Grandstand. Can “Power Europe”, this old French idea, recently reactivated by President Macron, come about thanks to Russian aggression against Ukraine? If the blockade of West Berlin by Stalin in 1948-1949 had played a major role in bringing about the emergence of European defence, the latter has until now been exercised largely within the framework of NATO. The Atlantic Pact had also been concluded on April 4, 1949, precisely at the end of this hostage taking of the former capital of the Reich.
Today, will the attack on Kiev allow the emergence of a real clean European power, and not just an Atlantic one? Certainly, this powerful Europe would not be opposed to the United States; it would respond, on the contrary, to the wishes of the Americans themselves, occupied since Barack Obama with a “pivot” towards Asia, and whose nativist rhetoric under Donald Trump has cast doubt on their Atlantic commitment.
Three types of European construction
Let us first define this notion of Europe as a power so as not to reduce it to a slogan. In reality, three types of European construction can be distinguished: liberal, solidarity and power.
The first was certainly the matrix of the Community and then of the European Union (EU), both on the economic level, with the promotion of market logic, and on the political level, with the defense of the rule of law on the continent and in the world: Europeans rely on shared rules to regulate conflicts, extending the old Wilsonian dream of peace through law.
The second, united Europe, was more sporadic but not absent, as evidenced by the assistance plans from which the former communist countries which joined the Union have benefited. Admittedly, the aid may have been too late and limited, but it partly explains why Poland is almost four times richer than Ukraine in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, when the difference was 10% in 1990.
The third, finally, Europe as a power, was largely absent, because, precisely, the European project is based on the promotion of logics of cooperation providing mutual benefits.
On the contrary, the logic of power is based on the idea of a zero-sum game, of defining a community of inhabitants, national or European, which opposes its neighbors. Powerful Europe has long been confined to the commercial domain, in particular through common responses to American protectionism which periodically resurfaces from Reagan to Trump, and to one-off industrial achievements, such as Airbus.
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