StrasbourgHehomo smartphone, this species we've become by spending hours glued to our cell phone screens, is so accustomed to rapid input that it sometimes struggles to perceive the depth of the landscape around us.
And the landscape we Europeans—a species, by the way, under reconstruction—woke up to this Wednesday was serious: in the early hours of the morning, the Polish army shot down Russian drones flying over its airspace, considering them a threat. Translation: an exchange of war actions between NATO—and the European Union—and a Russia ruled by a leader openly nostalgic for Soviet imperialism.
The scenario is unprecedented. The scenario—although insistently announced because Moscow has been pushing its luck for some time—would have seemed like science fiction four years ago. The scenario accentuates concerns. The scenario opens a new phase of hostility between the West and Russia. We must not ignore the scenario.
"Europe is fighting. [...] Europe must fight," Ursula von der Leyen said this morning from the Strasbourg parliament. Listening to her, I imagined her advisors making last-minute changes to adjust the speech so that it sounded worthy of Putin's latest resounding challenge. Von der Leyen sounded forceful when she said: "Europe is fighting, and we will defend every square centimeter of our territory." A quarter applauded. She also sounded forceful when she asked: "Does Europe have the stomach for a fight?" A quarter applauded.
The applause in the beautiful city of Strasbourg, where war seems like a distant joke, made me think of another beautiful European city, Odessa, where war is a horrifying truth. Two weeks ago, in beautiful Odessa, the spokesman for the Ukrainian Navy told me another powerful statement: "If Ukraine loses this war, the next day a Russia-led Ukraine will attack Europe."
Powerful statements often seem alarmist. Is it alarmist to talk about the risk of a bigger war in Europe? The answer varies dramatically depending on whether you're talking from Warsaw or Barcelona. Does Europe have the stomach to fight? More than stomach, what Von der Leyen should be asking is whether Europe has the capacity to fight. The answer exposes Europe's great weakness today: its famous strategic autonomy is still an adolescent illusion, and the continent's security remains in the hands of the hopelessly unpredictable United States.
"To achieve strategic autonomy, mental emancipation is first necessary," said a prominent voice in the European Parliament this week. This is Europe's great struggle. Today's European landscape is decisively different from the pre-2022 European landscape. In that scenario Kiev was just another tourist destination for thehomo smartphone. In today's scenario, the Ukrainian trenches are filled with men fighting and dying with their cell phones in their pockets.
It's hard to ignore the change in scenery, in landscape, in Europe, in the world.
