Russian invasion of Ukraine forces Europe to redefine its future

It is Europe’s 9/11.

But Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, aiming to bomb its democracy and its independence out of existence, is still more than that.

The aggression confronts the continent – and Washington – with even more painful and difficult questions than Al Qaeda’s attack on the twin towers in New York. How the Western allies answer them could have a deeper, and more long-lasting impact than the “war on terror.”

There is one fundamental similarity. Russia’s attack has been quite literally a wake-up call: a frightening confrontation with a threat, and an uncompromising adversary, whose existence was known, but left complacently, even willfully, unattended for years.

But the adversary this time is incomparably stronger than Al Qaeda. Indeed European leaders have been making Russia stronger: For years they have been doing business with Mr. Putin, buying 40% of Europe’s gas supplies from him.

Until the tanks thundered into Ukraine Feb. 24, those leaders had convinced themselves that, far from constituting a security risk, this was a form of interdependence that would make a Russian attack on a European democracy simply unthinkable. This led them to pare back their military preparedness for what has now happened.

All of that has now changed.

The force with which the new reality is jolting Europe may be difficult to grasp for Americans.

One reason is geography: the scenes of carnage – and of Ukraine’s David-and-Goliath resistance – are playing out in the heart of Europe, a few hours’ flight from Berlin, Paris, or London.

But it’s also about history, echoing two of the darkest periods in Europe’s recent past. One is the Cold War, during which the Soviet Union used its military might to quash any tremor of reform by rolling tanks into Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, and by forcing martial law on Poland in 1981.

The other echo recalls Nazi Germany’s campaign of aggression and genocide. It is lost on few Europeans, even those too young to have experienced World War II themselves, that the last time such a fearsome foreign military force advanced on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was when the German army attacked in 1941.

For now, we are in the immediate post-9/11 moment, as Europe’s governments and people share a sense of shock, sadness, and anger.

There is unity, too. In the 27-nation European Union, even countries which have traditionally been reluctant to take political or economic issue with Mr. Putin have backed unprecedentedly harsh economic sanctions. Within NATO, even an initially skittish Germany has backed beefing up troop numbers in member states nearest Ukraine, and rushing more defensive weapons to Ukraine.

Still, having ruled out direct intervention, NATO knows that Ukraine’s short-term fate will rest with the valiant, though hugely outmatched, Ukrainians.

And more difficult policy questions lie ahead, as they did after 9/11. Not just how to respond to the immediate attack, nor even how to exert the heaviest possible cost on the attacker. They are about how to prevent Mr. Putin from going further, or from using his attack on Ukraine to cow other nearby states.

Such steps will mean more sacrifices for European citizens at a time when rising energy prices, and inflation, are already hitting families hard.

Any effective, longer-term response will mean action on two fronts – military and economic.

Since the end of the Cold War, Europe has been reveling in a “peace dividend,” scaling down expenditure on conventional military forces in favor of smaller-scale anti-terror operations or policing missions. Until the Ukraine invasion, NATO seemed to have lost its original, Cold War mission without having found a coherent alternative.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump wondered what NATO was for, especially when so few European states were ready to increase their military spending. French President Emmanuel Macron, a few years back, described the alliance as “brain dead.”

Now, there’s not just talk among European capitals about stepping up military spending to the 2% of gross domestic product they have long promised; there are real signs of action. With tens of thousands of anti-Putin protesters on Berlin’s streets, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced plans Feb. 27 to spend some $112 billion to bring German defense outlays up to the NATO minimum. Europe and Germany, he told an emergency session of parliament, had entered “a new era.”

And for the first time, the EU agreed to spend $500 million on defensive weaponry for Ukraine.

An even greater challenge, however, will lie in freeing Europe from its energy dependence on Russia, thus denying Moscow – whose economy is heavily dependent on energy exports – a major source of revenue.

In the short term, that may prove impossible. Europe’s reliance on Russian imports is simply too great, and the likely price spike from seeking alternative sources would be huge.

Yet here, too, there are signs of incipient change. Germany has now commissioned a pair of terminals to handle shipments of liquefied natural gas as a move to begin diversifying its energy supplies.

The EU is also planning to unveil new policy targets this week to boost its energy independence. Measures are expected to include an increase in natural gas storage ahead of next winter, and a plan to cut Europe’s consumption of fossil fuels by 40 percent by 2030.

Those plans will cost taxpayers money. The open question is whether ordinary Europeans’ anger at Mr. Putin’s invasion will be sufficient to sustain a willingness to make the economic sacrifices such responses will require.

The immediate outrage over the invasion is not in doubt. Nor is widespread admiration for the Ukrainians’ resistance. And there is another sentiment abroad, which suggests that the shift in mood could indeed prove enduring: raw astonishment, and a sense that Europe has arrived at a watershed moment.

That feeling has been unmistakable on the faces and in the words of demonstrators, young and old, in cities across the continent.

And in a question asked again and again: How can this be happening? In Europe. In 2022?