Vladimir Putin and his brutal offensive against Ukraine have achieved what seemed impossible, the awakening of Europe. That is why the title of this article, taken from the magnificent editorial of “Le Figaro” of Paris, is not an admonition, but the confirmation of a fact that until a few months ago seemed impossible to achieve: the self-awareness of Europe. This is the result of the endangerment of Western values of which Europe has been the matrix that has been spreading throughout the globe. Values incompatible with forms of government that deny freedom, representative democracy with its defects, reason, globalization, respect for life and the decisions of its citizens.
The story designed by Putin to legitimize his armed aggression and unleash the most dangerous world crisis since World War II is absolutely unbelievable. Since 2014, with the war unleashed in the Donbas regions, Ukraine, by NATO statutes, would never have been admitted to NATO. Putin claims that Russia's security is at stake because of NATO's advances in Eastern Europe, which ignore what was verbally agreed when Germany was reunified and the Soviet Union disappeared in the 1990s. It forgets that one of the commitments of that time agreed by the US, the UK and Russia itself was to protect the sovereignty of Ukraine once it had handed over all its nuclear weapons in accordance with the new existing order. To protect the rights of Russian citizens in Ukraine, allegedly endangered by their “Nazi” government destroying the country, is unpresentable. One of the writers of the British magazine “The Economist” said, with grim irony, that Putin's strategy to win the “Super Bowl” was to destroy both the players and the spectators in order to declare himself the winner.
“The European disease” to which Nietzsche referred was an indispensable assumption for the success of Putin's narrative. The German turnaround, after decades of somnolence, is the best symbol of this Europe willing to fight for its values.
Joaquín Hernández, Ph.D.
Rector UEES
