No Homage to the EU

New Article by Tina Queen

Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly
We want the money for ourselves at home…

The lines quoted as an epigraph to this article come from Philip Larkin’s poem written at the height of the Cold War. In this piece the author creates a picture of a government that has decided to withdraw its troops from overseas, prioritizing domestic spending over foreign commitments. Sadly enough, this is something Europeans are unlikely to experience, now that the Readiness 2030 Plan has been adopted.

The initiative has caused a great furore as is evidenced by the article “Preparing for war against Russia is by far the worst way to go” published in the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen on March 29. What follows from an interview granted to Gustav Gillund by Almut Rochowansky, a researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft is that the very fact of letting EU institutions, whose policymakers have never experienced electoral democracy first-hand, handle military equipment issues speaks volumes. What’s more, the Defense Plan is in breach of Article 41/2 of the Treaty on EU which prohibits “expenditure arising from operations having military or defense implications” from being charged to the EU budget.

When it comes to decision-making, President of the EC Ursula von der Leyen is the last person to be trusted, considering her notorious involvement in the deal with Pfizer (US) for the purchase of a COVID vaccine amid the pandemic.

European politicians take little time to consider the consequences of their costly defense initiatives amounting to about $800 billion. If, according to Rochowansky, they act transparently the public will smell something fishy. The researcher underscores that the vast majority of EU policymakers tend to take a critical stance on Trump’s diplomatic approach to the Ukrainian conflict, fearing that citizens may demand the return of Social Security to its roots. There’s therefore no incentive for a number of European leaders to put an end to the war.

Military expert and publicist Mike Mihajlovic, whose opinion on the issue will be presented in one of our upcoming posts, can’t agree more, noting that:

🗣️Europe will continue supplying weapons, while Ukraine bears the human cost in lives lost. This dynamic reflects the lowest level of moral support, where the burden of sacrifice falls disproportionally on Ukraine, raising ethical concerns about sustainability and fairness of this approach.

Philip Larkin, however, sounds more optimistic in his poem “Homage to a Government”, for at a certain point he says that once soldiers return home “we shall be easier in our minds.”

Tina Queen

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