By Julian French.
“Forget these frivolous demands which strike a terror to my fainting soul”. So pleads the Devil’s agent Mephostophilis to Doctor Faustus in Christopher Marlowe’s Goethe-inspired play.
Faustus has just agreed twenty-four years of power and luxury in return for the eternal damnation thereafter of his soul. The opportunity Moscow seized to annex Ukraine-Crimea was made possible by three factors; Europe’s energy dependency, Russian investments in European financial centres most notably London and European unilateral disarmament.
Today, Russia supplies EU member-states with 25% of their oil and gas. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland import between 70% and 100% of their gas from Russia. Russia has also created a very strategic cartel called the Gas Exporting Countries Forum which holds up to 70% of the world’s reserves. Russia is playing hard poker as Europe as ever plays bad chess.
The defence figures alone speak for themselves. The US invests roughly $100k per soldier in 2014 compared with an average European investment of $24k with the interoperability gap between US and European forces growing daily. And, whilst the US can deploy some 12.5% of its force many Europeans can only deploy on average 3.5% .
Moreover, whilst the US spends only 36% of its defence budget on personnel some Europeans are spending between 70% and 75%. Russia is investing some $700bn in a new military by 2020. Now, I am no nostalgist about defence. States should only have the minimum military power commensurate with the achievement of legitimate foreign and security policy goals.
All of this makes President Obama’s speech in Brussels last week sound not a little desperate. “Going forward, every NATO member state must step up and carry its share of the burden by showing the political will to invest in our collective defence and by developing the capabilities to serve as a source of international peace and security”.
Not a chance! As he was speaking I was talking to a high-ranking NATO officer who told me bluntly the Alliance can no longer carry out the very collective defence President Obama referred to. Another senior NATO officer mused with me about how far the new Russian Army would make it across Europe before it was stopped. Capability, will and intent are the stuff of power not wishful thinking. Now, I do not expect Russia to roll across Europe but the Baltic States are rightfully concerned.
There are two kinds of state in today’s world; those shaping reality and those denying it. Unless Europe’s hopeless leaders begin to take a long view about the emerging big global picture then something very nasty is going to happen to Europeans…again!
In his dying hour Faustus faces up to the consequence of his hubris as he watches the hand of a clock move inexorably towards his damnation. “O lente, lente currite noctis ecquis”, he pleads – “Oh slowly, slowly run the horses of the night”.
Europe: Faust or Whore?
