It is not enough to always pressure the US to support Ukraine. Europe must seriously step up and in more ways than just militarily. Let me explain.
When Putin started the full-on invasion of Ukraine, he made it clear beforehand what his real demands were, and they all aimed against Europe, also the United States. His criticism of NATO, his talking point of NATO is code for he wants everything back the way it was during the Cold War plus a dash extra.
He wants NATO unraveled, the US out of Europe, and full dominion over what used to be part of the Soviet sphere.
People in Europe don’t seem to understand that completely. Or let me correct—some people in Europe, or the majority in Europe.
The Baltic countries understand, Finland understands, Poland understands. They’ve been steadfast in their understanding.
Let me make the controversial point that even Hungary understands and Slovakia does too. It’s just that Hungary under Orbán seems paralyzed with fear driven by the need for Russian oil and the strange alignment with some of Putin’s anti-liberal talking points.
Okay, I’ll get back to that a little bit later.
What does Europe need to do? It needs to step up, of course, with real security guarantees. That means troop commitments, military defense, and also helping Ukraine develop weapons. That’s the baseline. That’s the basic assumption. And that means there need to be European troops able to come to Ukraine’s help immediately.
There needs to be a no-fly zone, a protection against bombing, a no-fly zone for Russian airplanes in case it needs to happen. That should have happened in the beginning of the war. But again, everybody was too timid because Putin has been playing this game of mentioning the nuclear word and everybody’s scared.
Now, I know this is difficult. It upsets a lot of people for bad and good reasons. No one wants a full-scale war, but we cannot deny that we are in a low-level war already.
Europe may call it a hybrid war, but there is a war going on by Russia against the entire West. There have been factories put on fire in Berlin. People have been poisoned already back then in the UK. There are all kinds of things happening in Europe at the hands of Russia. This threat is real.
So there needs to be talk, more talk and more action of a complete disentanglement of Europe from Russia for the moment. As long as this goes on, as long as the threat is there, Europe needs to disentangle from Russia. It needs to also disentangle from China.
And I understand how Europeans feel about Donald Trump, but this talk about the United States being as dangerous as Russia or China is sheer lunacy. Let me say this again. It’s lunacy.
The United States is going through, I don’t know how to call it, a provocative moment in its history right now. It has a disruptor as president that believes he’s the CEO of the country or he acts like it. I don’t know what he believes but he acts like that. But let me explain this too.
The American principle of checks and balances means the president, the executive, needs to focus on the strength of the executive. The legislature, Congress, then needs to push back and the judiciary needs to push back too. Each of those three levels of power needs to push against each other and in this checking, that’s how democracy ideally thrives.
So if you’re looking at American democracy right now, you may be, depending on where you are politically, maybe a little bit confused, maybe a little bit upset, even frightened. Let this play out. It’s a shakedown, a shakeup, but it is not the end.
I trust in the selfish need of each member of Congress, Republican or Democrat, to eventually want to be reelected. This is not the worst scenario. So, get that out of your head from a European perspective.
Like Trump or don’t like Trump, it’s irrelevant compared with Putin or Xi. This is absolutely a non-comparison.
And the other thing—I believe Trump is serious in his desire to make peace. However, in his simplistic approach and in continuing a little bit the Biden approach of being scared of Putin or respecting him a little bit too much, he may underestimate Ukraine. So that I think is where the mistake lies. Do I question whether Trump has a commitment to real peace? No. That is genuine. It has shown. Do I think the way he’s doing it is correct? Not necessarily. But let’s see how this continues.
Any comparisons that people draw between Trump and much less palatable creatures in history are very overblown. So, America and Europe still are on the same wavelength. Democracy is still the game played by the United States and Europe.
But democracy is also where Europe needs to now be serious and this is where it can help Ukraine even more than in the military realm.
EU integration is something that will help stabilize Ukraine and it will also provide Ukraine with a long-lasting attractiveness that may be working to win back its former territories should they have to stay with Russia for a while. I’ll make another video on that, but this is probably East versus West Germany part two.
There needs to be continued civil support of Ukraine. Civil society in Ukraine is alive, but it must get stronger.
Now, Zelenskyy gave in to criticism of his restructuring of the corruption authorities. And I do believe Zelenskyy is genuine in the fight against corruption. I mean, anybody who has watched his television show, please do. It’s illustrative. You are underestimating Zelenskyy. This is all genuine. His interest in Ukrainian democracy, in fighting corruption is genuine, but the pushback is immense. So I believe it’s somewhere in season one, one of the episodes where he actually talks about how does a Ukrainian become a yoke and then he talks about the culture of bribery and overall it’s actually a remnant of Soviet style corruption.
So Ukrainian democracy needs to be stabilized. This is a long game and for that Europe will be needed.
Europe also will be needed for figuring out how to negotiate between Ukrainian, Polish, Romanian, German, French, and other agricultural interests. The EU is basically a club of countries fighting with each other over agricultural subsidies. And that’s also what played into Brexit. Sorry—the UK Brexited and still now has the same fisheries fight that they had within the EU. Don’t get me started.
Stabilization of Ukrainian democracy also needs to extend to stabilization and support for Moldova. Maybe Transnistria can be brought back into Moldova. Georgia needs to be supported. The current Georgian government is a little bit odd.
But when Putin falls, not if, when, this will all change. And then the EU needs to be ready with a game plan.
Armenia and Azerbaijan just had a war, but both are disappointed with Putin. Putin is desperately trying to get back. Trump just negotiated a peace agreement, wants to build this corridor. Iran and Russia are apparently already destabilizing it here. The EU needs to support as well. The EU needs to have a foreign policy game.
I teach EU. I’ve been teaching it for years. This is frustrating. The European Union is such a strong entity and it is so weak when it really counts and it doesn’t have to be.
So this is a call to action right now. European borders of course need to have military protection. They’re working on that.
The other thing that Europe is not so sure about sometimes is we need to support every effort against China, against the Communist Party of China. I didn’t dislike Angela Merkel, but she naively trusted Putin and natural gas deliveries and she also trusted China to put Huawei infrastructure into German telecommunications. That was an ill-advised move on several levels. That trust is misplaced.
As long as China does not give international companies the same rights as Chinese companies, there’s no deal. China can’t just be allowed to continue doing what they did. But that’s a different topic. I can be derailed easily. Let me stop myself here.
The EU needs to up its soft power game that goes beyond tourism, castles, beauty, history. It needs to be a pro-democracy soft power game.
That also means to support Hungary and Slovakia when it comes to oil and gas and Austria. Hungary is in a real pickle. It is too dependent on oil and gas and other European countries are always working to maximize their own interests. When it comes to actually living up to the promise of the EU, the EU frequently fails. And whether or not you like Viktor Orbán is immaterial. Don’t give Hungary and Slovakia an excuse to pull away from Ukraine.
The containment of Russia, Russia as it is now, needs to continue aggressively. However, it needs to be coupled also with the support for the Russian Democratic opposition and the support of dissidents inside and outside Russia. There are several Russians that are reporting on the war, that are reporting on Russia that don’t get the support that they should.
Europe should have, just like the US, every interest in a successful Russia post-war.
And the war needs to end justly. The war is only really over when the territorial integrity of Ukraine is completely restored, when Russia has started reparations, and when Ukraine has very strong Western security guarantees and really when Russia is back on the path of democracy.
Call me utopian, call me a dreamer, call me an idiot, I don’t care.
I don’t believe that Russia and democracy are incompatible concepts. This is why this war exists in the first place.
Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians are indeed very similar in many respects. That doesn’t justify a war. But here’s the kicker.
Ukrainians being dedicated to democracy and living in a country that actually wants to fight corruption, that wants to make life livable and having had several revolutions in that direction, is proof positive to the Russian people that being Russian or “Small Russian” or “White Russian” is not an excuse to not want democracy.
Zelenskyy himself grew up speaking Russian. A lot of people in Ukraine before the war felt affinity to their Russian brethren. Indeed, doesn’t mean that the war was wanted or needed or is justified.
But if you know that the similar people with a shared history and culture and mentality can want freedom and democracy and fight for it, then this is the biggest threat to Putin.
This is also why China wants Taiwan because the democratic development in Ukraine, the democratic opposition in Belarus, the democratic opposition that existed in Russia—Khodorkovsky, Nemtsov, Navalny and others—was proof positive that the Russian narrative that the Russian people don’t want democracy is wrong.
So the biggest job here is a combination of military and democracy support and then we will be on a good path. But for that Europe needs to step up. Stop hiding behind Donald Trump. I don’t like Donald Trump. I don’t have to.
Europe is strong enough to go this path and the future without a dictatorial Russia at the door will be much brighter.
Ceterum censeo Ucrainam esse defendam. Слава Україні!
[This was originally posted to YouTube as a video. This post is a slightly abbreviated transcript, preserving the oral style of the video.]
Erratic Attempts 