When I studied 19th-century Europe in grad school, the readings were heavy on contemporary intellectuals bemoaning the sorry state of the continent. The intelligentsia, always and everywhere, has been known for this particular train of thought, but it seemed especially pronounced in Europe, culminating, perhaps, in Nietzsche. He bemoaned himself straight into an asylum.
I wasn't there, so I can't say with more than booklernin' that European society had fagged itself out. Many of its writers, artists, professors, philosophers and others who lived by their wits believed just that, however. Europe seemed stagnant, its confidence undermined by crises, its foresight, blind, or so went large currents of thought.
It was my readings in this 19th-century societal ennui that came back to me yesterday afternoon as I read David Sanger and Steven Erlanger's Times piece, partially titled "Despair in Europe."
The cause of the correspondents' disheartening word usage was the Munich Security Conference, which concluded Sunday. Their article's opening lines set the tone. "As the leaders of the West gathered in Munich over the past three days, President Vladimir V. Putin had a message for them: Nothing they’ve done so far — sanctions, condemnation, attempted containment — would alter his intentions to disrupt the current world order."
In short, the conference's three-day zeitgeist was one of near helplessness; not yet panic, but it could easily turn in that direction if a certain bad guy were to act in the right way. NATO's secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, along with likeminded defense and intelligence officials, were the conference's Cassandras, bringing everyone down with recent intel forecasts of Putin poking one of NATO's smaller Baltic states in three to five years.
The forecasts may be recent, but this is hardly news. Analysts have warned of such a scenario for at least two years — ever since Putin did the once-unthinkable, bullying his way into Ukraine. He now has Russia on a war footing, its entire economy is geared for weapons manufacturing.
You might think a well-armed, sociopathic dictator's rather obvious intentions would have had the conference attendees popping anticonvulsant barbiturates. But, observed Sanger and Erlanger, "the warning did not appear to generate a very urgent discussion of how to prepare for that possibility."
Those in attendance, or most, anyway, instead spent much of their time patting themselves on the back for having increased their defense spending to 2% of GDP. Some in attendance also conceded that the 2% target is already obsolete, yet those acknowledgements quickly turned to discussions of how domestic politics would prevent them from doing more; that is, doing what's needed.
Italy’s director of the Institute of International Affairs, Nathalie Tocci, was unimpressed by, and harshly critical toward, two of the conference's main speakers. A third she simply felt sorry for. "Kamala Harris empty, [Olaf] Scholz mushy, [Volodymyr] Zelensky tired," she said. "Lots of words, no concrete commitments."
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba was harsher yet, and for good reason. "Our friends and partners were too late in waking up their own defense industries. And we will pay with our lives throughout 2024 to give your defense industries time to ramp up production," he said.
Sanger, Erlanger and defense analyst François Heisbourg's concluding remarks noted the "fundamental disconnect" that pervaded the attendees' past acts. "When Europeans thought Russia would integrate into European institutions, they stopped planning and spending for the possibility they might be wrong. And when Russia’s attitude changed, they underreacted," wrote The Times correspondents. Said Heisbourg: "This is 30 years of underinvestment coming home."
If philistine Europe slept its way through much of the 19th century, effete and dangerously purblind to the future, it would seem that history is repeating itself. We know where the continent's debilitating myopia led in the early 20th century — from extraordinarily bad to unspeakably worse; enough to make Schopenhauer and Nietzsche seem prescient.
My apologies for again quoting this stanza by the poet W.H. Auden. But it perfectly exemplifies the sentiments of the generation that lived through the horrors of WW II, caused by the horrors of WW I, caused by European blindness: More than ever / life-out-there is goodly, miraculous, loveable, / but we shan’t, not since Stalin and Hitler, / trust ourselves ever again: we know that, subjectively, / all is possible.
In this century, excepting Great Britain, Europe did trust itself. Its targeted victim trusted itself. Worse, they both trusted Vladimir Putin — Stalin and Hitler personified, though Xi Jinping is waiting in the wings. Virtually all of Europe forgot the lesson of the world's deadliest conflagration. "They stopped planning and spending for the possibility they might be wrong," to repeat Sanger and Erlanger. They then compounded their errors by underreacting, as did the U.S., as does the U.S., now that the isolationists have returned, full steam ahead backward.
I swear to you I have not gone neocon, which is another way of saying I have not lost my mind. Bush-Cheneyism had its way for eight years and showed only that its Weltanschauung was demonstrably stupid. I remain as opposed to military adventurism as I was in 2003. A belief in defending liberal democracy against the violent encroachments of murderous tyrants is another story. I keep hoping Europe and the U.S. will write its own with the same plot, but unfavorable circumstances are closing in.