Europe is losing itself in the banality of war rhetoric. The facts are obvious: with Trump, the time has come—too late—for Europe to grow up and emancipate itself. The protective father is kicking it out of the house. And, besieged from the eastern corner, it must figure out how to organize its life. Thus arose the need for rearmament. Those with nuclear umbrellas should open up to the protection of all. Even Sánchez, always evasive in the face of bad news, was among the first to take up that banner. But the time came to explain the hows and the whys, and no one was able to construct a discourse that, without excess, made a virtue of necessity and gave it reasonable objectives and a framework.
Von der Leyen's haste and Macron's noise, who saw an opportunity to reestablish himself after having eclipsed himself—failure after failure on the French stage—have had a boomerang effect. Rearmament cannot be an objective in itself; it must have a societal narrative, an explanation of its rationale, and shared regulation. European societies, chastened by history, adapted to the logic of reasonably well-off societies, not fond of shocks, did not necessarily see the gravity and urgency of the situation. Without any strategic definition, there was only one path: instill fear in the hearts of citizens. And so we have found ourselves with grotesque initiatives such as appealing to citizens to understand each other. kits urgently to resist for three days in the event of a war emergency. Are we really at this point? Ukraine is more than a warning: we have a duty to save it. But is there a significant probability that any country in the European Union could be attacked at any moment?
Instead of mobilizing citizens, the alarm has generated fear and mistrust. And even President Sánchez, who has a nose for capturing the feelings of the environment, has begun to distance himself and lower the demand for weapons with which he had returned from one of his European meetings. And he has resorted to euphemisms and decided to quietly increase spending. In these times, weapons cannot be an objective in itself in a place like Europe. And if there is a need—and there surely is—it must be framed within an ambitious project to relaunch the Union that citizens can embrace. And it cannot only involve weapons.
We return to the structural issues of Europe, which the rise of the far right, along with the shift of much of the European right—more patriotic than Union—reveals. And which right now leads many sectors of the population to feel closer to Trump (or even Putin) than to the European institutions. Europe's problem is recovering a shared sense of purpose: if it succeeds, the need to rearm will be abundant. Otherwise, it will be difficult for citizens to see the need.
