A Europe United: Toothless

The EU is weak in foreign policy not least because it remains a pawn in America's game for global domination.

Welcome to 2024—the *super* election year. Roughly half the world’s population will go to the polls in 2024, including eight of the world’s ten most populous nations (Bangladesh, Brazil, India, the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia and Mexico). Russia had its election on 15–17 March, with underdog Vladimir Putin coming out on top, vanquishing Nikolay Kharitonov of the Communist Party. 

Then we mustn’t forget the supranational realm: in June, the European Union will hold its parliamentary elections. Over 400 million registered voters will soon cast their ballots and elect representatives determining the EU’s direction for the next five years. On matters of trade and business regulation, these administrators have shown the capacity to act decisively. On foreign policy, however, Europe is much less effective, not least because it remains a pawn—or perhaps a bishop—in America’s game for global domination. 

Since its inception in 1993, the EU has had a less than favourable foreign policy reputation, failing its baptism of fire to prevent and later arbitrate the Yugoslav and Kosovo Wars. This role instead fell to the US and NATO, culminating in the Dayton Accords of 1995 and the Kumanovo Agreement of 1999.

The EU’s weakness in external affairs is often attributed to its complex institutional structure and individual member states pursuing independent foreign policy goals. Another fragility is the EU’s lack of a common defence force or army, which makes it harder to present a credible threat, resulting in a lack of impetus as an international actor. Matters of defence are central to the sovereign nation-state—the EU’s 27 members are unlikely to yield it to Brussels any time soon.

NATO, meanwhile, is a military alliance between sovereign governments. Its institutional makeup is not designed around consensus on every issue but a common understanding by cooperating on, among other things, intelligence sharing and interoperability. NATO countries can, thus, build ad-hoc coalitions with other alliance members, such as in the Baltic states. 

And, of course, NATO membership comes with US security guarantees. Such a warranty is attractive, given that America in 2023 spent more money on defence—$877 billion—than the ten next countries combined and has over 5,000 nuclear weapons. In light of the EU’s flaws, it is hardly surprising that European countries in 2014 rallied around NATO when Russia annexed Crimea and again in 2022 after it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

For EU countries, membership in NATO does come with one major downside: it means subordinating to US strategic interests. It’s no secret that America dominates the alliance. The country accounts for some 70% of NATO’s total expenditure and has army bases and nuclear storage facilities in several European NATO countries. 

Moreover, NATO’s highest military chief—the Supreme Allied Commander Europe—has always been a US citizen. This same American is simultaneously head of the US European Command—one of seven geographical combatant commands the US has set up to control its military forces across the globe (and in space). For reference, Chinese and Russian military commands do not, at least officially, extend beyond national borders in peacetime.

The United States has been adamant in ensuring it remains the dominant force within NATO, repeatedly opposing efforts that would see Europe strengthen its self-sufficiency in defence. These include a British-French initiative in 1998 to increase the EU’s military capabilities and a 2019 European venture to jointly develop armaments. As Kathryn Wheelbarger, a top US defence official at the time, said in 2017: “We don’t want to see EU efforts pulling requirements or forces away from NATO and into the EU.” The US position is clear. It does not want the EU to act independently in foreign policy.

Take the Ukraine War, for example. A horrible conflict started by a repressive, kleptocratic tyrant. Russia’s invasion should in no way be supported. It breaks international law, disregards human life and sets a dangerous precedent for autocrats elsewhere; Venezuela threatening to press its “claims” on Guyana’s oil-rich Essequibo region comes to mind. 

Yet, the US’ role in spurring this European conflict cannot be understated. There is, firstly, the issue of NATO enlargement, which Russia perceives as a threat to national security because it places US troops and weaponry at its doorstep. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO has added 16 new members, many of them in eastern Europe. When the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962, the world almost ended. Moreover, enlargement directly breaks promises given by US and European officials in 1990. 

Picture. US military commands across the globe (and in space).

Russia would feel threatened regardless of who sits in the Kremlin. It’s, however, worth remembering that the United States meddled in the election which saw Boris Yeltsin elected as Russia’s first president and OK:d his handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin. America also imposed its neoliberal economic doctrine on Russia. In the classic shock therapy style, wealth was privatised to a tiny elite, and millions of people fell into poverty, creating the oligarchic Russian state we see today.

The US continued its long-standing policy of interfering in European affairs when it backed the overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014—a series of events American political scientist John Mearsheimer has described as a coup. The full US involvement is still unclear, but a call leaked between Victoria Nuland, the then-Assistant Secretary of State, and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, in which they discussed regime change in Ukraine. 

Exemplifying another pillar of American foreign policy, Nuland, when commenting on Europe’s hesitance to act on the situation, said “fuck the EU.” 

In response to events which saw a firmly pro-Western government come to power in Ukraine, Russia seized Crimea, arguing it was bound to host a NATO naval base. 

This action should be condemned, but it should not come as a surprise. Russia has long been adamant it does not want Ukraine (or Georgia) to join NATO. US officials know this. William Burns, current CIA Director, sent a strong warning to DC in 2008 when he was US Ambassador to Russia:

“Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia's influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. 

Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.” 

In the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the Ukrainian government appealed to join NATO. The leadership in Kyiv understood such a course would lead to conflict—former Zelensky adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in a 2019 interview that the country’s “price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia.”

In 2021, the United States doubled down on future NATO membership for Ukraine. Two months before its invasion, Russia proposed a treaty with the US whereby America would commit to halting NATO expansion in states bordering Russia. Diplomacy was shunned, and tanks rolled into Ukraine on 24 February 2022, with Russia citing NATO enlargement as the casus belli. 

When a peace deal based on Ukraine’s neutrality was on the cards in March (2022), the United States and its allies blocked negotiations, according to former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who was a mediator. Preferring, instead, an escalation of war that would see Russia “weakened.” 

“Think of the people in Ukraine,” I hear you say. If those in high places really cared about the people of Ukraine, they would have tried very hard to avoid bloodshed. They didn’t. 

The war in Ukraine might be a European conflict, but it is not being fought over European interests. The war is a consequence of the US trying to tighten its hold on Europe by weakening Russia and adding Ukraine to its sphere of influence, all under the NATO umbrella. The narrative that Russia attacked Ukraine unprompted and of a looming invasion of the EU by Russian hordes is lunacy. 

That’s why the rhetoric advanced by European leaders strikes such a nerve. When Macron says putting Western boots on the ground in Ukraine is not ruled out, or Ursula von der Leyen asserts that the EU needs to “turbocharge” its “defence industrial capacity in the next five years,” one wonders about their true motives. As long as US narratives dominate EU foreign policy, these statements only benefit the warmongers, who have no issue with bodies pilling. 

Moreover, where are EU member states supposed to get the money to rearm? It would have to come from increased taxes or by cutting welfare either directly or through increased borrowing costs. I’ll let you decide which one you think is the most likely outcome. Citizens in EU countries deserve better than to be disregarded in favour of the United States hegemonic project. 

As expressed by Marcos Carnelos, a former Italian diplomat, the US world order “cannot accept power-sharing arrangements or true multipolarity. The only option left is the friend-or-foe narrative.” In this game of American high politics, the EU remains a piece on the board. 

// Adrian