Nato, like the European Union, was born from the ashes of World War II. The United States did not want to abandon the European continent in 1945 as it had done after the First World War and it was proposed to preserve the western europe out of the reach of Soviet communism, which had already occupied half a continent. All the territory that remained behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ that divided Europe for four decades.
The Atlantic Alliance had a clear mission until the end of the Cold War: to confront the Warsaw Pact. So when the communist military alliance dissolved after the breakup of the Soviet Union, NATO began to be viewed suspiciously because its usefulness appeared in doubt.
For years the European and American governments looked for jobs for which it had not been created: It was used in the 90s as a military force to stop, with successes and errors, the wars in the Balkans. It was used in anti-terrorist operations and even in naval missions to prevent the arrival of barges of migrants and refugees from North Africa.
The Administration of Donald Trump came to question the US commitment to NATO, its key to the vault, while French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of the body being “brain dead”.
(You can read: ‘Ukraine’s entry into NATO would cause World War III’: Russia)
Then the tanks moved and the big war returned to Europe. Leaving aside the civil wars in the Balkans in the 1990s, the Russian attack on Ukraine It is the first war between states on the European continent since 1945. Not even in the worst moments of tension of the Cold War in Europe was it possible to shoot as it is now done in the southeast of Ukraine.
The imperialist ideas of past centuries, of Russian President Vladimir Putin, brought the war to its neighbor Ukraine, to European soil. More than seven million, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration, fled to take refuge away from the bombs and Russia was totally isolated from the rest of its continent.
(Also read: ‘We are facing a new undesirable international order’)
Vladimir Putin was wrong in calculating that the Europeans and Americans would not help Ukraine as they are doing
Vladimir Putin was wrong in calculating that the Europeans and Americans would not help Ukraine as they are doing and NATO recovered its traditional mission, to deal with Russia.
The triumphant walk towards kyiv was aborted and Europeans, Americans and Canadians turned, with increasing force, to arming the Ukrainians to resist. If in the first weeks they hardly sent bulletproof vests, personal weapons or helmets, little by little they increased their support even now promising that in weeks they will start sending powerful heavy tanks German Leopard 2, British Challenger 2 and American Abrams.
Hundreds of artillery pieces or European armored personnel carriers, Turkish attack drones and ammunition taken from the arsenals of the former Warsaw Pact countries now members of the European Union and NATO defend the Ukrainians, who in view of the evolution of the fighting no longer accept anything other than the withdrawal absolute removal of the Russians from all the occupied territories. When that happens, Ukraine plans to ask for both war reparations and an international trial against those responsible for launching the military attack.
(Keep reading: Zelensky asks his allies for fighter jets on his second trip abroad)
The resurgence of NATO
The Russian aggression on Ukraine revived NATO and its essential mission, the protection of the northwestern space from a possible Russian attack. And it served to see in practice the motto of “all for one” established in article 5 of its founding treaty. French, German, British or Spanish troops, planes or tanks moved to protect the Baltic republics, Poland or Romania.
The war generated a form of recovery of the idea of the ‘West’, understood as Europe, the United States, Canada and some allies In the style of Japan, South Korea, Australia or New Zealand, the democracies of the north of the planet (plus the peaceful ones) against the autocratic Russia of Vladimir Putin and, after it, the Chinese giant.
The conflict also served for the United States to return to Europe. If the Barack Obama Administration began to talk about the “pivot to Asia”, to give more importance to the confrontation between the two great powers, China and the United States, this war saw how the Biden Administration regularly returned to civil and military conclaves and meetings in Europe and how Washington was increasing the number of soldiers redeployed in central and eastern Europe by tens of thousands. They are not the numbers of the Cold War but the trend is upward.
(You may be interested in: Why have Latin American countries refused to send weapons to Ukraine?)
The attack also further solidified the European ranks. Moscow gambled that Europe would drop its support for Ukraine as soon as it began to suffer the economic effects. Europe would be cold this winter and inflation, with the historic rise in energy prices, would devour the pockets of Europeans, who would jump on their governments. If in a few months between May and August the situation seemed to be heading in that direction, in recent months it has been seen that Moscow was missing the mark.
Europe currently pays for natural gas in the wholesale markets at prices lower than those at the start of the war despite having stopped importing 40% of the gas it consumed from Russia and close to 20% of the oil.
The country of the Kremlin was isolated in the old continent, with the only hand of its vassal Belarus
(In other news: With heavy tanks, the West seeks to break Russian fortifications)
The supplier diversification plans and the savings achieved in recent months allowed us to spend the winter without blackouts and with heating. The economy performed better than expected, with the unemployment rate at 6.1% in December in the Eurozone, its lowest level since the creation of the euro more than 20 years ago.
Without fear of those economic consequences that were finally much less serious than expected, The Europeans were approving new packages of sanctions every month that corrode the Russian economy, for example, expelling it from the international bank transfer system Swift or freezing in international banks more than 300,000 million dollars of reserves of the Russian Central Bank.
The war also generated a movement that may be fundamental because it will take Europe decades to trust Russia again. The Kremlin’s country was left isolated on the old continent, with the only hand of its vassal Belarus, a puppet state controlled by Moscow and led by Alexander Lukashenko, known as “Europe’s last dictator.” Neither traditional partners like Serbia have wanted to go hand in hand with Moscow.
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