By Jean – Dominique Giuliani
By abandoning Ukraine, even before it was attacked, NATO and its allies have given up trying to dissuade Putin from attacking its neighbour. A few troops, even on exercise, might have sufficed… Ukraine is alone and the Ukrainians will pay a very heavy price for this renunciation.
But now Europe is also alone. For fear of the consequences, it did not imagine using force to deter and its allies’s of the Alliance showed no desire to get involved in this new tearing of the continent. It is therefore up to it to say whether it accepts seeing its environment at its borders gradually eroded by force.
Years of refusal to organize a collective and autonomous defense risk leading it where it does not want to return – an armed conflict – and where its allies would hesitate to follow it.
For the moment, convinced, perhaps wrongly, of its relative weakness, it is relying on them, even though they are far from the theater of operations and seem paralyzed by the idea of a more global war, the threat of which Russian transgressive aggressor whom it failed to dissuade.
Europe therefore sees the price to pay to stop this unjustifiable act increase every day. Moreover, the probability increases for it to be drawn into a conflict which may one day concern it directly. Europeans would then be bound by the Treaty of European Union (article 42.7) in solidarity with one another, in much more imperative terms than article 5 of the Atlantic Treaty: “In the event that a Member State is the object of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States owe it aid and assistance by all the means in their power”.
Will this commitment convince them to take the necessary decisions to oppose those who want to rewrite the already tragic history of Europe?
In view of the past, it is however only by their determination and their essential unity, by massive rearmament and reinforced coordination, by a strong and early reaction, that they would be able to stop a tragedy which, if not, could call others. /Argumentum.al
