“I know it sounds devastating,” Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said earlier this year. “But we have to get used to the fact that a new era has begun: the prewar era.” Fresh from ousting national populists from power, Mr. Tusk is widely respected. Yet his words may come as a surprise. Considering the war in Gaza, Russia’s onslaught in Ukraine and conflict in Sudan, can we still speak of a prewar era?
Mr. Tusk, a former president of the European Council, could perhaps be accused of Eurocentrism. But his remark is right: We are not in a traditional war. Yet of all the conflicts currently playing out, the one in Ukraine — which pitches autocratically aligned Russia against Western-backed Ukraine — has the greatest potential to become a full-blown world war. For NATO members gathered this week in Washington, working out how to stop that from happening will be at the top of the agenda.
They’re unlikely to agree, though. For the two and a half years since Russia’s invasion, Western countries have pursued divergent, sometimes contradictory approaches to the war. Behind each country’s policy is a special perspective, informed by history. It’s like a pair of glasses, casting the war in a different light. As Vladimir Putin threatens nuclear escalation and Ukraine suffers further assaults, it’s essential that NATO members decide together how they should see the war in Ukraine — and how best to bring it to an end.
Some believe that we are on the eve of a wider war, experiencing an equivalent of something that happened 100 years ago. This is the view through Sarajevo glasses. There, on a hot summer day in 1914, a young assassin opened fire on Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s vehicle, setting off a chaotic sequence that led to World War I. That war, which was extraordinarily devastating, began somewhat by accident. The historian Christopher Clark has called the political class of the time “sleepwalkers.” Through a complex mix of emotions, offended honor and recklessness, they wandered unwittingly into war.
For those who see the situation through this lens, the conflict in Ukraine must not be allowed to become the equivalent of Ferdinand’s killing, the starting pistol of a world war. They speak in a pacifist tone: Attention, step by step we are heading toward a global, maybe even nuclear, conflict — even if no one actually wants it. The conclusion for them is simple. For fear of alarming Russia into an irreversible escalation, Ukraine’s military ambitions must be restrained and diplomatic negotiations sought.
These Sarajevo glasses seem to be worn most prominently in Germany. Since February 2022 Chancellor Olaf Scholz has strenuously made the case for supporting Ukraine, and his country is one of the most important exporters of material aid and weapons to Ukraine. Yet at the same time, with every new delivery, he repeatedly warns: At some point one drone, one plane may be too many. His emphasis is always on caution and the aim, ultimately, to find some sort of negotiated settlement. On the streets of Berlin during the recent European elections, posters bearing Mr. Scholz’s image promised to “ensure peace.”
Others wear an entirely different pair of glasses — call them Munich ones. Their historical point of reference comes from 1938, when Adolf Hitler demanded a part of Czechoslovakia and the European powers, in the spirit of appeasement, agreed to it. The annexation was meant to satisfy the appetites of the Third Reich, and so avoid a repeat of the Great War. But appeasement came at the expense of other countries, as Eastern and Central Europeans will tell you.
It also, on its own terms, failed. Appeasement collapsed like a house of cards with Germany’s attack on Poland in 1939, leading the rest of Europe and eventually the globe to World War II. This is exactly what Mr. Tusk seeks to avoid. In this view, naïve decisions result only in more victims and suffering, in more cities — Warsaw then, Mariupol today — burned and bombed to the ground. The mistake of appeasement must not be repeated, they argue. No concessions should be made to Hitler’s modern-day counterpart.
Apart from Ukraine itself and Poland, these glasses are worn by countries in the surrounding region: Finland, the Baltic States, Romania, Moldova. President Emmanuel Macron of France seems to have changed from Sarajevo to Munich glasses over the past two years. An initial advocate of negotiations and diplomacy, he recently gave a speech sounding the alarm over the threat from Russia. “Europe can die,” Mr. Macron warned in a strikingly Eastern European tone. The weakening of his authority, after the recent election, could disrupt this view.
What about Washington? The United States, of course, entered the world wars late: The buildup of both has little resonance on the other side of the Atlantic. Instead, America’s perspective comes from the trauma that drew it into World War II: the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. That unexpected assault, in which more than 2,000 U.S. personnel were killed, taught the United States that if it does not have a carefully calibrated presence in conflicts it may pay a far greater price. The country resolved to never be surprised on its own territory ever again.
These Pearl Harbor glasses help explain America’s conduct throughout the war, where it has sought to support Ukraine as much as possible — up to the point where it would be at direct risk of retaliation. This accounts for the vacillating quality of America’s support as it wavers between more or less active approaches, always anxious about Russian escalation. The problems this has created, not least in the delayed aid package to Ukraine, are plain to see.
In 2024, we are not in Sarajevo, Munich or Pearl Harbor. But that does not change the profound effect these perspectives have. Each pair of glasses not only shapes an intellectual analysis of current events but also entails a strong moral conviction of being right, even superior. It is this feeling, rather than the mere choice of historical analogy, that can lead protagonists to close themselves off from listening to one another.
Yet there is a way to reconcile all sides. It lies in understanding that we are not in an old-fashioned prewar era but a new era of hybrid war. This multifaceted war with the West and its core political values is already happening across the globe, not only in Europe but also in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. And if there are not yet Russian drones flying over E.U. countries, fighting is already underway on other fronts — if only, for now, in the form of disinformation, spying and hacking. The analogies of Sarajevo, Munich and Pearl Harbor are all useful for building a new perspective, fit for the 21st century.
We are not condemned to repeat the past. Instead we can freely choose what action to take: This is the essence of belief in democracy on both sides of the Atlantic. “Nothing happens twice,” as Wisława Szymborska reminds us in her wise poem. Our view is that NATO members should put the alliance’s arsenal of resources at Ukraine’s disposal to ensure Russia is defeated. That’s how we see things. In Washington this week, countries have a chance to take off their glasses, look one another in the eye and set a new course.
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