippe Sands — a lawyer and writer — offers this bit of advice before we arrive in a place that he knows well: Zhovkva. His maternal grandfather’s family — who were exterminated in the Holocaust — came from this village in western Ukraine. Hersch Lauterpacht was also born there, in 1897 — he’s the jurist to whom we owe the concept of crimes against humanity. Lauterpacht is also one of the protagonists of Sands’ book, East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (2016). In Zhokvka — which has been, at varying points in history, Austro-Hungarian, Ukrainian, Polish, German and Soviet, bearing the names “Zółkiew” and “Nestorov” — the journey begins.Preliminary note. Between February and April 2023, the photographer and editor of this piece crossed Europe by plane, car, ferry and train. They didn’t travel the route between Ukraine and Ireland in a single stretch: at the end of each stage, they returned to their home bases for a few days — the first to Madrid, the second to Paris. Then, they went back out on the road. Dozens of meetings and conversations, thousands of photographs and six full notebooks offer up the conclusion that no one really knows what will be the outcome of this war… but the trip has allowed for EL PAÍS to get a sense of the landscapes following the invasion.“What do we have in Ukraine?” the teacher asks.“War!” the students respond.“Who are we fighting against?”“Against Russia!”“Who will win?”“Ukraine!”It’s a sunny February morning in this part of western Ukraine. A few minutes ago, a hundred students in Zhovkva — between the ages of 10 and 12 — saluted the flag in the school’s courtyard, as they do every Monday. Now, they sit in the classroom, listening to the visiting journalists. They raise their hands to explain that an uncle, a father, a cousin is at the front, hundreds of miles from here. The war is both far and close.Serhii and Iryna Dobrohodkiy have a hole in the floor of their living room. It leads to an underground hideout, which was used by Jewish children during the Holocaust.The hideout under the Dobrohodkiy house, used during the Holocaust.The forest surrounding Zhovkva, where the Nazis rounded up and shot more than 3,000 Jews in March of 1943.A moment of everyday life, eastern Ukraine."They are our heroes"A walk through Zhovkva reveals a town that bears many scars from the 20th century (and some from the 21st). In front of a 16th-century castle in the main square, three soldiers walk.In a corner of the cemetery, blue-and-yellow national flags fly over the graves of the fallen. A tombstone reads: “Sluka, Petro Bohadonovych, 09.10.1981-04.02.2022.” Another: “Stanko, Andryi, 02.20.1988-04.03.2022.” They died in the first weeks of the war, within a day of each other. The woman who stands in front of the graves knew them both — they were the children of her friends: “They are our heroes.” When the air raid sirens go off, no one flinches.On the facade of the town hall are the flags of Ukraine and Europe. There’s also a portrait of the revered Stepan Bandera — an ultranationalist leader in the 1930s and 1940s who was initially associated with the Nazis, although they eventually put him in a concentration camp.In the local history museum, there’s a photo that shows the entrance of the town in the 1940s, during the German occupation. A banner reads: “Heil Hitler.” It’s an uncomfortable truth in this part of Europe, where the victims of invasion were, in many cases, accomplices of the executioners.Few Zhovkva residents visit 53 Lviv Street. This is natural: nothing attracts attention when crossing the threshold of the house, not even in the room where the Dobrohodskiys sit. Serhii, 67, is a retired policeman. Iryna, 64 — the woman from the cemetery — used to work as an economist with the local government administration. They’ve lived in their house for 30 years… 30 years living on top of a dark void. The void is real; it’s underground, right beneath their feet. It’s also metaphorical, representing the cloudy past that nobody likes to look at.“Can we see it?”“Sure.”Serhii and Iryna push a table away, pull back the rug. They raise the hatch, hidden in the parquet floor. Downstairs is a dark and dusty room. You need a flashlight to see anything. And you have to bend down to walk — the ceiling is no more than five feet high.Here, under the living room of this house — which once belonged to the Becks, a German-Polish family — 18 Jews from Zhovkva hid between 1942 and 1944. Clara Kramer — one of the girls who lived in the shelter — would recount this experience years later, in a book. She also returned to visit the house that she had hidden under.“It’s important to know what happened here for two reasons,” says Iryna. “First, to show how terrible war is. And second, to point out that, even in dire circumstances, we can help each other. If the Nazis had known that there was a Polish family hiding Jews, they would have killed them.”Iryna and Serhii say that, in Zhovkva, people know the story… but they’re not interested. Visitors who are interested in the space beneath their house tend to be foreigners, who visit from around the world.Note number 1. The past never ends in Europe — in reality, it’s always present. Memory — as the French Protestant philosopher Paul Ricoeur would say — is the delicate balance between the excesses of forgetting and the abuses of memory. This is the raw material that makes up European identity.Clara Kramer and the 17 other people holed up in the Beck house escaped the worst. They were the exception in Zhovkva. On March 25, 1943, the Nazis rounded up more than 3,000 Jews, took them to a forest a mile away from the town center and shot them. Of Zhovkva’s Jews — who made up nearly half of the town’s original population — only 74 survived.It’s not easy to find the memorial in the forest. The sky has clouded over: it’s raining. This is a huge cemetery with no graves. The heart of what historian Timothy Snyder called the “bloodlands” — the piece of Europe where, between 1933 and 1945, Hitler and Stalin murdered 14 million people: Jews, Ukrainians, Poles, Soviets.The past is both near and far.-Military paradox-Paradox: after crossing the border into Poland, the war in Ukraine seems closer than in Ukraine itself. In Zhovkva and neighboring Lviv — the largest city in western Ukraine — the echo of artillery and missiles is remote. The Polish city of Rzeszów, on the other hand, is a militarized city — and an Americanized one.Planes take off and land every day from the airport — soldiers come and go between announcements of flights to Warsaw or Manchester. Academic debates about the future of NATO and whether Europe should spend more on weapons were settled in one fell swoop in the winter of 2022, when Putin invaded Ukraine. Poland felt like it could be next. Today, Rzeszów is the military capital of the EU. And Poland — a Eurosceptic and nationalistic country — is the center of gravity in a continent that, in the coming years, could welcome a dozen more members from its eastern flank.Note number 2. The landscape of Europe’s future will surely look more like the monotonous plain between the Oder and Dnipro rivers, rather than vineyards on the banks of the Rhine, a steel plant on the Moselle, a Haussmannian avenue in Paris, or a port in the Mediterranean. The Europe that will emerge from this war is less Franco-German and more Eastern. More militarized and attached to the protective umbrella of Washington. But for how long? There is no guarantee that, after the 2024 presidential election, the next American president will continue to be interested in Europe. And which Europe are we talking about? Membership in the European Union is constantly changing. An EU that includes Ukraine — and, along with it, possibly a dozen new countries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe — wouldn’t only change Europe’s geography and institutions, but also its identity. And its relationship with the world: with the United States, which is moving away; with Russia, which will not budge.“Ukraine is fighting for our freedom,” says Mayor Fijołek, who is fervently pro-European and an opponent of the nationalist government in Warsaw. “We don’t want to have Russian soldiers along our border.” When asked if he’s fearful, he replies: “Yes, but only a little. We know that we’re supported by NATO and all of Europe.” And the USA? “A guarantee of security,” he affirms.Achill Island’s beach, in County Mayo, Ireland. This is the end point of the trip that EL PAÍS correspondents Marc Bassets and Samuel Sánchez made through Europe. They journeyed through six countries – 1,700 miles in total – searching for the Europe that will emerge after the war in Ukraine.Kantians, not Hobbesians.The Russian invasion of Ukraine — like the pandemic three years ago — turned everything upside down. Before, the world discovered its fragility in the face of an invisible virus. Now, Europe discovers that the Pax Europea — the extended period of relative peace that followed World War II — was a chimera. Nobody is safe.“It’s the rediscovery of war, conflict and suffering on a large scale,” explains Arancha González Laya — dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po and Spain’s former foreign minister — in Paris. “We already had it to a large extent during the breakup of Yugoslavia. But now, we’re not talking about a disintegration, but about the invasion of one country by another, about a return to wars such as the First or Second World War… this is a shock for European citizens.”There’s an idea circulating — that Europe was Kantian and must become Hobbesian. The continent believed that respect for institutions and the law could guarantee perpetual peace — advocated for by Immanuel Kant — and that war as a hypothesis could be ruled out. But now, Europe realizes that the world is dangerous and that what really counts is the language of force.“We haven’t become Hobbesians, but responsible Kantians,”González Laya points out. “We continue to prefer peace and a system that aims to maintain peace, security, stability. But today, we know that, in order to achieve that Kantian ideal, we need to invest in the defense of European interests with more muscle than before.” The former minister adds that she doesn’t “believe this [narrative] that says that we all now have to become neoconservatives in order to defend European interests. It’s not the model of a military power seeking to project its military power on the rest of the world because it wants to be a hegemonic power. That’s not our project.””Erik von Malottki, 36, a member of the German Bundestag for the Social Democratic Party: “Lubmin is in the spotlight right now, and not for good reasons."Footbridge on Lubmin beach, not far from the facilities of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline – opened in 2011 – and Nord Stream 2, which has never been operational. In September, an attack destroyed the pipeline’s infrastructure under the Baltic Sea."He's an actor"There is no more Kantian country in Europe than Germany — and perhaps there is no region more hostile to this war than the territories of the extinct German Democratic Republic. We found this sentiment in the northeastern corner of Germany, next to the border with Poland:“The one who is provoking the war is Zelensky.”“I don’t trust him.”“He’s an actor.”“Sometimes, I think that he works with Putin, hand-in-hand.”Two women are having a chat at a table at Zum Anker, a tiny fish restaurant on the beach in Lubmin, Germany. From here, you can see the clear sea and sky after the morning storm. The white cliffs of the island of Rügen line the horizon. It’s a slow post-meal conversation on a March day.Lubmin, with 2,000 inhabitants, looks like one of the many towns on the German Baltic coast, with its wooden houses and family hotels, where nothing ever happens. But that impression is wrong. For a year now, everything has gone through Lubmin. The explanation can be found at the end of the deserted beach, a couple of miles on foot along the promenade, beyond the marina and the forest.Crossing the forest is like entering another world. There’s suddenly an industrial area; in the distance, there’s the old nuclear plant, which shuttered after the Iron Curtain fell. Neptune is docked in the port — at 928-feet-long, the ship processes liquid gas that arrives via sea from other parts of the planet. Beyond it are the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline facilities — inaugurated in 2011 — and Nord Stream 2, which has never come into operation. In September of 2022, an attack destroyed the project’s infrastructure under the Baltic Sea. While several theories have circulated about the authorship of the blast, none are conclusive.Submarine gas pipelines from Russia were meant to ensure Germany’s energy supply. The gas landed in Lubmin, passed through these facilities and, from there, left for the rest of Germany. Not anymore.“Lubmin is in the spotlight now, and it’s not for good reasons,” says Erik von Malottki. Originally from this part of Germany, the 36-year-old entered adulthood after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A Social Democrat, he’s a member of the German Bundestag (the federal parliament) and a historian by profession. For as long as he can remember, Lubmin had specialized in power production: first with atomic energy, then with natural gas.In the post-Soviet years, Russia offered cheaper gas than other suppliers. Germany — under the leadership of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (1998-2005) and his successor, Chancellor Angela Merkel (2005-2021) — believed that closer trade ties with Russia could strengthen political ties, while bringing Russia closer to Europe would ensure peace on the continent. In the end, the opposite happened. The millions and millions of euros that Germany sent to Moscow for gas on a daily basis served to feed the Russian state and its war machine. Was Lubmin — the picturesque Lubmin, with its beach bars, little hotels and pensioners — Putin’s secret weapon?“Everybody says that this made the war easier, although I’m not sure that’s the case,” cautions Von Malottki. Although, he admits, “it didn’t stop it, either.” The member of parliament says that, in the region, there’s a feeling that residents have been made into scapegoats — as if they were the ones who threw themselves into Putin’s arms, rather than the majority of Germany’s political class.Ben Fredrich — a journalist from Lubmin and founder of the daily newspaper Katapult — explains: “Here, they’re pro-Russian for historical reasons; they have the idea that the German Democratic Republic [or East Germany] wasn’t so bad. The same goes for my family — if you criticize Russia, it’s like criticizing their children.” For this reason Fredrich no longer speaks with several of his relatives. He explains that many local politicians affiliated with the Social Democratic Party cancelled their subscriptions to Katapult after the daily published an article accusing the regional president — Manuela Schwesig — of having “co-financed” the Russian massacre in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv.Germany, after the invasion, changed directions: the government announced an increase in military spending, delivered weapons to Ukraine, sanctioned Russia with its European partners and freed itself from energy dependency on Putin. The country has embarked on something very German: a self-examination of its mistakes and sins.Note number 3. Ukraine is transforming Germany: its relationship with Russia, its sources of energy, its economy and its attitude towards war. And, inevitably, the changes in Germany — the richest and most-populous country in the European Union — transform the club, which, over the last 15 years, has overcome a financial crisis, the migrant crisis in 2015, the departure of the United Kingdom and a pandemic. Now, the EU is contending with the invasion of Ukraine and the arrival of millions of refugees from this country.In the Zum Anker café, the two women continue their discussion:“If Putin shoots a couple of rockets at us, we’ll have war here.”“I don’t agree with giving arms to Ukraine. In other countries, they protest over little things. Not in Germany.”It’s possible that the ladies in Lubmin were thinking of France. Throughout the winter and into the spring, protests against pension reform and violent incidents made headlines in the European media. In France — the other European powerhouse, along with Germany — the government, the opposition and society are busy with something other than Ukraine.The barricades and piles of burning rubbish, the hundreds of thousands of workers and young people who took to the streets… none of this was to protest Putin, nor was it to defend him (although inflation has contributed to the general malaise, with war having exacerbated prices). In France, at least, Putin and Zelensky have totally disappeared from the equation. The target of the protests was someone else: President Emmanuel Macron. The left and the extreme-right took to the streets of Paris to challenge him. There has been anger about the future of the country’s social model and the impoverishment of the middle class, along with anguish over inflation and despair about a future with no prospects. But this is another story.“It’s not my war”The journey continues. The MS Scania ferry — which left the Polish port of Świnoujście more than two hours ago — is sailing across the Baltic Sea towards the Swedish city of Ystad. Three men sit at the slot machines in the ship’s casino; others drink beer in the bar in front of the TV, which is showing a ski competition. These men aren’t tourists — they’re Polish bricklayers working in construction in Sweden. One man is accompanying his father to close a bank account, after years of working in Sweden. There’s also a trucker headed to Stockholm. When asked about Ukraine, he shrugs. “It’s not my war.”It’s pitch-black outside — the cabin is dark. In a few minutes, the ferry will pass over the destroyed, inoperative gas pipeline — the front of the invisible war. At dawn, the ferry docks in Ystad. Next destination: Sjöbo, in the Swedish province of Scania, in the south of the country.“People are afraid”The idea of visiting this town of 20,000 inhabitants in the middle of the Swedish countryside comes from a fictional character: Inspector Kurt Wallander. In Faceless Killers (1991) — the crime novel by Swedish writer Henning Mankell — Wallander says: “Insecurity is only increasing in this country. People are afraid. Especially in the countryside, like this region. It won’t take you long to realize that there’s a great hero around right now. A man who is applauded in secret, behind the curtains. The one who has taken the initiative of a municipal referendum to prohibit refugees from coming to settle in the town of Sjöbo.” Wallander was talking about Sven-Olle Olsson — a man who, years after his death, is still a subject of discussion.Sven-Olle Olsson was a farmer and municipal politician. He pushed for a referendum against refugees and won it with 64% of the vote. In that time and place — Sjöbo, 1988 — you could pinpoint the origin of the movement that has ended up becoming the second-largest electoral force in the whole country. This movement has broken the image of Sweden as a model of tolerance and equality.Mankell already saw this phenomenon in his novels more than 30 years ago. And Nixi Orvoën — an artist, designer and seamstress — has also seen it in her years living in Sjöbo. Originally from Brittany, she came to Sweden at the age of 20, out of love for the country’s cinema. She met a Guinean musician, who had been a member of a band called Kebeckeise. They had a daughter together. After they separated, she and her daughter went to live near Sjöbo, in a wooded area.“It’s magical,” she says, at the end of a morning walk, as she opens the door to her studio. It’s in a wing of a Rococo church, high up on a hill. There, she designs the clothes that she sells in shops and online — she also knits.Orvoën tells EL PAÍS about something that happened to her granddaughter in the nursery: upon seeing that her skin was darker than theirs, the other children told her that she was dirty. She also recalls that, when she had a shop in the center of Sjöbo a few years ago, there were customers who told her that they had voted for the extreme right. They offered the following reasoning: “I live here, I do as my neighbor does.”The radical new right“The results in Sjöbo are, at the next election, the results in Scania and, after that, [the results] in Sweden. Here, we’re looking ahead, we’re doing it first.”André Af Geijerstam feels the winds of history in his favor. The 37-year-old councillor is a land developer by profession. He smilingly says that he got into politics because he was “cheated.” In Sjöbo, he’s the leader of the local branch of the far-right Sweden Democrats.In the last general election, in September 2022, the Sweden Democrats obtained 20.5% of the vote across Sweden. But in Sjöbo, they got more than 40%.Sweden is no longer the Sweden that the rest of the world thought it knew. After the invasion of Ukraine, it abandoned its neutrality. It has also become the testing ground for the new radical right. In the 1990s and 2000s, the Sweden Democrats welcomed neo-Nazis into its ranks. The party’s roots are deep in the extreme right.“That was 30 years ago!” Geijerstam defends himself. He adds: “There were Nazis among us, but we kicked them out. We’ve grown up a lot since that time… we were the only ones questioning immigration, so people who shouldn’t have [joined the party] joined up.”The success of the Sweden Democrats has nothing to do with Ukraine — it precedes the invasion. According to Geijerstam, the party’s growth can be attributed to the fact that they spoke up about what others didn’t dare mention: insecurity and immigration.The municipal councillor is clear about what to do regarding immigration: “Stop!” And what about refugees fleeing wars or political persecution? “You have to give them help in areas close to their countries,” he replies. “Ukrainians, of course, we have to help them: they’re close to our area.”The surprising thing is that in thier fiefdom of Sjöbo the Sweden Democrats aren’t in charge: Geijerstam is in the opposition. In Stockholm, they participate in a coalition with the conservatives, liberals and Christian Democrats… although they have no ministers.“In Sjöbo, they’re afraid of what I might find if I open all the cupboards and see what they’ve done, what they’ve spent the money on,” Geijerstam claims. It doesn’t seem to matter that there are few immigrants in Sjöbo and that calm reigns in the streets, without a trace of the insecurity that the extreme right warns about. But there is fear, as Inspector Wallander once said… and the habit of voting for the home party, as Nixi Orvoën reminds us.Note number 4. The certainties of the past have ceased to apply. Sweden wants to join NATO, the workers have defected en masse from the Social Democrats and, in the Scandinavian oasis of peace, consensus and moderation — perhaps the highest representation of “European values,” as has sometimes been said with smug self-satisfaction — the radical right is close to taking power. What it means to be European has been redefined: nationalist conservatism and euroscepticism aren’t foreign bodies to the continent… they are part of its identity.The Social Democrats have forgotten the working class. They talk about feminism, about environmental culture, about woke culture,” sums up the leader of the Sweden Democrats in Sjöbo, using the American term that accuses the new left of being focused on identity issues “That’s why we grow so much.”“We have no other choice”In Brussels, it’s an atypical sunny April day, at ten o’clock in the morning. At the European Parliament, on the ninth floor, Roberta Metsola — president of the institution since January of 2022 — admits: “For a long time, our mistake was to ignore populist rhetoric. The result was that [populism] grew. [2024 will be] my fifth European election. I’ve never believed that they should be ignored — [they should be] fought from the center.” Metsola — who belongs to the Christian Democrats — includes social democrats, liberals and environmentalists in this political center.“The main task I have set is for people to continue to believe in politics. Politics can be a force for good. A reason to vote should still be found. If this doesn’t happen, then extremist and bigoted rhetoric takes over, and it’s scary. Anti-semitism is on the rise. Disinformation wins. This is what worries me.”In 1989, Metsola was 10-years-old. She remembers the execution of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu on Christmas day. “1989 symbolized freedom, while this war [on Ukraine] is an invasion, an imperialist aggression.” The united European response to the war demonstrates, first, that “the EU or Europe is not only an economic bloc, but also one of security, with shared political values.”February 24, 2022 is a date that — due to its consequences and symbolism — is comparable to 1989, or 9/11. “On this day, we realized that being part of the EU — not living under an autocracy, having territorial integrity — is something we cannot take for granted,” she affirms. “That’s why so many countries look to Europe as the only hope — we cannot look the other way.”Metsola continues: “We have to make sure that we continue to help Ukraine. We’re entering a very difficult phase. Before, it was in the news every day. Not now. The other option would be to stop, because it’s gone on for too long, because defense budgets are already high, because people are nervous about the economic situation, even though the doomsday scenario hasn’t materialized… but we have no choice but to continue.”In County Mayo, Ireland, sheep graze next to the beach. But even in this idyllic corner of Europe, far from the frontlines, the war in Ukraine has had an impact.European flags in Ukraine; Ukrainian flags on Achill Island. There are few places in Europe as far removed from Ukraine as this beach on the western tip of Ireland. Beyond is the ocean — much later, America. It’s the end of the road after the journey through Europe. Some French tourists pass by, along with some North Americans. There’s no noise: just the waves and the cry of the sheep. For some time now, the Irish Ministry of Defense has regularly sighted Russian warships off these coasts. As the Ukrainian poet Victoria Melkovska said the day before in Dublin, “You can never leave the war behind, no matter how much you want to.”Melkovska remembers what her neighbor told her one day. This woman was walking through the aisles of a supermarket. Nearby, another woman received a phone call. She picked it up and collapsed between sobs — they had told her that her son had died in the Ukraine. That woman — one of the more than 70,000 refugees that Ireland has welcomed this year — was pursued by war from one end of Europe to the other. Just like the family that stayed at Melkovska’s house in the first months of the war: a woman with two children who, in the first few days, never forgot to untie the laces before taking off their shoes — they left them ready to be put on quickly and they slept fully-dressed. They had gotten used to being vigilant in case the sirens went off.The poet Melkovska arrived in Ireland 20 years ago. After a career as a radio journalist in the Ukraine, she wanted a change of scenery. She married an Irishman, raised a family. She has just published a collection of poems titled For the Birds. “In poetry,” she says, “you cannot hide.” The book begins with a poem in which family wounds are mixed with collective ones. It is titled Family Policy:My father is like Russia: he hits first.Hits hard. Hits where it hurts. Hits whoare incapable of answering with word or sword.Strikes those who capitulate with pain,in the midst of a pandemic, a heart attack, cancer.Another poem includes a tribute to the Irish:To put it simply:if you accidentally step on someone-you hear a humble: “I’m sorry.”A stranger will say “hello” to you for no reason.And thank the bus driver (I wonder why).On Grafton — Dublin’s busiest street — a boy strums a guitar and sings a patriotic song. A couple stops to listen to him, smiling. Their names are Dymtro and Helen — they are 24 and 27-years-old, from Crimea, the peninsula that was annexed by Russia in 2014. They arrived three days ago, after a months-long journey that took them through Saint Petersburg and Turkey. They hug, they hum along.A man dressed as a soldier approaches: Eugene Peschansky, 24, from Kramatorsk. He has several wounds on his body: a bullet, a paralyzed hand. He is undergoing rehabilitation in a Dublin hospital. He explains the harmony between the two countries in this way: “In Ukraine, we have similar problems to those in Ireland. Northern Ireland belongs to the United Kingdom. It’s similar to Crimea.”Ireland is a country of emigrants turned into a country of immigrants; a country that, in a few decades, jumped from underdevelopment to an economic miracle, from Catholicism to being a hallmark of Europe. It has devoted itself to the cause of Ukraine. “The Irish went through a lot of hardship, they went hungry,” explains Melkovska. “So, when they see people in need, they help them.”At the other end of the island — about 150 miles from Dublin — Lily, Valentina, Anna, Sasha, a dog and others get in a car. They’re going on a field trip for a few days around Ireland, to show five Ukrainian children the sights. Lily Luzan was born in Belarus — near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant — and has lived in Ireland for years. She founded the Candle of Grace association, whose main activity is hosting groups of Chernobyl children from Belarus in the summer for rehabilitation rest. She has organized some aid shipments to Ukraine and the arrival of refugees in County Mayo. She helps them find accommodation and work, while locating a doctor for the elderly whenever they get sick.“I tell the Ukrainians that, when the Irish immigrated to America, there was no social protection for them — they had to work. And, from America, they helped Ireland,” Lily Luzan explains. “This is what we teach them: to stay here as long as it’s not safe there, but when the war is over, you must help your country to rise up. In Ireland, there isn’t enough accommodation. And there are people who are tired — it’s not easy to be so accommodating for a year. We’ve met people who tell us: ‘We don’t want any more Ukrainians.’”Note number five: There are countries, such as France, where the impact of the fighting between the Ukrainians and Russians is more distant. And others, such as Poland, where it imposes itself as an immediate existential threat. The European flag doesn’t mean the same thing in one place or another; neither does it mean the same thing to everyone in Ukraine. But even in regions that seem far from time and reality — like a windswept isle in the west of Ireland — there are yellow-and-blue flags. You can hear Ukrainian spoken, you can see refugees working in a local pub. The war is here, too. Europe is not an island.“Our geopolitical vision consisted of saying: we (Europe) are outside of history,” says the essayist Dominique Moïsi, from Paris. “We would like to be an actor in the world again, but in a world in which the tragedies were elsewhere. And, suddenly… there’s a return of the tragic.”Castelbar is the main town in the county. At the cemetery, there’s a huge, crucified Christ, along with a memorial dedicated to the county’s fallen, who died in the wars of the 20th century.On a tombstone, a poem is inscribed:In known and unknown graves they rest,the young and the bravest and the best.They loved what life could give them,and they died so that we might live.On another tombstone, there are two names… and a story to be reconstructed: “Tommy Patton, 26-years-old, who died at the gates of Madrid in December of 1936. A native of Achill. David Walsh died in the battle of Teruel, on January 19, 1938. Native of Ballina.”
HERES WHAT THE COMMUNIST NAZI SOCIALISTS SAY ABOUT THE RUSSIA COUP. WORLD SOCIALISTS.
The failed coup in Russia: Causes and consequences-Statement of the WSWS International Editorial Board-MAY 24,23
A coup attempt led by Evgeny Prigozhin, the chief of the Russian Wagner mercenary force, collapsed in the evening hours of Saturday, local time. In an agreement brokered by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Prigozhin has left Russia, and the Russian Secret Service (FSB) has dropped the mutiny investigation initiated earlier in the day against the Wagner leader. There are unconfirmed reports that the deal includes the removal of Defense Minister Shoigu and the chairman of the chief-of-staff, Valery Gerasimov, and the relocation of Wagner to Africa.Prigozhin started his coup on Friday evening, local time, with a 30-minute video in which he ranted against Russia’s military leadership and made a direct appeal to the pro-NATO faction within the Russian ruling class. Prigozhin, who only a few weeks ago called for a mass mobilization and a full turn to a war economy in order to combat the threat from NATO, now claimed, “The Armed Forces of Ukraine were not going to attack Russia with NATO.”On Saturday morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared on television and accused Prigozhin, but without mentioning him by name, of acting on behalf of NATO. Putin stated, “Today, Russia is waging a tough struggle for its future, repelling the aggression of neo-Nazis and their patrons. The entire military, economic and informational machine of the West is directed against us.”Later Saturday evening, with Wagner troops having taken over Rostov-on-Don and on the outskirts of Moscow, Prigozhin announced that they would retreat. His sudden retreat clearly indicates that the level of support he was counting on for a successful coup failed to materialize.What led Prigozhin to launch his coup? First, it is evident that his escalating conflicts with the Russian state and military apparatus came to a head. The coup attempt was preceded by Prigozhin’s vitriolic denunciations of Defense Minister Shoigu, whom he accused of not waging the war aggressively enough. It has been reported that funding for Wagner was to be substantially cut. Earlier this month, Prigozhin refused to accept Putin’s demand that Wagner be placed under the control of the army leadership.There is evidence that the military was fed up with Putin’s long-time patronage of this foul-mouthed and disrespectful (to the military) thug. His operations in Ukraine, while useful to a limited extent, also interfered with the professional conduct of the war by trained officers. Prigozhin, one can safely surmise, attempted the coup in order to preempt actions against him.Second, it would be the height of political cluelessness to believe that NATO has been a passive bystander in the events of the last 24 to 36 hours. It has certainly been following the escalating war of words between Prigozhin and the Russian military with extreme care, and it can be assumed that it made contact with him. There is no other credible explanation for the pro-NATO justification made by Prigozhin upon launching the coup.Prigozhin’s NATO contacts would have had a good reason to demand that he act now. The coup has been launched less than three weeks into the NATO-backed counter-offensive by Ukraine. Having cost tens of billions of dollars to prepare, it has so far proven to be a debacle, with thousands of Ukrainian soldiers dying each day and only a few villages seized. In just over two weeks, NATO will be holding a major summit in Vilnius that, until the coup attempt, threatened to be dominated by Ukraine’s military debacle.The Biden administration and its NATO allies calculated that a coup attempt, even if not successful, would destabilize the regime and undermine its military operations. In any case, the coup attempt has shifted the media narrative away from the failed Ukrainian counter-offensive to the failing Putin regime.The immediate response of high-level representatives of US imperialism, the Zelensky regime and the pro-NATO opposition within the Russian oligarchy makes clear that the coup did not come as a surprise.US Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who has been a key figure in the US preparations for war against Russia for over a decade, tweeted on Friday evening, “For all of those that have been wondering how the war in Ukraine is going, it’s going insurrection-in-Russia well.” Later into the coup, he suggested that NATO use the opportunity to extend its air defenses “100 miles into Ukraine.”Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, one of the leading CIA Democrats in the US, tweeted, “U.S. posture at this stage should be watching events closely, assisting our Ukrainian allies in exploiting any battlefield opportunities, & staying flexible & alert at an unpredictable moment in history.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also expressed support for Prigozhin’s coup attempt.London-based Russian ex-oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a central figure in the NATO-backed operation to overthrow the Putin regime, endorsed the coup attempt as a “unique opportunity” and called upon people to take up arms to ensure that Prigozhin could “survive and reach the Kremlin.” After Prigozhin’s retreat, Khodorkovsky celebrated the coup attempt as a major blow to the Putin regime on his Telegram account: The scale of the damage to the regime is fantastic. Negotiations with Ukraine, if they start, will come from a much weaker position. The autonomy of the military, and thus its fighting ability, will be drastically reduced. The opposition will have to draw certain conclusions... [I]f the war does not end, a new insurgency is not long in coming. The tasks are clear. We will get to work.That the coup was prepared with some significant level of NATO involvement is clear enough. But to portray the coup as primarily the product of a CIA conspiracy would be to ignore the real divisions that exist in the Russian regime and the social interests that determine its policies.Prigozhin’s coup attempt exposes above all the bankruptcy of the Putin regime itself, out of which Prigozhin himself emerged. He is a Frankenstein monster created by Putin and over whom the Russian president lost control.For decades, Putin and Prigozhin were close allies. Until recently, the Wagner group, which originated within the Russian military intelligence GRU, enjoyed the evident patronage of Putin and other powerful forces within the state apparatus.Prigozhin, a fascistic war-lord, billionaire and convicted criminal, represents a substantial faction of the Russian oligarchy that opposes the war solely because Putin’s effort to protect the capitalist class’s and state’s privileged access to the country’s vast resources has cost them dearly.Putin has sought to balance between these factions, and this attempt to reconcile opposing oligarchic interests has determined the conduct of what he still calls a “special military operation.”From the beginning, the Kremlin’s policy in Ukraine has been based on the hope that limited military pressure could persuade the Western imperialist powers to accept the “legitimate” security interests of the Russian capitalist regime. Putin has persisted with this aim even as all of his “red lines” have been crossed, the latest “red line” being the attempt to overthrow him.How Putin responds remains to be seen, whether through a military escalation or with significant concessions to reach some sort of accommodation. The imperialist powers, however, are not interested in compromise. Their ultimate goal is the carve-up of Russia so as to bring the vast resources of the entire former Soviet Union under their direct control.Ultimately, both Putin and Prigozhin represent the same social class: an oligarchy, steeped in criminality and hatred of the working class, which has emerged out of the Stalinist destruction of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism.Revealingly, in attacking their opponents in the ruling class, both Putin and Prigozhin have evoked above all the specter of the 1917 Russian Revolution, with Putin declaring of the coup that a “blow like this was dealt to Russia in 1917, when the country was fighting in World War I. But the victory was stolen from it: intrigues, squabbles and politicking behind the backs of the army and the nation turned into the greatest turmoil, the destruction of the army and the collapse of the state, and the loss of vast territories, ultimately leading to the tragedy of the civil war.”Putin’s latest denunciation of Bolshevism, aside from its pathologically obsessive character, exposes his own ignorance of history. In fact, the tsarist regime’s catastrophic entry into war in 1914, and its criminal mismanagement of the conflict, brought Russia to the brink of collapse. Confronted in 1917 with the outbreak of revolution, the efforts of the bourgeois Provisional Government to salvage its imperialist interests produced further disasters.The attempt of General Kornilov, surreptitiously backed by Kerensky, to suppress the working class in September 1917 would have resulted, had it been successful, in the surrender of Petrograd to the armies of German imperialism. This outcome was prevented by a mass uprising of workers, mobilized by the Bolshevik Party, which crushed the coup and went on to seize power in October.It was the new Soviet state that created the Red Army, led by Leon Trotsky, that between 1918 and 1921 routed the forces of counter-revolution backed by world imperialism.The interests of the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchies preclude any progressive form of defense of the interests of the mass of the working people against the predatory policies of imperialism.The principal fear, shared by all sections of the Russian oligarchy, is that the war will create conditions for a resurgence of the powerful traditions of Marxist internationalism within the Russian, Ukrainian and international working class. The war in Ukraine must be stopped through the independent revolutionary mobilization of the international working class, not the NATO-backed overthrow of the Putin regime and a carve-up of Russia.
Sunday, June 25, 2023
WILL THIS FAILED WEST COUP ATTEMP FORCE THE EU TO HAVE THEIR OWN MILITARY.
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