Dr. Eoin Drea is a senior researcher at the Wilfried Martens Center for European Studies.
Judging by the number of European Union leaders who have visited Ukraine in recent weeks, it would be easy to assume that Brussels is solely responsible for equipping the bold resistance of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his people.
But while European Council President Charles Michel spoke of the EU’s “unprecedented” response to Russian aggression, saying the EU was “determined to do everything possible to support Ukraine”, the sad reality is that under all the rhetoric, photos and recycled promises that the EU continues to escape while the Anglosphere is busy helping save Ukraine.
In fact, if the Ukrainians relied solely on the EU, the war might be over. And we will see a weak, fragmented and Russian-controlled Ukraine.
Monologues about Ukraine’s “European future” by EU leaders do not stop Russian tanks or cripple Russian artillery. It is not the EU that prevents the conquest of Ukraine. Rather, the sharing of weapons, materials, and intelligence provided immediately and unconditionally by the Anglosphere — particularly the United States and Britain — is crucial to freeing Kyiv’s troops.
In the first month of the conflict, the military support offered by the United States – nearly $ 4.4 billion – was more than twice as much as that offered by EU member states and European institutions combined. And that was before US President Joe Biden’s request to Congress for an additional $ 20 billion in direct military support, with an additional $ 12 billion in economic and humanitarian aid.
Even Britain – yes, unreliable, detached, enraged Britain – provided more military assistance to Ukraine during this key period than any other EU member state. And that support was recently expanded after Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the Ukrainian parliament.
This is the speed of Britain’s reaction, and even President Zelensky has acknowledged that other Western countries must “follow the example of the United Kingdom.”
So much for Washington and London, which are not interested in Europe.
Remarkably, while the United States and the United Kingdom are busy helping to arm Ukraine and defend European democracy, the EU’s only nuclear power, France, remains largely unforeseen in terms of military aid. And support from Europe’s largest economy continues to draw from Berlin as one of those half-empty warehouses for Bundeswehr supplies, while Italy, as always, remains visible but hopelessly irrelevant.
Even EU countries providing significant materials for Ukraine – Estonia, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, the main ones among them – have been facilitated by replenishing (and modernizing) their US military stockpiles. This approach has allowed Czech tanks, Slovak air defense systems and many others to make a difference on the ground in Ukraine, an approach that Germany eventually adopted as part of a broader US-led international coalition.
But the real lesson to be learned from all this is that the rhetoric of European “strategic autonomy” is a Parisian fantasy provided with oxygen from Brussels.
Brexit has left the EU without a member with the world’s leading military and intelligence-gathering capabilities. However, the ongoing conflict ensures that the British Armed Forces – and equipment – will have to remain an important element of the EU’s collective security strategy, regardless of the prevailing political climate.
Most importantly, this war has shown that NATO – backed by the United States and Britain and with Eastern European members as its basis – is the future of European security. A Scandinavian-Baltic arc, possibly involving Finland and Sweden, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic Sea – these combined forces will be equipped with predominantly US equipment, British intelligence and NATO logistical support.
Europe’s future defense leadership must lie to the east, but the challenge for Brussels now is to reconcile its grand image with the reality of Anglo-dominated protection of Ukrainian freedom – and European values.
It takes a little humility for that to happen. The EU will not be able to defend itself soon. It cannot project force in its immediate neighborhood, nor act as an important military partner for the United States or Britain.
Brussels should court Washington, London, Canberra and Ottawa, not despise them.
Announcing the delivery of armored vehicles to Ukraine, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he believed “this battle is important because not only Ukrainian lives and their lands are at stake, but also the principles of freedom and the rule of law.”
And the only way for the EU to survive is if the Anglo-Sphere continues to uphold these principles that inspired its creation.
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