We are experiencing a time of great change. Principles and institutions we have taken for granted since the Second World War are on their way to the scrapheap of history. We will not be able to continue as before, but what we should or will do is by no means obvious.
Where do we come from? Two of the bitter experiences of the Second World War have, more than anything else, influenced our way of thinking and international relations in the years after the war: (i) the destruction of the war and the slaughter of human beings, both in and out of military uniform, and (ii) Nazi Germany’s extermination of Jews and other minorities.
After the war, both statesmen and ordinary people naturally wished to ensure that this catastrophe would not be repeated. The United States, which suffered the smallest losses and emerged from the war as the world’s strongest power, took the initiative to establish institutions for resolving international conflicts peacefully and to base international relations on rules and peaceful coexistence. This had been attempted before, after the catastrophic First World War, and it did not work in the long run. An attempt was made to create a United Nations that avoided the weaknesses of the League of Nations, but success was only partial. Nevertheless, it must be said that the years after the end of the Second World War were characterised by a rule-based world order and peaceful coexistence rather than wars of conquest to a greater extent than previously in world history.
Another reaction to the catastrophe of the Second World War was an increased prioritisation of general welfare rather than military build-up. This is perhaps best illustrated by what happened in the first parliamentary election in Great Britain after the war. The voters placed their trust in the Labour Party and its leader Clement Attlee rather than the legendary wartime leader Winston Churchill. The Labour Party built the National Health Service (NHS), which became a model for much that later occurred in Western Europe. General pension schemes came later. Although the European welfare state has roots further back in history, it truly took off in the years after the Second World War.
Strange though it may sound, the European prioritisation of welfare rather than defence was little affected by the Cold War between the former allies, the United States and the Soviet Union. It would be more accurate to say that Europe’s prioritisation of welfare rather than defence was strengthened by the Cold War. The United States did not wish the Soviet Union to incorporate Western Europe into its sphere of interest and succeeded in establishing NATO to prevent this from happening. Through NATO, the United States promised massive retaliation if the Soviet Union attempted to seize territory belonging to the NATO alliance. European military forces continued to be built up and maintained, but the American security guarantee undoubtedly had the effect that European NATO countries invested less in their own defence than they otherwise would have done.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 undoubtedly strengthened Europe’s prioritisation of welfare rather than defence. Before 1990, one could say that Europeans built their welfare states in the shadow of the American security guarantee. After 1990, one could say that the security guarantee had become obsolete; the Soviet Union had disappeared and with it any possible plans of conquest. For many years there appeared to be no military threat on the European horizon. Europe’s military forces were gradually hollowed out, though they did not disappear entirely. Europe collected the peace dividend and used it for further expansion of the welfare state.
Then there was the second bitter experience of the Second World War, the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews. These horrors triggered a revolt against those events and the ideas behind them. People were to be treated as equals regardless of race or religion. Laws were passed and likewise conventions on human rights. In particular, people fleeing persecution in their home countries were to be protected and granted asylum. Those fleeing the regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were warmly received in Western Europe. Perhaps not all of them were persecuted, but their labour was welcome, and sympathy for the communist regimes in Eastern Europe was minimal, with good reason.
In time, the European countries were flooded with asylum seekers who were not fleeing persecution in their home countries, but civil wars and misgovernment, and who sought a better livelihood elsewhere. Human rights sound like sweet music on the abstract plane, but real people arrive with the baggage that is easiest to bring along: their customs and culture. The encounter with the people in their new home countries is often harsh. What appears to us in Western Europe as barbaric customs is often self-evident and even a highly valued tradition for those arriving from abroad. Female genital mutilation and the oppression of women, to take the starkest examples, would not make any Western European country a better place to live. Mentioning these problems was long considered by many to be bad form, but the problems of mass immigration from foreign cultures with barbaric customs have now reached such a level that European authorities are seeking solutions that not long ago were characterised by many as extreme and unworthy of civilised society.
Recent events in the United States have suddenly turned Europe’s defence upside down. The arrangement whereby the United States stood as guarantor of the ultimate defence against a threat which in our time can only come from Russia no longer exists. Europe must find a solution that it alone can stand behind. This will take time and may prove impossible to realise. Military forces must be built up and soldiers recruited from a population increasingly consisting of ageing people unfit for combat, and immigrants whose loyalty may be open to question. Europe still consists of many nation-states that took hundreds of years to build and served the European countries well in a bygone age, but they are too fragmented in a world where the leaders of the most powerful industrial nations wish to rearrange the world stage as it suits them. The EU is not equal to the task; although it encompasses many countries and people, it is too loose-knit, with cumbersome and slow decision-making mechanisms. Nor does it have military forces of its own at its disposal. The EU was not established to deal with military defence in any case. The only credible military defence against Russia requires leadership by a few militarily strong states, and the others must follow along as best they can. In that coalition, Great Britain is an absolutely indispensable partner and possibly the one that must take the lead. Great Britain is no longer part of the EU, which further marginalises any possible role for the EU in this context. If a credible military alliance of European countries is not cobbled together, Russia’s conquest of Western Europe will be limited only by what it can digest.
A radical change of course is required in the Western European countries to achieve this. It sounds fine to say, as European leaders have said many times in connection with the war in Ukraine, that national borders cannot be changed by military force. Well, this is in fact the traditional way of changing borders, and it is only in the years after the Second World War that this method has not been used in Europe. Without the military strength necessary to guarantee the inviolability of borders, all talk of this is merely empty chatter and wishful thinking.
The build-up of military forces requires resources. Where are they to come from? European state finances are unsustainable, with large and growing deficits. Germany, the only EU country with a reasonable level of public debt, is now beginning to finance the build-up of its military forces through borrowing. It is difficult to see how European countries are to manage a sustainable build-up of their military forces without drastic cuts in welfare expenditure. Europe’s climate and energy policy is also a serious obstacle. Independent military forces require an independent industrial base, which climate and energy policy is in the process of destroying through high energy prices and, in addition, insecure supply from weather-dependent sources. Abandoning the costly investment in wind and solar energy would make funds available for military rearmament. Europe, including Great Britain, is now responsible for approximately 10% of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions, and even if the world’s climate depended upon this gas, European emission cuts matter little in a world where emissions increase year after year in populous developing countries. Moreover, much suggests that the so-called “climate problem” is grossly exaggerated and possibly non-existent anywhere except in the imagination.
What kind of future awaits Europe in a world where a few leaders in powerful industrial states negotiate among themselves according to the strength of the cards they hold? Such methods have never been entirely absent from world politics, but they appear to be the preferred method for those currently leading the United States of America. A fragmented and industrially weak Europe cannot have any leaders with strong cards in hand. But we do have the somewhat amusing and colourful traditions of different languages and relics of former greatness that tourists from the rest of the world may come and look at and amuse themselves with.
Rögnvaldur Hannesson is Professor Emeritus at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH).