We built Europe to live in peace, but war haunts us. Progress pushes us to a post-industrial society, dominated by technology, where the eternal life of human beings is even being considered and, even so, war is on our heels.
Since the fifteenth century, Europe has been a pioneer in social movements that have dignified the life of man. Freedom and individual rights, equality before the law and tolerance, secularism and private property, the defense of what is ours against the arbitrariness of absolutist powers, have been the conquests of our ancestors. Millions lost their lives shaping the liberal state, building a code of civic virtues, a democratic tradition that has taken root almost everywhere in the world. Even where it hasn’t, as in China and Russia, the free market is the main beam that supports everything.
Liberalism has taken us from ax to pixel and we should be thankful, but then how do we avoid destruction? How is it possible that the same political system that protects and dignifies us embraces the most oppressive forms of economic power, militarism and imperialism, how is it possible that European governments have allowed themselves to be influenced by both left and right radicalism? ? How have they abandoned centrality to embrace the most banal populism?
Only yesterday the European Council took a decision that betrays the essence of Europe. The heads of state ordered more perimeter fences to be erected to cut off the flow of people, immigrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East, survivors of wars and famines seeking a better, more dignified and secure life. The open and cosmopolitan Europe that our ancestors thought of as an alternative to territorial confrontation is vanishing.
Europe at war closes in on itself and becomes small. Because?
I think one reason is a lack of leadership and another is a lack of honesty.
Macron and Scholz should lead. It is their obligation, but they do not. They don’t know how. The French president talks a lot about the strategic autonomy of Europe, but it is impossible without a common foreign policy and without knowing what will become of Russia. It is pure entelechy and, in addition, the countries of the East prefer to depend on the United States. Macron’s European rhetoric leads nowhere.
The German chancellor also talks about radical changes, theorizes about the Zeitenwende, the period of transition to a new order, but he doesn’t do anything practical either. He philosophizes and doubts. He doesn’t act.
The Leopards for Ukraine are a good example. Not because of an understandable reluctance to have German main battle tanks on the Ukrainian plains 77 years after the end of World War II, but because Rheinmetall, the company that makes them, says it will take a year to condition the 200 it has in stock. . A year ago Scholz could have ordered these tanks tuned up, but he had a very incompetent defense minister. He could have fired her, but he waited for her to resign, something he didn’t do until a month ago.
Scholz does not make decisions. He is a drag as was Merkel. It is not good for Europe that Zelensky has been this week in London, Paris and Brussels, but not in Berlin.
Germany is a problem for its lack of leadership. The commendable efforts to overcome the ravages of the Third Reich seem not to have been enough. 15% of the electorate supports the neo-fascism of Alternative for Germany. There are far-right anti-democratic groups that conspire to destroy the state. Reichsbürger is a Nazi and anti-Semitic movement, which the police dismantled last December. There were 25 detainees throughout the country. They had weapons and were planning to storm the Reichstag, but they don’t talk about it anymore. As if it had not happened. A country that for decades has wondered how to overcome Nazism, the engine of Europe and its liberal principles, now does not look in the mirror.
This honesty deficit further compounds the weakness of leadership.
Macron suffers too. Two thirds of the French oppose the reform that he has proposed for pensions. They consider that delaying the retirement age from 62 to 64 years is a loss of rights, the erosion of the social protection system that was built after World War II.
Macron argues that there is no other remedy due to the demographic decline and the lack of financial resources. At the same time, however, he announces the disbursement of 100,000 million euros in seven years for the Armed Forces, more than what is needed to guarantee pensions. He says it is necessary for strategic autonomy, an abstract concept that the public does not understand. The protests are massive and violent.
The State that does not prioritize the dignity of ordinary people loses its democratic rationale. It’s the only thing that matters. Without this dignity there is no civic virtue and without civic virtue there is no social progress. This is the model that Europe has given to the world and that Europe itself has endangered. A year of war in the Ukraine has made that very clear.
