Putin is an existential threat to Eastern Europeans, but Russia is not the main enemy in the history of Western Europe.
Imagine that you are a Western European politician in Paris , Berlin or Rome. The Russian invasion of Ukraine terrifies you. Despite the expectations of Eastern Europeans, you do not cultivate naive views on Vladimir Putin. For all these years, you know very well what he has in mind. And you hope that he will not win this war.
In your heart you rejoice in every Ukrainian flag in the window. You are proud that your country is helping that small number of Ukrainian refugees who went further to Eastern Europe. You condemn the war. But at the same time you are convinced that this is not a problem of Western Europe. You just want the fighting to stop, perhaps after some ambiguous truce that will actually give Russia control of the conquered territories. The British writer Simon Cooper writes about this in an article for the Financial Times.
The housing crisis will then ease, as will the risk of entering a nuclear war and the need for Western governments to spend their precious time in power fighting the aggressor in the neighboring region. Western politicians will never say it out loud, but they are not very worried about Ukraine.
“It should be clarified here that I am against such cynical views. I would like these governments to support Ukraine. But I'm just trying to explain their thoughts, which I gathered during conversations with politicians, as well as reading the media on the continent. The hilarious talk of a “united Europe” ignores the fact that there are actually several Europes. For centuries, a kind of veil has separated the more affluent West from the poorer East. Putin's threat is existential for Eastern Europeans, whose club suddenly includes Sweden and Finland. But in Western European history, Russia is not the main enemy. She is a very problematic minor character who once covered our backs at a critical moment. We have almost always allowed Moscow to do whatever it pleases in the East, especially from 1944 to 1989. When France and Britain were unnecessarily drawn into the conflict in the east in 1914, the world war derailed everyone for a century, “the article reads.
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So after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and Donbas in 2014, France began seeking a truce that rewarded Putin. Emmanuel Macron spent years trying to create a new European security architecture that would include Moscow. Many Eastern Europeans called it a “naive” indulgence in Putin's appetite. Western realists said it was only to appease his appetites in Eastern Europe. Like Putin, they do not like the fact that NATO has become a scheme of Eastern European protection.
Putin's Russia is good for Western Europe. In the eyes of many Western politicians, cheap Russian energy and the export of billions of dollars to places like London have offset all Russian killings abroad and interference in elections. Western Europeans are now under pressure from the United States and Eastern Europe, which strongly supports Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi visited Kyiv too late . They are sending weapons to Ukraine, although they are doing it slowly, on an insufficient scale, and they are not sending exactly what is needed. They fear a protracted war or the possibility that the Ukrainian army will launch an offensive in Russia. Berlin is too far from the East to worry about Putin's ridiculous ideas. So the German government is pouring capital into its dysfunctional army.
But Western Europeans know that the United States is very fond of wars and then loses interest in them. This was the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. Moreover, if Donald Trump returns to the presidency in 2024, he could ruin the Western aloe. So Western Europe is focusing on its own problems. That's why Italy's biggest parties, the Five Star Movement and the League, want Ukraine to compromise with Russia. And France's defense minister is more concerned about jihadists in West Africa. Madrid is located 3440 kilometers from Moscow, but only 714 kilometers from Algeria, which remains its main problem. Prior to Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the Spanish government hoped to make cybersecurity, the Sahel and climate change the main topics for the NATO summit. Ukraine's best friend in Western Europe is Great Britain. But it has a military tradition, as well as a ruling party whose voters have historically supported the war and a prime minister whose main justification for retaining power is that Ukraine needs it.
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Other Western European capitals are patiently waiting for Kyiv to want a truce. Any peace agreement will give Russia de facto but not formal control over the occupied territories. Western Europeans will make sure that Ukraine keeps some ports in the Black Sea so that Putin cannot starve the whole world. Yes, it will be a reward for a bloody dictator. But such is international relations. For example, look at President Joe Biden's planned visit to Saudi Arabia. Western Europe has long learned that it can live normally without Eastern Europe.
