If European leaders have really devised a strategy to raise awareness among their citizens that an armed conflict with Russia is viable, we can conclude that they are achieving it with flying colors. For some time now, the main heads of state and those responsible for European institutions have been insisting on the need to increase defense resources on the continent, in the face of the Russian threat.
What we are experiencing now is one more step in this escalation and there is now open talk of the real possibility of an armed confrontation between NATO and Russia. First it was French President Emmanuel Macron, who on Monday did not rule out sending troops from EU countries to Ukraine to participate in the fight against Russia. It was denied the next day by other European leaders, but yesterday, the president of the European Commission (EC), Ursula von der Leyen, once again placed this eventuality as something feasible. “The threat of war may not be imminent, but it is not impossible,” she noted. The EPP candidate to continue leading the Commission is promoting a vast defense investment program for all member countries. Rearmament is a reality and it is planned to follow the model of purchasing vaccines used to stop covid.
Sweden, which, like Finland, has abandoned its traditional policy of neutrality, has decided to reinstate compulsory military service that was eliminated in 2008, and its Government is studying defense plans in the event of a possible conflict. The general opinion in all countries bordering Russia is that if Ukraine loses the war, Vladimir Putin will continue his escalation in surrounding countries.
The weapons option is not the most popular in Europe and surely the speeches of recent days are in the direction of changing the pacifist chip of the majority of the population. The European Union is seeing how on one side there is an increasingly threatening Russia and, on the other, the United States where the option of Donald Trump’s victory and the subsequent withdrawal of his aid to Ukraine is increasingly probable. This is how this change in discourse is understood.
