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In the wake of Donald Trump’s unconventional Ukraine policy, we have a new awareness in Europe of the importance of a strong European military defense. Donald Trump was clear already during his first term that the countries of Europe should pay more for their own defense. At the time this provoked strong reactions, and many considered Donald Trump to be undiplomatic and clumsy. In retrospect, most have admitted that he was right. And now Europe is also investing significantly more money in strengthening its military capability.
What has happened since Trump’s first term as president is above all that Russia has attacked Ukraine. We have a bloody war on the European continent and most Europeans agree that we should support Ukraine both financially and militarily. But we have also come to realize that we must strengthen the defense of our own countries. But with that, the fundamentally very interesting question of what we Europeans are actually supposed to defend has also gained a new relevance.
At first glance, it may seem obvious that we in the West must defend our freedom and our independence. We must defend ourselves against an aggressive Russia and we must defend our new allies and friends who were previously part of the Russian sphere of interest.
But what happens if we all ask the question of what it is we must defend from a more national perspective? It is nevertheless the case that Europe’s military defense is primarily organized by the various separate nations. The French defense urges young Frenchmen to risk their lives for France and the Swedish defense must motivate young Swedes to risk their lives for Sweden. So, what are all these young soldiers really supposed to be defending?
The interesting thing about this question is that it points to a paradox in the modern West. Internationalization and globalization have to some extent weakened our nation-states. The nation-states’ power over their own politics and their own population has to some extent been transferred to international organizations such as the UN, NATO and the EU. This allows us to claim that our western nations have to some extent been ruled by anti-nationalist politicians. So why should we all defend our various nations?
Again: in an internationalized world, we can be said to have to defend our freedom, our independence and our right to join any international organizations. But then the question becomes why a Swedish soldier should defend Sweden rather than the whole of Western Europe or why a Frenchman should defend his freedom in France if the same freedom also exists in Great Britain or Denmark.
What I want to get at is that the question of what it is we are really defending can make people think in somewhat more conservative ways. Because we defend not only our freedom and our prosperity but also our nation-states and our specific national cultures.
In the case of Ukraine, they are defending their right to be something other than a Russian vassal state. But they also defend their right to own and develop an identity that is something other than the Russian identity. In the same way, all of us Western Europeans can say that we defend our right to be Europeans on our own terms. We defend our right to own and maintain our own cultures and our own identities. We, of course, defend our sovereignty and our independence. But in doing so, we also defend ourselves, our culture and the cultural continuity that runs through history and that binds us together with the past and the future.
So perhaps we should think that the current conflict with Russia has at least contributed to strengthening the European identity. It has contributed to strengthening our self-esteem and our awareness of who we are and what we have. And that can probably actually be seen as something positive.