Europe at War.

• Author: Cox, Robert

American Diplomacy

May 1, 2022

www.americandiplomacy.org

Title: Europe at War

Author: Robert Cox

Text:

For the moment as western Europeans watch the nightly media display of Russian brutality in Ukraine, many instinctively feel it's a long way away. An echo of British Premier Neville Chamberlain's dismissal of Hitler's threats to Czechoslovakia in 1938 as a "quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing." One Czech emigree saw the fatuousness of Chamberlain's stance--Madeleine Albright. Balts and Poles, their memories fresh of Russian occupation, are clearly nervous. At greater distance, Portuguese, Greeks and Italians feel less threatened. French people show more concern with cost-of-living hikes--albeit driven by Russia's actions. Yet the violence is happening on all Europeans' doorstep. One false move, deliberate or careless, and NATO's Article 5 activates. Perhaps. Let us look at the complexities of the context in which this war has come to pass.

Ukrainians suffer--bravely. Sadly, this will continue. Russians too are suffering. All Europeans to a degree are prisoners of today's violence, war crimes, the war's duration, the nagging unpredictability of its outcome. And this on top of the

fragilizingCovidpandemic which is not over. Food and energy scarcities threaten. War-stoked inflation threatens welfare, jobs, and, for many, accustomed prosperity. With us too is the challenge of giving Ukrainians a prospect of something better than what Stanford historian Niall Ferguson called "the pity of war". Europe's biggest challenge since 1945 confronts citizens' willingness to bear restrictions and challenges politicians' imagination. Nor is it too early for the European Union to look ahead to the task of post-war rehabilitation.

We cannot predict the future. But to help us understand why we are here, let us take a look at Ukraine's, Russia's, and Europe's crisis from different angles.

Russia: an Unwieldy Empire

Your correspondent--an amateur Russian scholar and linguist - frequently focuses on the map of Russia. Behind Russia's proclaimed security fears lies a deeper problem of demographics. Russia is a huge country. Over 11 time zones it covers 17 million square kilometers (km2). Seventy-seven percent of its population of 144 million people lives in European Russia west of the Urals--27 per km2. The European Union's 447 million people occupy 4.23 million km2--a population density of 118 per km2. Russia has the treble problem of governing a vast and often inhospitable space; containing a relatively small and diminishing population; mastering a poor economic basis and performance. On its western flank Russia faces a densely populated and concentrated space with a vigorous economy and rule...