Not with a bang, but a whimper

Europe’s long war shortens – The (Brexit) party’s over

I launched this newsletter in June secure in the conviction that Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February would be truly transformative for Europe (hence Twenty-Four Two since you ask). 

The war and its after-shocks would, I believed, rewire European political opinion, end decades of using armies as little more than public-employment programmes, create a powerful security and rule-of-law lobby inside the EU, compel eastward expansion, and change the terms of the UK's withdrawal. At the time, it seemed epoch-defining. As it turns out, I underestimated the pace of change.

Back then, a long and grinding land war (Bosnia on a grand scale) was bound to end (following joint intermediation by Elon Musk and Roger Waters) with Russia in long-term control of Crimea and much of Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhia. The Ukrainian authorities would hate it but - like the Bosniaks before them - they would eventually sign a truce, maintain their long-term claim, and bank the international goodwill. Reconstruction aid would pour in, Kyiv would have established the principle of non-neutrality, and EU membership would beckon. Cordial European relations with Moscow – although irreparable until Vladimir Putin’s removal or defenestration - would start to rebuild.

Two thousand kilometres west, it was already clear that Vote Leave’s entryist project for the Conservative Party had failed and eventually the “politics of gravity” would pull the UK back into the EU's orbit. But, since not even the Tories would be stupid enough to replace Boris Johnson with someone worse, a less amateurish Brexiteer - a Rishi Sunak or a Penny Mordaunt – would soon take office. They would end the game-playing over the Northern Ireland protocol, restore pre-Johnson governing decorum, exile quarter-wits from the cabinet to the backbenches and challenge the Labour Party's six-point lead in the long campaign for re-election. The EU’s gravitational pull could have been resisted for another five years.

The mighty fall

Four months on, it’s now possible – albeit improbable once the Russians retreat to more defensible positions – that the war could be over within weeks with Ukraine having taken back all the territory seized since 2014. And that’s not even half of it. The Russian military is now so fragile that Georgia and Moldova could be tempted to open second and third fronts to retake South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transnistria.

Moscow is staring into the abyss: the end of seven decades of Great Power status – a loss that would only be accelerated if Putin and his sidekicks resort to using even one tactical nuclear weapon. David Petraeus isn’t just anyone. In a “hypothetical” last weekend, the former commander of international forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and CIA director predicted that NATO would retaliate by destroying all Russian forces within Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders and sink the Black Sea fleet.

Russia’s political and military leadership knows that executing a nuclear order from the president will leave them with nothing except their nuclear arsenal. Thirty years of systematic looting have left Russia with little to show for itself beyond commodity-export revenues and a now humiliated military. The death cultists on state television are one thing. Do the rich, connected and venal really want a future as a humbled Chinese client state unable even to impose its will on the near-abroad? And for what? Putin isn’t even trying to take Ukraine anymore – just hold onto part of the wasteland he’s created in the Donbas depleted of Russian speakers he’s turned into mortal enemies. Personally, I think they blink.  

Ukraine, on the other hand, will emerge from the war as a European giant and no longer as a buffer-state supplicant in the easternmost corner of the EU’s eye. In a post (The War In Ukraine Has Already Changed Europe) for the 1945 newsletter, Andrew Michta - a national-security specialist at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Bavaria - makes two profound observations:

1. “Kyiv’s determination to fight on until victory is continuing to degrade the Russian military in a way that lowers the threat that Putin will be able to pose to Europe in the coming years, thereby freeing America’s resources to address the rising Chinese threat in Asia”.

2. “Once in NATO, Finland and Sweden will bring to the alliance additional real exercised military capabilities. Most importantly, what is not often discussed today is that Ukraine has arguably the most capable military in all of Europe, save for the US forces deployed here”.

This will have profound implications for Europe. Traditional Franco-German security doctrine was already crumbling in the wake of the invasion and the emergence of Poland, the Baltics and the Nordics as bulwarks of the broader western alliance. The French hesitated but have since moved quickly to adapt to the new order while the Germans – besides the Greens – have still not fully accepted how much the post-1989 settlement has been upended. But they’ll get there because they have no choice.

The inaugural summit this week of the new 44-nation European Political Community (EPC) – incorporating the EU, its applicants and neighbours – was predictably anodyne. This too will change because it has to. Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia will not be ready to join the union for a long time but, unless they are brought into a substantive halfway house, they will be open to seduction from alternative undemocratic powers. This applies equally in the western Balkans.

The Bruegel think tank has developed a realistic blueprint for the EPC, which would focus on planning and funding cross-border infrastructure, energy connectivity, joint procurement, and – crucially – tapping into Ukraine’s wartime experience to deepen cooperation in defence, counter-terrorism, cybersecurity and fighting state-sponsored misinformation. As it evolves from a forum into an organisation, the EPC should become the hothouse for developing a workable multi-speed Europe that incorporates the European Economic Area (EEA), and the patchwork of association agreements, cross-border agencies and institutions.

In office but not in power

The EPC provides a way back for another summit attendee: the UK. Not for prime minister Liz Truss obviously. The end of the British summer also marked the end of the six-year civil war inside the British right. Both sides lost. The Conservatives may stay in office until the bitter end in January 2025 – with or without Truss – but their government is already over.

I enjoy reading about intra-Tory bloodletting as much as the next man (see Katy Balls, James Forsyth, David Gauke, and Tim Shipman) but I recognise it’s just sport at this stage. This is now a caretaker administration. The polling evidence is consistent and overwhelming. Take just the latest example: today’s poll from YouGov, conducted on 6-7 October. Not only are the Tories 30 points behind but Truss lags Labour Party leader Keir Starmer as “best prime minister” by 43/14% and on every policy metric except “keeping taxes low”, which is hardly surprising. Regret for leaving the EU leads by 17 points in total, among all age groups under 65, and across every region.

Starmer will lead the next government and may even do it without needing to fall back on the Liberal Democrats. Leading by enough to ignore the Scottish National Party is a significant campaign advantage but the Lib Dems’ absence from the governing majority would remove the most consistent voice in favour of rejoining the EEA as a medium-term goal.

Starmer’s step-by-step return to orbit should dovetail nicely with the evolution of the EPC as he prioritises the negotiation of a security pact, enhancement of intelligence sharing and data equivalence. While unambitious, the baby steps on the economic side – agreements on veterinary standards for trade in agricultural products, on mutual recognition of conformity assessments and professional qualifications, on cultural-sector labour mobility, and on research programmes – will still feel like a significant change to the post-2019 relationship.

But five years isn’t enough to complete the repairs. A landslide would reduce Starmer’s incentive to introduce proportional representation in national elections – the only sure-fire way to ensure Vote Leave never returns to Downing Street. This safeguard will be necessary since the job of surrendering to the EU’s gravitational pull is the work of at least two terms and much of the first will be devoted to the unpopular task of restoring the public accounts from Brexiteer vandalism.