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Shkruar nga Veton Surroi
Europe has entered into defining its new identity, deciding what it does not want to be. This process of self-determination today is more or less being in opposition to Putin and in panic about Trump. But, clearly, this will not be enough.
1.
Presidents Putin and Trump have developed, without any prior coordination or knowledge, an intensive cooperation in defining the European identity of the 21st century in the last three years. And, for this, they have invited European philosophers, Plato, Fichte and Hegel to help them (and the list could be long to this day).
President Putin, with the open war of aggression in Ukraine, which began in February 2022, influenced the European peoples to redefine their identity through opposition. Europe from 2022 onwards is trying to build itself as a counteraction to an unprecedented act since 1945, the aggressive attack of one state on another European state. In this sense, Europe from 2022 is being built as a counteraction to Putin's policy, so it is completely understandable that Sweden and Finland, countries that built a universally accepted tradition of neutral states, decided to become members of NATO. President Putin thus expanded the European part of NATO and enriched it with the tradition of the two Scandinavian states.
President Trump, by warning that the US will no longer be responsible for European security, has pushed Europe to define its own identity in light of this new contradiction. Thus, Europe, which gave NATO two more member states, now faces a new identity, that of considering the continent's security eventually without the American protective umbrella.
2.
If we ask European philosophers - let us call on Plato, Fichte and Hegel - today's Europe is currently being defined by what it is not, or does not want to be. That is, it does not want to be a vulnerable Europe, into which Russian tanks can enter any day that President Putin determines that this or that people, or this or that European state, does not exist or should not exist. And, at the same time, it does not want to be a continent which, having experienced the best period in history, of an uninterrupted peace of almost 80 years (and here, intentionally, the wars of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia are forgotten, as "unEuropean"), suddenly finds itself in a space of uncertainty created by the understanding that the relationship so far with America has come to an end.
Plato would teach us that the "One" cannot exist without the "Other", so Europe can understand what it is by confronting what it is not, i.e. traditionally it is not Russia, or what it has now discovered it is not, (transatlantic) America. Johann Gottlieb Fichte argued that the "I" cannot exist without a "Not-I" – a subject can only understand itself in relation to an opponent or challenge. Today's Europe is intensely Fichtean, when it is realizing that the US is no longer the "greatest European power", something that Europeans have come to take for granted. And Hegel further teaches us that European identity is being built on a dialectic of contradictions: the interest of the US is not necessarily compatible with that of Europe, and Europe must now rediscover how to build a new compatibility of interests in an order in which Pax Americana does not exist as a bank guarantee advance.
3.
It is already clear, at this early stage, what Europe does not want to be – a continent vulnerable to Russian aggression or abandoned by its transatlantic ally.
If this is the case, then the continent has entered an emergency of self-determination that is not only military and geopolitical in nature, but also philosophical and existential. This is a Europe that must define itself no longer as a project based on the premise of permanent peace and external guarantees, but as an entity that can defend and guarantee its autonomy.
The initial phase is that of military calculations. Former European Commission President Juncker called for the first step to be “improving the coordination of European militaries and unifying security – satellites, artificial intelligence in defense, cyber threats. We have 174 different weapons systems; the US has 34. We have more than a dozen infantry fighting vehicles; the US has three. We have an unknown number of different tanks; the US has one.”
This initial phase is now the focus of attention among citizens of major European countries. In a survey by the Franco-European magazine and think tank Le Grand Continent, 50 percent of respondents in the Netherlands and Belgium, 48 percent in France, and 43 percent in Germany and Spain say it is now urgent for the European Union to increase defense spending to 5 percent of gross national product.
But these are only the first – and urgent – signs of awakening.
4.
The essential questions will follow. For example, what does Europe represent in the sense of a security zone? The obvious answer is the space that begins in Great Britain and ends in Turkey, including on this eastern flank that part of Ukraine that will be controlled by the Ukrainians. But here too there are conceptual innovations: Canada, which would now like to become part of the industrial union for the production of weapons. And if it could be Canada (albeit a “European” country on the American continent), why not South Korea and Japan, which have already developed cooperation with NATO member states?
The whole consideration of a new security architecture clearly requires its own political framework. It could be what it is today, NATO, the most powerful alliance in the history of mankind, but now with an internal re-contraction, especially in the relationship between the US and Europe. It could also be of a European strategic autonomy (an old idea, since the French president De Gaulle), again within NATO. It could be of new inventive forms (of strategic defense partnerships with states that are not yet in NATO). It could also be something that we have not yet heard of.
But, ultimately, the fundamental challenge that will be presented to Europe (from Great Britain to Turkey and Ukraine) is how to build a common European security area with full responsibility of the European states?
This is a challenge that goes beyond current thinking in the European Union, individual member states, and non-member states such as Great Britain, Turkey, or in the future Ukraine, with significant potential in the field of defense.
This is a challenge that also transcends existing European political and security institutions.
5.
The countries of the Western Balkans are now at a historical moment analogous in importance to that of 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even then, identity was defined by what those countries were not or did not want to be. They were not and did not want to be communist states, and most of them wanted to be independent. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, these states have been engaged in an identity struggle over what they want to be, supposedly democratic, functional states at peace with their neighbors. This process is not over; there are still states that are not completely democratic, functional, or at peace with their neighbors.
Meanwhile, the new challenge is even higher, how to find their identity in a Europe that has itself been pushed into its own identity challenge. Perhaps the first step in this entry into self-knowledge is identifying the problem: how to live in a common security space.
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