On the remilitarisation of Europe
The European Union is in the process of expanding its military capacity. The immediate plan is to invest in “made in Europe” defence capabilities. As outlined on the European Commission’s website, governments will benefit from a lending facility that will mobilise funds from capital markets as well as creative national accounting. The latter involves the relaxation of the EU’s stringent rules on fiscal deficits and public debts such that expenditure up to 1.5% of Gross Domestic Product is not counted against the deficit if directed towards military affairs. Critics will rightly question where was this leeway when European leaders were insistent on imposing grinding austerity on the vast majority of the population. Why did the EU not relax those rules in favour of public health and education, for example, and why is the war machine treated differently in this regard? While I share that sentiment, I think the discrepancy is justified.
War is odious yet part of our potential. A country that wants to preserve its way of living is a country that is combat ready. The same is true for individuals: those who do not want to be victims of some bully do what they must to make themselves a hard target. And those who are always mistreated are so because they are easy targets. Is this nice? No. Are the aggressors justified? No. The point is not one of aesthetics or of moralising against the phenomena. What matters is how the world works. There is no lasting security, personal or collective, that is sustained absent strong checks on innate ambitions of control, dominance, or even the sheer thrill of conquest and adventure.
The story of the European integration process is one of peace among the Member States, in juxtaposition to the cruelty of two World Wars, yet it happened against the backdrop of the Cold War and, more recently, of ongoing tensions in the wider region. Europeans uniting under a single legal-institutional framework is, in practical terms, an alliance. Even from a purely economic standpoint, it makes sense for trading partners to have a vested interest in their common safety: it helps business continue. And with that come all the practicalities of the free movement of workers, their right to establishment, and so on. In other words, what starts out as a purely financial calculus inevitably spills over to all facets of the quotidian experience.
The EU is a highly flawed architecture which cannot be a federal republic in its current form. It is a union of states or a confederation, else, a layer of bureaucracy on top of nation states, which has some competences (“sovereignty”) but which nevertheless lacks democratic accountability commensurate with that generally found at the Member State level. There still are degrees though, which critics of the Union need be mindful of in order not to lose their sense of perspective. Despite its shortcomings, the EU is a largely progressive place in terms of the rule of law and the respect for fundamental freedoms. One need only take a look at the immediate periphery of the EU to appreciate those nuances and understanding how nothing can be taken as a given.
A European Defence Union provides a credible deterrent to aspiring overlords that seek to exploit Europeans. It cannot be purely good though, as it admittedly comes with the latent risk of turning into a repressive regime in its own right. Such is the trade-off every hitherto society faces: who guards us from the guardians? There is no ultimate guarantee and it is pointless to think of politics in terms of the untenable binary of good versus evil. It will always be an arrangement that is prone to abuse while having the merit of enabling a certain lifestyle. It is why political conduct rests on faith, else the acquiescence of individuals to the prevailing norms and their commitment to operate in good faith accordingly. Put differently for our immediate case, democracies are maintained by democratic citizens and cease to be democratic when the people no longer are vigilant in enforcing the values they purport to uphold.
Accelerated rearmament is a pragmatic response to the evolving international trends. Anything else is complacency bordering on recklessness. My hope is that on the balance, we avoid the worse by showing the requisite readiness, without getting sucked into the black hole of militarism. The key, then, looking forward is to be responsible in the language we use and the deeds we carry out. We will all be on the losing side if in the process of fighting the bullies we become bullies ourselves.