Madam,
Reflecting on your recent subscriber event to mark the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the comfort of my peaceful living room in sunny Madrid, I’m wondering if here in my neighborhood anybody feels that we’re actually at war. I doubt so. Yes, there are no tanks on the streets, no rockets flying over our heads. I’m not aware of an air raid shelter anywhere in town, and we’re not stocking piling goods in the basement. I’ve also made no evacuation plans just yet. But listening to your recap of these past two years, and the possible implications for the next ones, I have the feeling the war will hit Europeans more and more. And I’m wondering if anybody actually has an intention to do something about it.
Shashank can probably spend hours listing all the equipment we need to send to Ukraine, and the bill will be huge. Assuming that after the next US elections Europe will find itself sandwiched between two hostile powers and not just aggressed by one in the East, my fear is that the support to Ukraine is actually peanuts compared to the resources Europe will have to divert to protect our way of life, our peace and our freedom.
Let’s start with the military side. It seems Europe’s militaries, especially if left alone by the US, are in a deplorable state. I’m not sure how a Europe attacked by Russia, and left alone by the US two years ago, would look like today in a high intensity conflict. If we want to restore our capability to defend ourselves on our own, the bill will make the recently approved €50bn for Ukraine pale. Adding the building up of a nuclear deterrent that actually works, unlike UK missiles fired from a submarine recently, increases that bill even further. This is money we will not be able to spend on other things, like infrastructure, healthcare, education, pensions and so on. Everybody in Europe will feel the results of the cuts we’ll need to make to fund defence. The value added in normal life of military equipment is basically zero. We’re wasting money, to be ready “just in case”. If all goes well, the billions spent on military equipment will be a complete waste. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans will also waste years of their lives building this kit, and sitting in barracks training for the day they will possibly have to use it. What a complete waste of money, time of life and brainpower that could be put to so much better use. But should we actually have to use this kit to defend ourselves against a Russian attack, the situation will be far worse.
I suspect that spoiled Europeans will revolt once their governments tell the electorate that spending will have to shift to defence. No subsidies for farmers? No free money to install solar panels? No new roads and schools? The likely outcome is votes for parties that opportunistically seize this opportunity to capitalise on discontent. These are likely to come from the extremes. We already see the advent of democracy-despising, populistic parties everywhere in Europe, before the real effects of the war start hitting at scale, tangibly for all of us in our everyday lives.
This leads me to another question: assuming we agree that we need to stop this development, who will have the courage to actually spell out what the only solution to fundamentally addressing this threat is? Who will have the guts to say openly that for Europe the only way to stop the threat from Russia is a regime change in Moscow? And who will come forward to openly say that this must be our clear goal? Listening to Arkady, including his excursions into centuries of Russian history, it seems very unlikely the Russian population will make regime change happen on their own. Russia has been exporting, incarcerating or exterminating dissidents for centuries. It is unlikely there will be any resistance that will bring about change from the inside. Russia is a country that has never accepted the wrongs of its past of dictatorship and imperialism, and it will keep behaving in the same way also in the future, threatening Europe. So far I cannot see any other way to stop this threat to Europe than a radical change in Russia, something comparable to 1945 for Germany.
Now, achieving that required huge sacrifices and costs, from Stalingrad to D-Day, leaving Europe littered with cemeteries and memorials. If we want to avoid that, we need ideas, and action. In today’s world it must be possible to unleash hell in Russia without overt warfare. It must be possible to destabilise the current dictatorship. Any means must be legitimate. Why not use divide et impera, a technique that has worked so well in many conflicts of the past, and throw Russia into a civil war? If 1917, the only attempt of radical regime change in Russia’s recent history, was triggered by poverty boiling over, let’s plunge Russia into poverty and mayhem. The eye of Mordor will then need to veer off from Ukraine and Europe, and look inward. We’ll then need to send somebody to throw a ring into a furnace in Moscow, avoiding “sudden death syndrome” on his way.
All this is miles away from our current sanctions rounds, our timid help to Ukraine. When I tease these thoughts with friends they look at me as if I’m talking Chinese, and I seem like a bloodthirsty revanchist and warmonger. Given your team’s immense expertise it would be great to hear your thoughts on how Europe can shift from a weak, defensive and reactive attitude, to a more assertive, decisive and solution-oriented approach to the war Russia has been waging on it for far more than the past two years.
