The European peace project was always about ensuring peace through socio-economic cooperation and mutual interdependence. That is how the EU managed to bond eastern and western Europe together. Strengthening these bonds is the reason why Russia remains pretty much isolated and without much support. That is also the reason why I want Ukraine to join the EU, even if the conditions for membership are not fulfilled.
Europe's cooperation with Russia was always in the hope that the same might happen here too. I mean, which country has an active interest in waging war against their own clients? Considering how Russia's economy is going down the drain right now, the war they started will cost them much more than they might be willing to admit.
If you want to guarantee peace, you must make war the more costly option.
Also, Europe has no army of its own and most western European countries were in a constant process of disarmament. How else can you reinforce peace other than through economic cooperation? Had Steinmeier and Merkel known that Putin would be capable of these atrocities, I'm sure they would never have pursued this foreign policy with Russia.
The refusal to let Ukraine join NATO was purely to appease Russia and who knows, had their membership not been refused maybe Russia would have invaded much sooner.
In hindsight peaceful co-existence through compromise turned out to be a futile hope. Certainly not as long as Putin is in charge. That still does not change the fact the Europe's best hope for peace remains mutual cooperation and economic interdependency.
There is
plenty of analysis available of what would happen if Germany would spontaneously cut itself off from Russian gas imports. This is not only a question about "being poorer" but about severely crippling your own basic supply facilities to the point of not even having basic goods anymore. Germany would essentially collapse (socially and economically) and trigger a recession that would endanger all of the European Union. We would basically hand Putin the EU on a silver platter and weaken one of the main things that is keeping Russia contained right now.
Here's the breakdown:
As you can see, the production of food, basic building materials and chemistry products (
including medicine) would basically cease to function.
How is that in the interest of Ukraine? Or are we forgetting that after the war, there will be the question of rebuilding Ukraine. How are we supposed to achieve that if the EU lies in shambles? This is not a mere question of turning your thermostat down a notch or two. Already European countries are suffering major recession due to inflation, rising energy prices and corona restrictions.
For sure,
in hindsight, there's a lot to criticize and both Germany and the EU are in the process of analyzing these faults. But this thread is about to devolve into simplistic political tribalism with some people taking this humanitarian crisis as a pretext to air their personal grievances with the EU. Criticize all you want, but lets maybe not put emotion above what is reasonable.
What Russia is doing right now is beyond reason and against their own best interests. Economic cooperation would have been much better in the long term. Our only fault was to assume that Putin would be a rational actor. Let's not forget, Putin is the one invading Ukraine and the war atrocities are committed in his name and his name only.
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