Europe needs to wake up: "We are facing clear military threats and we are not prepared"

Barcelona"There are many international actors interested in weakening Europe, which is the last bastion of liberal democracy." This warning from the former Italian Minister of Defence between 2014 and 2017, Roberta Pinotti, hovered over the room at the Sant Pau Modernista Site where 200 people invited by ARA attended the Enfoquem conference to analyze the state of European security. The diagnosis that Pinotti drew is very clear: Europe is a kind of garden in a wild world that has suddenly been left without its guardian and must now scramble to protect itself. It must wake up. The most explicit threat is the Russian one, but there are many others.

Pinotti, who spoke with the head of the International section of ARA, Francesc Millan, placed the beginning of the paradigm shift in 2008, when Vladimir Putin threatened NATO at the Munich Security Conference. Regrettably, no one paid him any mind. Not even the annexation of Crimea in 2014, nor the start of the war in the Donbas, were taken seriously. Nor was it taken seriously when, in 2022, the intelligence services of the United States and Great Britain warned European chancelleries about the concentration of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine and their plans for conquest. The former minister recalled that Europeans could not quite believe it. "We thought it was a simple show of force. We said, 'It is not in his interest; Russia has a fragile economy, why would he embark on a war?' We did not imagine that Putin wanted to reactivate the telephone line with Washington and return to sit at the table of the great powers. Putin does not care about the suffering of the population, and that is something we, the Europeans, do not understand."

At that moment it seemed that Europe was waking up from its dream, but there has been no move from words to deeds. For many reasons. Pinotti pointed out that the EU is designed for other objectives that are not defense, but said that ways should be sought to advance with concrete alliances of countries to circumvent the right of veto. Investing in defense, yes, but seeking a balance with social spending, as Pedro Sánchez defends. "I would have done the same as him with NATO," he confessed regarding the commitment to allocate 5% of GDP to it.

European weaknesses

In another panel, the doctor in international security Guillem Colom Piella took it upon himself to make it clear to the audience that Europe is not a strategic actor right now, and that it will not be one either. This bath of realism and humility preceded a very stark diagnosis. "For many years, little and poor investment has been made in defense. The result is that we now have clear military threats, the main one being Russia, and we are not prepared," he concluded. From another point of view, the migration expert and former MEP Anna Terrón wanted to downplay it. "We are not so far from where we were. We are not on the UN Security Council now, either. Our main weapon was soft power. And now it turns out that the world has changed," she said. Terrón agreed with Pinotti that for both Putin and Donald Trump, Europe is an enemy to be defeated because it represents a model contrary to their autocratic values.

Colom warned that it is not enough to increase conventional military capabilities, since threats are now much more varied, and pointed to the Ceuta fence episode from this summer. "The Ceuta fence would be Donald Trump's dream to have in Mexico. It is not true that Europe has a lax border policy," Terrón wanted to point out. Pinotti had already warned before that the goal of hybrid warfare is to create instability, whether by attacking communications or interfering in electoral processes.

The role of Catalonia

And what role should Catalonia play in all of this? Well, that was the question analyzed in the first dialogue by the director of ARA, Esther Vera, and the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau. For the minister, Catalonia has industrial and innovation potential that makes it an ideal territory to develop projects related to the defense and technology sector. "This is a sector that is currently concentrated in Madrid, the Basque Country, Asturias, and Andalusia, and we want to play our part based on our economic weight, and we account for 19% of the GDP," Dalmau wanted to emphasize.

Right now, one of the main European technological projects that Catalonia aspires to host is an AI gigafactory in Móra d'Ebre, an investment of more than 4 billion euros. But Dalmau complained about the slowness of European processes, which meant they needed a year just to submit the application. "We must increase defense capacity, but we cannot do so at the expense of social cohesion," warned the minister, as this makes societies more resilient. This is perhaps the European differential factor: "Seeking a balance between defense and social needs," in the words of Roberta Pinotti. Because if Europe renounces being Europe, what will have been the point of it all?