Preparing the counter-attack on Russia
Sergei Lavrov, Russia's seasoned foreign minister, dismissed the European Union with disdain, irony and derision when he appeared before the media after his meeting with his US counterpart Antony Blinken in Geneva. The head of Russian diplomacy wore the rictus of someone who believed he had already achieved a moral victory over the West: he had obtained, he said, a commitment from the United States to respond promptly and in writing to the demands of his boss, President Vladimir Putin. In the eyes of international public opinion, therefore, it seemed that the show of force, military muscle and threatening diplomacy had achieved its main objective: to re-establish Russia's world hierarchy as a major superpower, which necessarily entails meeting its demands, i.e. accepting to bow to them, an ostensible sign of capitulation due to the fear that the threats have aroused.
It turns out that neither the US nor the EU itself can simply accept such a scenario, not only because it would be evidence of the West's moral surrender to the force of totalitarianism and the violation of international law, but also because such a defeat would cause a chain reaction collapse of the democratic architecture of what we can still euphemistically call the free world.
That the US and the EU do not want a military confrontation is self-evident. They are well aware of the human and economic catastrophe it would entail. But it is also clear that they cannot remain impassive and allow the conviction to spread in international public opinion that they have been cowed by Russia's ordago. The feeling would spread that the amputation of territories such as Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Crimea, but also Lugansk, Donetsk or any other region that Moscow considers vital for its security, are susceptible to being torn away from its country, simply because they want to exercise their sovereign right to choose their partners, alliances and friendships. And beyond mere declarations in favour of a diplomatic solution, there are signs that the transatlantic alliance is preparing a counter-attack.
Washington and Brussels have repeatedly outlined this, and it seems that the weapon of 'unprecedented sanctions' against Russia does not remain mere rhetoric. Fundamental to shaping, articulating and enforcing them is unity among allies. In general terms, the aim would be to suffocate the Russian economy, at an enormous cost, yes, for the EU itself, but one that would put Russia in a much more vulnerable situation.
The outline of such sanctions would already be drawn, and would correspond to each possible scenario based on Russian behaviour. Retaliation would range from the complete severance of trade relations to Russia's expulsion from the SWIFT global financial transactions system. These measures are so brutal that alternatives are already being envisaged to alleviate the contingency of a total cut-off of Russian oil and gas supplies to the EU, whose energy dependence on Russia has become precisely its Achilles' heel. Including the essential chapter of hydrocarbons, the EU is the destination of 38 per cent of Russia's total exports, while Russia is the destination of a meagre 4.1 per cent of EU exports. Moscow nevertheless accumulates European investments worth 300 billion euros. It is this web of mutual interests that causes the differences of opinion among the EU-27, a division that Putin and his loyalist Lavrov are trying to encourage as much as possible.
The conditions therefore weigh heavily, but the stakes are objectively much higher. The time may have come for the new generations of Europeans to find in this struggle the new horizon that justifies their existence and their struggle to create a better world of freedoms and true democracy, values to which they had become so accustomed that it was unimaginable that they could be taken away from them.
The coming counter-attack will by no means be the end of the game. Many battles will remain to be fought. But it is comforting to know that the West is not giving up, and that this moment may be the turning point that halts what seemed to be its inexorable decline. Russia is a great country, to be sure, but what its current regime conveys is totalitarianism and unbridled ambition to dominate entire peoples it seeks to subjugate under the pretext of its own security. Fortunately, these are not the values of the EU, which has been ignored in the direct US-Russia talks, but will have to be reckoned with if it believes itself to be its own power and adopts the measures and sacrifices that are imposed. It will also be the moment when leaders capable of galvanising European citizens around the goal of defending what has taken centuries of blood and tears to achieve can emerge. A phenomenal challenge. Nothing more, nothing less.