War in Europe E-Book

Jamal Qaiser

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 280

Beschreibung

Europe has become the battlefield of a merciless proxy war between the superpowers. The war erupted in 2022, but it has been in the offing for more than two decades.   In the wake of  the Cold War, Western Europe sought to achieve a peace process in Eastern Europe. The Federal Republic of Germany's Ostpolitik (German policy towards Eastern Europe)  is an example of this. Russia became a partner, almost even a friend. However, at the same time, NATO, under US leadership, expanded further and further east. This development brought the peace process to a standstill and eventually reversed it. Today, Russia and the USA are irreconcilably opposed to each other in Europe. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in spring 2022 has made any peaceful agreement between Europe and Russia impossible for the foreseeable future. Europe is committed to the USA and not only vis-à-vis Russia. For according to the will of the USA, this front is also to be positioned vis-à-vis the People's Republic of China.   This fatal development is critically connected to the fact that Europe has not succeeded in creating an independent and autonomous position for itself in world politics. The "Old Continent" has become dependent on the USA, Russia and China, from which there seems to be no escape. Europe has become the pawn of the superpowers. The battle for Europe has begun.

Leseprobe

Dedicated to the next generation

This work is dedicated to our children, nephews and nieces.

They all represent the next generation. May they grow up in peace and freedom and, as adults, ensure that successive generations can also thrive in peace and freedom.

Andreas Dripke, Hang Nguyen, Jamal A. Qaiser, Dr. Horst Walther

"Callous individuals who do not see the needs of the people and do not take them to heart should not be allowed to hold leadership positions".

Michail Gorbatschow, 1987

"Europe is not a place, it is an idea".

Bernhard-Henri Lévy, 1995

"Europe now finds itself suspended between a past it seeks to overcome and a future it has not yet defined".

Henry Kissinger, 2014

"Russia is no more than a regional power standing alone".

Barack Obama, 2014

"The war has surprised a society in Germany that has long been lost in often dull debates on privatism". It was about striking a balance linguistically, gender equality and all kinds of variants of "you mustn't". Those who liked could participate there with little life experience and a lot of moral will to shape things, no big deal. We now seem to lack the earnestness for a debate on war and peace".

Boris Palmer, 2022

Contents

Preface

The dependent continent

Proxy wars on European soil

Old world and new dependence

The idea of a peaceful Europe

Europe losing its impartiality

Freedom versus unfreedom

The free West against the Sino-Russian axis

First and Second World Wars

The high death tolls

Innumerable wars

"Everyone knows WW III to be a nuclear war"

Quo vadis Europe?

What Europe means (to us): the torn unity

Why we need Europe

Euro: The last collective feat

Inexorable species extinction

Climate change: often mentioned, little done

Resource consumption on the increase

Dogma of the growth economy

Overpopulation : Too many of us

Economic inequality on the upswing

Conflict potential abounds

Europe needs democratic legitimacy

Europe needs more influence

Europe must take stand

Europe must establish a clear mission for itself

How we can recreate Europe

Europe looks out primarily for itself

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Human Rights violations in the EU

Global power centres

International law

Basis for a better world

Security Council grapples with veto trap

Multilateralism has had its day

Congress of Vienna: Foundation of diplomacy

USA shuns international organisations

EU "comeback" since 24 February 2022

A run on NATO

No one has declared World War III

Angela Merkel's new world order

Russia on the fence

Russia shuffles up Europe

The Russian worldview

Perestroika and Glasnost

Putin's dream of Great Russia

The struggle for Ukraine began in 2004

UN appeals to OSCE remain futile

Crimea: Part of Russia since Catherine the Great

Home of the Black Sea Fleet

Russia seizes Syria

Four decades of Assad

The UN plan for Syria

Private mercenaries on the rise

Russia's charm offensive in Africa

Putin's world history spin for children

Operation "Iron Fist"

Russian invasion of Ukraine

Germany soft-pedals with Russia

Ukrainian-Western offensive

Germany gets ready for war

It is all about gas and money

America's "sacred obligation"

Ukraine's national and presidential courage

Comedian, corrumpist, war hero

All but China vote against Russia

"Alliance Treaty" between China and Russia 2022

Millions flee Ukraine

Vladimir Putin: "The weak get beaten"

Putin captures German hearts

Bounty on Vladimir Putin's head

Warmonger Joe Biden

Many weapons generate much war

Ukraine not Russia's last point of call

China buying Europe: Silk Road

New Silk Road – dream come true

China's charm offensive in the West

Italy at helm, European dwarfs to follow

17 plus 1

Europe a Military Dwarf

Europe's guardian loses military edge

Hypothetical attack on Europe

The West fights back: NATO

NATO's zigzag course

Nine-Eleven – first case of alliance

European army faces huge hurdles

The world is re-arming

Killer robots on the march

Arms race in space

Cyber war – war on the Internet

Warning to the digital society

Intelligence agencies destabilize cyber world

Attack on vaccines

Hacker attack on Putin

Nuclear war: Who wants it?

The war triumvirate

USA: First nuclear weapons test in 1945

Cuban Missile Crisis – world on the brink

Exit from disarmament

Missiles against China – and back

Destruction of the earth

Pathways to peace

World War III can be averted

Happy place and non-place Utopia

About the authors

Andreas Dripke

Hang Nguyen

Jamal Qaiser

Dr. Horst Walther

Books published by Diplomatic Council (English)

About the Diplomatic Council

References and Notes

Preface

On 24 February 2022, the war in Europe began. This is often asserted because on that day the Russian army crossed the border into neighbouring Ukraine.

Now this step undoubtedly represented a caesura for Europe. But one can hardly call it the beginning of a completely surprising development. Europe had long before fallen into a kind of agony, a drowsiness, from which the Russian invasion of Ukraine has aroused us. In this book we want to trace how Europe has become this drowsy paradise, what consequences we are threatened with as a result, and how real the danger of war in Europe really is. This range of topics includes, of course, the failure of the European Union, but also of other international organisations, first and foremost the United Nations.

The dependent continent

We have divided this book into three parts. The first part is about all the worries and hardships of Europe before the outbreak of war in Ukraine. In the final analysis, all these challenges still persist. The problems of "old Europe" have been concealed by the war, but not solved. This includes Europe's age-old dependence on the USA and on Russia, as we have become acutely aware since spring 2022, and on China, something we have been suppressing for many years. The supply bottlenecks for many products that have been rampant since 2021, threatening entire branches of industry in Europe, have opened our eyes to this dependence for the first time. Without software from the USA, chips from Asia and energy from Russia, prosperity in Europe is at risk. The EU – and the Federal Republic of Germany, for that matter – would have had plenty of time to reduce this dependence. But instead, it has imagined itself to be in a "world of friends", whose supplies seemed self-evident as long as one only paid for them. As a result, Europe today finds itself more dependent and reliant on others than ever before.

The second part focuses on the raging war in Europe. In so doing, we wish to point out that this by no means began in 2022 but at least as early as 2014. In this context, the question of an independent European army also plays a role, which we discuss in this book. For since 2022 at the latest, it has been clear that Europe is not capable of defending itself.

Finally, in the third part, we turn to the dangers of war that do not emanate from Europe at all, but directly affect Europe as well as other parts of the world. This undoubtedly includes the danger of nuclear war as well as the possible consequences of the devastating arms race in space. In all these cases, Europe is certainly not the initiator, but neither is it even a player at eye level on the stage of world politics.

But our sights go far beyond the immediate military conflict. The question of Europe's independence is also at stake. China's "economic invasion" of Europe under the guise of the "New Silk Road" is proceeding peacefully but is nonetheless of fundamental importance. This is all the more true since, at the latest after the outbreak of the Ukraine war, Europe has drawn geopolitically closer to the United States of America.

In the political poker of the superpowers, on the one hand, the USA with an undisguised claim to world supremacy, and on the other hand, the emerging People's Republic of China and the resurgent Russia, which have no intention whatsoever of succumbing to US supremacy, Europe is like a pawn in the waves of global conflict, without itself taking an active part in the game, let alone being the leader.

Proxy wars on European soil

The wars in and around Europe are therefore mainly proxy wars, conflicts between the superpowers that are fought on European soil and to the chagrin of the European population, but which are basically not about Europe at all.

Countries like Vietnam and Korea have seen how these bloody proxy wars between the free world, the West, on the one hand, and the authoritarian power blocs on the other, have destroyed their countries. Today, the situation has changed: Europe has become the stage – one could also say the battlefield – of this confrontation.

We have authored this book in the hope that much of what we outline here will turn out to be wrong, that the course of history will take a different turn, that the European values of which we can rightly be proud will once again find a greater hearing in the world.

Andreas Dripke, Hang Nguyen, Jamal A. Qaiser, Dr. Horst Walther

Old world and new dependence

The "Old World" is a historical term for the continents of the earth that were known to Europeans before the discovery of America in 1492: Europe, Africa and Asia. Basically, Europe (ancient Greek Εὐρώπη Eur pē) is not a continent in its own right, but merely a subcontinent that, together with Asia, forms the continent of Eurasia. However, the term "Europe" is not defined purely geographically, but also refers to historical, cultural, political, economic, legal and intellectual aspects. "Not a place, but an idea... a category of mind, not of being", was how the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy characterised Europe in August 1789, in the wake of the French Revolution.1 This cultural Europe is also usually meant when one speaks of the "Old Continent". The term illustrates Europe's entrenchment in Greek culture as well as its conditioning by the Roman Empire and Christianity, three influences that still have a decisive impact on European culture today.

In classical antiquity, the Roman Empire temporarily united southern Europe with the other coastal countries of the Mediterranean into one great empire. In late antiquity, Christianity was elevated to the status of state religion, which continues to have an effect today. During this time, a multitude of mostly Germanic tribes such as Anglo-Saxons, Franks and Goths invaded western Europe and laid the foundations for future nations such as England, France and Spain. Throughout all these centuries, Europe has been a battleground, not at all a model for whatever.

It was not until the 18th century that the Enlightenment movement set new accents and called for tolerance, respect for human dignity, equality and freedom. When we speak of "European values" nowadays, we mean the time of about 300 years ago. The "Old Continent" in this nowadays fondly referred to tradition thus only goes back to about 1798 – the year of the French Revolution. In the process, the "dark spots" since that time, especially the First and Second World Wars, are often more or less obscured in order to extol "European values" as "noble and good".

The idea of a peaceful Europe

Only after the Second World War did the idea of a united or at least peaceful Europe gradually emerge. In a speech held in Paris on May 9, 1950, the then French Foreign Minister Robert Schumann developed the idea of a supranational European institution to manage and pool coal and steel production. In his vision, this new type of political cooperation was intended to prevent wars between European neighbours.2 His proposal, which was implemented one year later in the form of the European Coal and Steel Community, is considered the cornerstone of today's European Union. However, it was still a long way until then. In 1951, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy and France joined forces to form the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The attempt to establish a European Defence Community (EDC) as well as a European Political Community (EPC) failed in 1954 because of the French National Assembly. As a result, the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and the European Economic Community (EEC) were founded in 1957 with the Treaties of Rome. Since the Treaty of Brussels in 1967, the three European Communities (ECSC, Euratom and EEC) have shared the common institutions of Commission, Council, Parliament and Court of Justice. With the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993, the EEC was renamed the European Community (EC). At the same time, the European Union was founded, encompassing the three Communities and adding two intergovernmental policies, the Common Foreign and Security Policy and cooperation in the field of Justice and Home Affairs. In 2002, the ECSC was disbanded and its functions were taken over by the EC. The Treaty of Lisbon fully merged the EC into the EU on 1 December 2009.

In the wake of eastward expansion in 2004, 2007 and 2013, and the Brexit in 2020, the EU currently has 26 European member states, with the 27th member state, the Republic of Cyprus, geographically counted as Asia. 3 All these figures, developments and institutions are part of the general education of anyone seriously concerned with Europe. The "fast forward" through history gives the impression that Europe has overcome its centuries of strife and is on the way to unification, a United Europe.

That would be nice – but in fact Europe is facing challenges that make the future of the "Old Continent" seem less rosy. This has to do with the fact that Europe is more entrenched in the past than concerned about its future. European society has hardly any vision for the future of its own continent, let alone the world.

European politics largely takes its cue from this lack of imagination on the part of society, the sole aim of which is to preserve today's prosperity and continue to bask in complacency. Increasingly more people in Europe, nevertheless, are beginning to suspect that this complacency and lack of vision will lead to Europe's decline. This thought process did not first begin with the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022. Long before, the vision of a European paradise had been relegated to the sidelines by bickering over nation-statehood, anxiety about the stability of the euro as a pan-European currency (fuelled anew by the spectre of inflation), the sprawling Brussels bureaucracy, Europe's apparent failure in virtually all aspects of digitalisation, which is enveloping our entire lives, the discussions about migration and the threat to our European values, as well as Europe's dwindling importance on a geopolitical scale and, related to this, the dependence of the "Old Continent" on America and Asia, especially the United States of America and China. This was accompanied by the realisation that the so-called international institutions with their concept of multilateralism are not as powerful as they often make themselves out to be – from the European Union to the United Nations. The security supposedly associated with these institutions often seems more illusory than real.

An additional shock wave was triggered in many people by the realisation that the predatory exploitation of our environment could lead to a global climate catastrophe that will not spare Europe. Resulting new migration flows, dependencies and potential wars over resources have come into focus and appear more real today than ever before.

Europe losing its impartiality

With reference to American power play and the inadequacies of U.S. policy, it appeared over the years that Europe could adopt an impartial, virtually equal stance between the United States and Russia, on the one hand, and, above all, China on the other. In the highest European government circles, the idea of an independent European army was advanced in order to no longer have to play the role of junior partner in NATO, the intergovernmental military alliance.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 has made all these considerations absurd. Without the economic, technological and, above all, military support of the United States of America, Europe would be lost. One may lament this but to ignore it would be fatal in the truest sense of the word, as the Ukrainian people have tragically experienced.

Freedom versus unfreedom

One must be clear that both the Soviet Union, of which "only" Russia is left at the moment, and the People's Republic of China share a fundamentally different view of humanity than the free West. The "old-age struggle" between the West and the two former communist states is by no means over, as it appeared to be after the end of the Cold War between the West and the Eastern bloc. It had only disappeared from the headlines but in the background the superpower arms race has continued unabated.

Let us take a count and assess the significance of this: There are three superpowers, namely the United States of America, Russia as the core of the former and gradually re-emerging Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China. In two of them, Russia and China, freedom of expression, human rights and the other characteristics of a free society that we know are virtually nonexistent. Although in Russia there is budding democratisation and, in both countries, budding capitalism – the Russian oligarchs speak for themselves – the only democratic and capitalist superpower is the USA. It is illusory to believe that, in the face of these power dynamics, Europe can adopt an impartial position, reap the benefits of freedom and democracy, and at the same time be "good friends" with the states of Russia and China, which are guided by a completely different conception of humanity.

One may lament the excesses of capitalism – and there are undoubtedly very many. But to conclude from this that life would be better in the Russian or even Chinese worldview has always been and remains a fallacy.

Germany should know better: The country was divided into a free West and an unfree East for 40 years. The East, then known as the German Democratic Republic, was fenced off by the GDR government to prevent people from fleeing in droves. There is no clearer image to document unfreedom under communism than that of encaging people like animals.

This is at least one, if not the decisive difference between capitalism and communism: freedom! The West presupposes the freedom of the individual as a conception of humanity. This includes the freedom to make something of one's life, to find happiness but lamentably also the freedom to "screw up" one's life, to put it casually, to perish in misery. But to conclude from this that the state can – as is the premise of communism – enforce people's happiness to help them all to a state-guaranteed good life, is inhumane.

A political regime that has to draw an actual or even an invisible fence around "its" population to prevent people from fleeing in droves is per se unjust. A state whose government monitors and reprimands "its" citizens to the utmost in respect of their loyalty to the state, without subjecting itself to independent jurisdiction, cannot claim to be a constitutional state.

If we look at the global balance of power from this perspective, there is only one rule-of-law superpower with liberal civil rights: the USA. There are undoubtedly many and good reasons to criticise the United States of America. But the alternatives – Russia, as the core of the former Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China – are not viable options – at least not if the freedom of the individual and the rule of law of a society as an expression of justice are taken as standards.

The free West against the Sino-Russian axis

For this reason, joint or even concerted action by the two communist superpowers China and Russia – a Sino-Soviet axis – is arguably the greatest threat to the free West, i.e. North America and Europe in particular. In this situation, it would be literally fatal for Europe to believe that it can adopt mutual, virtual impartiality between all parties. In this camp formation, which is deplorable but hardly subject to change, Germany and Europe clearly belong to the Western camp.

However, even if there is unity, it is by no means certain that the West will be able to win an escalating conflict against the People's Republic of China and Russia. The superpowers may not be "bosom friends", nor are Europe and the USA but they adhere to a similar ideology and the danger of a bloc formation is tangible. Should the Sino-Russian cartel emerge, the West would have a tough time. It would be helpful if Europe took a clear stance in this situation.

First and Second World Wars

Wars have existed since time immemorial. But never have so many people died in such a brief time as in World War I and World War II. It is not least a terrifying prospect that in a Third World War even more people would lose their lives in an even shorter period, which is what drives peace activists as well as responsible politicians all over the world to try to prevent a third recurrence.

The high death tolls

Almost 20 million people lost their lives in the First World War, including around 9.7 million soldiers and around 10 million civilians. The losses came from many countries: Australia (61,900 dead), Belgium (104,900), Bulgaria (187,500), the German Empire (2.46 million), Denmark (720), Canada (66,900), the Republic of France (1.697 million), Kingdom of Greece (176,000), United Kingdom (994,100), British India (74,000), the Kingdom of Italy (1.24 million), Japan (415), Montenegro (3,000), Austria-Hungary (1.567 million), Ottoman Empire (5 million), New Zealand (18,000), Newfoundland (1,200), Norway (1890), Portugal (89,200), Kingdom of Romania (680,000), Russian Empire (3.311 million), Kingdom of Serbia (725,000), Sweden (870), South African Union (9,400), United States of America (117,400). In addition, an estimated 21 million people were injured as a result of the war.4

In World War II everything got much worse. The fighting began, apart from a few skirmishes on the German-Polish border, on 1 September 1939, when the liner "Schleswig-Holstein" opened fire on the Westerplatte near Danzig, and ended on 8 May 1945 at 11:01 p m. That is 2077 days or 49,842 hours and 16 minutes. During this time, around 1,000 people died every hour. Overall, World War II claimed the lives of approximately 50 million people, including 39 million civilians. Other estimates even assume up to 80 million deaths in World War II.5

The victims came from numerous countries: Australia (30,000 deaths), Belgium (60,000), Bulgaria (32,000), China (13.5 million), Germany (6.355 million), Finland (91,700), France (360,000), Greece (180,000), the United Kingdom (332, 825), India (3.024 million), Italy (300,000), Japan (3.76 million), Yugoslavia (1.69 million), Canada (43,190), New Zealand (10,000), Netherlands (220,000), Norway (10,000), South Africa (9,000), Philippines (100,000), Poland (6 million), Romania (378,000), Soviet Union (27 million), Czechoslovakia (90,000), Hungary (950,000), USA (407,316).6

Well over 100 million dead and injured in two world wars within around 30 years. Soldiers, civilians, men, women, children, destroyed lives, extinguished hopes, indescribable horrors, infinite suffering – in the face of this gigantic destructiveness, the international community wanted to do everything possible with a "global peace organisation" to prevent or at least contain further killing. After the First World War with 20 million losses, the international community founded the League of Nations with a single goal: to prevent the Second World War. Unfortunately, the League of Nations failed. Around 20 years later, preparations began for the Second World War, which cost over 50 million lives.7

The United Nations Organisation was established to prevent a Third World War. 8

Has it succeeded so far? Yes, as far as no one has yet declared World War III. No, as far as more wars are raging in the world today than ever before. The global number of military conflicts has been rising steadily for years, as has the number of victims and refugees who want to escape the wars and save their lives.9 Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 has highlighted how close warfare has come to Europe. But long before that, wars raged almost around the globe.

Innumerable wars

The counts by the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research showed an average of 18 wars between 2011 and 2019 that took place around the globe every year.10 Thereby, the Institute referred only to "real wars", not to mere military confrontations or conflicts in which violence is occasionally deployed. The institute counted 21 wars in 2020, 15 in 2019, 16 in 2018, 20 in 2017, 18 in 2016, 19 in 2015, 21 in 2014, 18 in 2012 and 20 in 2011. Before 2011, the situation looked much better. In 2010 there were "only" six wars, in the year before that there were "only" seven wars. In addition to these "real wars", the Heidelberg Institute also recorded so-called "limited wars", which should be added to the "real" ones. Here the numbers were similarly high: 19 limited wars in 2020, 23 in 2019, 25 in 2018, 20 in 2017 and 2016, 24 in 2015, 25 in 2013 and 2012, 18 in 2011, 22 in 2010 and 24 in 2009. An order of magnitude higher by a factor of ten is obtained if one also considers conflicts in the world. The Heidelberg Institute named 319 conflicts in 2020, of which more than half – 180 – were classified as violent.11

The figures were similarly high in previous years: 385 conflicts in 2019, of which 196 were violent, 374 conflicts in 2018, of which 214 were violent, 385 conflicts in 2017, of which 222 were violent, 402 conflicts in 2016, of which 226 were violent, 409 conflicts in 2015, of which 223 were violent, 424 conflicts in 2014, of these again 223 were violent, 414 conflicts in 2014, of which 221 were violent.

Was it better in the past? The analyses by the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research say "yes". In 1992, the first year the institute started its research series, the report at the time showed over 100 conflicts and five wars. In 1993 there were already 119 conflicts and 23 wars. Without presenting the Institute's methodology in detail here or discussing the question of defining the differences between "real wars", "limited wars" and "violent conflicts" in detail, one thing is certain: violence is increasing worldwide, not decreasing. People are uprooted, injured, killed. Every day 500 people are killed on average in violent conflicts, i.e. 182,000 war deaths per annum. Together that is well over 12 million deaths since the end of World War II.12

These figures might even still be too conservative. A study by Global Research suggests that at least 20 million people in 37 states have died in combat operations that can be traced back directly to the United States since the end of World War II. The countries were either attacked directly or driven into civil wars by US intelligence activities.13

All these figures are based on estimates, are subject to questions of definition and are often politically motivated. The crucial question in relation to the subject of this book is, however, simple: Will the USA's power play and a clash between the Western camp on the one hand and the two powerful nations China and Russia on the other lead to another "really big war", a world war – and will Europe become a theatre of war?

"Everyone knows WW III to be a nuclear war"

One may rightly complain about the multitude of conflicts around the globe but how much greater would the suffering wrought by a Third World War be in which nuclear weapons were used? In the Cold War between the Western nations under the leadership of the USA and the Eastern Bloc of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Russia, a nuclear conflict was successfully averted.

But there is no guarantee that in the present-day conflict between China, Russia and the United States, for example, it will again be possible to avert a battle with nuclear weapons. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the spring of 2022, both a "nuclear war" and a "Third World War" were in the offing – or more precisely, both terms were used.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated bluntly: "Everyone knows that a Third World War will be a nuclear war. This question, however, is only a concern of Western politicians and not of the Russians.14 In fact, Russian President Vladimir Putin shocked the world by announcing that his country's nuclear strike forces would be alerted.15 China, on the other hand, has no interest whatsoever in a global armed conflict. Not because the People's Republic is inspired by peace but simply because China is not yet prepared to face a full-scale military confrontation with the USA in the foreseeable future. That is why China has (for the time being) shifted the rivalry to other areas such as the economy and technology.

In this constellation, it is important to find an answer to the question of where Europe stands in the struggle between the three superpowers and what role Europe can play in it.

Quo vadis Europe?

The clash of the continents – America, Europe, Asia – is nothing new. But in our time of global interdependencies and rapid networking, the effects of these developments are more rapidly and comprehensively perceptible than ever before.

What Europe means (to us): the torn unity

"Ach Europa!" is the title of a book by Hans Magnus Enzensberger that he wrote about half a century after the end of the last large-scale catastrophe of European civilisation.16 His diagnosis of the "Paradox of Europe" is: "The irregularity, the confusion is what makes Europe strong. The unity of the continent as it is understood in the logic of the corporations, the parties, the bureaucracies, namely as a project of homogenisation, proves to be a chimera. Europe is unthinkable as a bloc".

This was his indulgent insight into the inner life of Europeans. In a fictional interview with the equally fictional US Ambassador Murphy in Bonn, projected 19 years into the future, he has the first-person narrator in the role of an American ex-GI and journalist paint a less friendly picture to outsiders: "The European Community? Cut it out, Murphy! You act as if we were dealing with a world empire. You know as well as I do that the European Community is a henhouse, a tangle of ever-shrinking states – if what Europeans have settled into can be called states at all".

"Ah Europe!" one would like to exclaim, should just a little of this be true. But what is Europe really? And how should it be? And how realistic is the hope that the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022 will weld Europe together again more strongly in the face of a common enemy?

Europe (Greek Εὐρώπη) is geographically only a subcontinent of the continent of Eurasia. This peninsula, which occupies about one fifth of the Eurasian landmass, is generally agreed to stretch from Norway's Kinnarodden in the north to Spain's Punta de Tarifa in the south, from Portugal's Cabo da Roca in the west to the Urals in the East. Europe is not clearly demarcated from its neighbour Asia and was thus open to all kinds of migrations.

Thus, according to a well-known formulation by Bernard-Henri Lévy, Europe is "not a place, but an idea".17 This is what we should orient ourselves to – the historical, cultural, political and idealistic aspects.

However, it is not the intention here to retell history, nor to give an overview of the cultural currents or political movements during the turbulent centuries that Europe's peoples have lived through since then. But it is important to highlight what makes Europe unique, a feature that distinguishes us from the rest of the world in the long term, that we can be proud of, that we should be prepared to defend if necessary – and which, as has been clear since 2022 at the latest, we must also defend against attacks from outside in order to preserve.

We are talking about the European values that are so often referred to. But what are these ideas and values?

Europe is often equated with the "Christian Occident" – in clear distinction to the (Muslim) Orient. So is this particular characteristic Christianity? The answer to that is a resounding "no". Although Christianity only became a world religion in the wake of the rise of European states as superpowers, its roots and early spread are known to have been in a completely different cultural sphere, namely the Middle East.