Eduardo González
The Vice President of the European Commission and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, warned yesterday that Europe must strengthen its “military capabilities” because its traditional instruments of “soft power”, such as trade and the defense of values, are “no longer sufficient” to deal with the threats that have arisen with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Certainly, the war has changed Europe, it is waking us up, in Brussels they talk about the geopolitical awakening of Europe,” said Borrell during the 17th Carlos de Amberes Memorial Lecture, held at the headquarters of this foundation in Madrid and where he was introduced by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares; the former minister and former high representative Javier Solana, patron of the Carlos de Amberes Foundation; and the former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta.
“In a way,” Borrell continued, “it is an awakening of our initial project, a peace project that put aside the struggle for power and used soft power, trade and law, as our weapons.” “Now, we must become aware that this is not enough, because we Europeans cannot be herbivores in a world of carnivores,” he warned. “We live more and more in a world in which power relations are imposed, in which trade relations, the preaching of human rights or the preaching of a rules-based order are not enough,” he said. “We must continue with that, but it is not enough, we have to be something more, we have to equip ourselves with the means to face these threats, including military capabilities,” he continued.
However, he recalled, “Europe does not have an army; I have a lot of military advisors, but not an army, the armies are in the hands of the member states, but since the end of the Cold War the states started to disarm”. In these circumstances, Europe continues to pay the “peace dividend”: lower military spending and delegation of security to the United States, relations with Russia based on the purchase of cheap and abundant energy and the opening up of trade and exchange with China, a country that is “at once a rival, a partner and a competitor” and with which it would be advisable to “rethink relations”. “In a way, an important part of the prosperity has been built on cheap and abundant energy coming from Russia,” Borrell admitted. This is a “big strategic mistake” that, coupled with “great trade opportunities with China and security delegated to the United States,” highlights the negative consequences of “decoupling prosperity from security,” he added.
“To make matters worse, a war breaks out” that has forced the EU and its member states to “make significant efforts in the military dimension of support for Ukraine,” Borrell recalled. “With Ukraine there is a multiple commitment, financial, military, economic, and it has to stay that way, because Europeans have to be clear that when we defend Ukraine we defend ourselves, that it is not only out of generosity, it is also in our own interest,” he warned.
The unity of Europe
For this, he said, it is necessary to maintain unity among the EU states. “Vladimir Putin hoped that Europe would falter, that the transatlantic union would falter,” he asserted. “It is not yet clear how long this unity will last,” Borrell warned (in an unspoken allusion to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban), “but we must continue to maintain it, to show that the EU is not just a club of states, it is a political community in which sovereign states remain sovereign, but pool resources, materials, values and interests,” he continued.
That unity, according to Borrell, has borne fruit in military aid to Ukraine. “We estimate that, between the states and the community, it has not been far from the figure of 50% of U.S. military aid to Ukraine, which is not bad; those who say that Europe is insignificant from a military point of view do not get the math right,” he said.
However, that same unity should stand equally firm in the face of other challenges, such as “the energy crisis that is coming our way.” “The EU was born as a coal and steel union and must remain an energy unit,” he declared. “We have done unthinkable things; at the beginning of the war, 40% of gas came from Russia and now it is less than 10%, a reduction of three quarters has been achieved in three months”, but important problems remain to be solved, such as electricity prices, with which “Putin must be very satisfied”, he lamented. In this matter, he said, “a lot of work remains to be done to achieve unity”.
As for the economic consequences of the war, he warned, there are two alternatives: that “everyone goes on their own or act in solidarity, as in COVID; if the former happens, the single market will be in danger”, because “whoever has more fiscal space to help their companies” will distort the functioning of a market based on “fair and undistorted competition”.
One of the most important achievements derived from this war, in Borrell’s opinion, has been the “transatlantic union; here again Putin did not expect such a firm unity”. This unity, in his opinion, does not have to jeopardize the objective of strategic autonomy, because “the US, faced with this experience, will be the most interested in the Europeans having the capabilities to contribute to the common defense”. In any case, he warned, this circumstance “will force us to take our co-responsibility in defense matters much more seriously, but this requires political will, because if all the States increase military spending without taking into account the needs of the whole, there will be a great waste and it will not be possible to avoid duplication; for this reason, it is very important to arm ourselves in a coordinated and joint way”.
Albares
During the presentation of the event, José Manuel Albares stated that in the war in Ukraine (he took the opportunity to greet the Ambassador, Serhii Pohoreltsev, present in the room) “two models are facing each other: one that looks to the front, Europe, believes in plurality and diversity, equal sovereignty of the States and renounces war to solve conflicts, and another that looks to the past, to very dark and sad times in Europe, of limited sovereignty and in which war was possible to solve conflicts”.
“That combat is also taking place within European societies,” he warned. For this reason, he said, the EU foreign ministers have been “fortunate to have the High Representative at their head, because how different the European response would have been without Borrell’s leadership”. According to Albares, Europe is heading towards a “double Spanish leadership”, that of Borrell and the next Spanish EU Presidency in 2023. “At a time when Europe needs leadership, I am sure that we Spaniards will be up to the task,” he concluded.
