E for Eclipse

The 21st century is turning on two hinges, where different forms of the European nation-state and its sovereign integrity are involved

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EUROPE has fallen into a mid-Atlantic rift that opened up when its closest ally, the US, decided to ditch it and side with Russia, along with Belarus and North Korea to vote against a European Union (EU) resolution on Ukraine in the UN General Assembly. Earlier, US Vice President J. D. Vance launched into an extraordinary harangue of European liberal-democracy at the Munich Security Conference in February.

Western Atlantic Oceanic vs Russian Eurasian land-based The standoff over the Russian invasion of Ukraine since February 2022 brought to the fore contesting visions of a Western Atlantic and oceanic expansionism against the land-based Eurasianism of Russia. Charles Clover, in his book Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism, argues that the Cold War “was rather a permanent conflict between two geographic realities—the world’s greatest land power of ‘Eurasia’ and its natural opponent of ‘Atlantic’ sea power, represented first by Britain and then by the United States”. Atlantic oceanic expansionism assumed the form of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) whose eastwards advance understandably irked Russia. Lord Hastings Ismay, the first Secretary General of NATO, captured the purpose of the alliance when he famously said it was about keeping the Americans in Europe, the Russians out, and the Germans down. Under Donald Trump, the Americans have exited to be with the Russians, leaving the incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to request the extension of the meagre nuclear umbrella of the British (under 250 warheads) and the French (under 300 warheads), which are very small in terms of the larger number of 1,419 American deployed warheads they are meant to complement, against the 1,549 Russian ones, meant to be deterred.