Of course Zelensky went to Britain before Brussels
Tom Rogan
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Exemplifying absurd arrogance, a European Union official has lamented Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s decision to visit London before traveling to EU headquarters in Brussels. Zelensky met King Charles and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and addressed U.K. parliamentarians on Wednesday. On Thursday, he is expected to visit Brussels.
Speaking to BBC News, however, an EU official complained about Zelensky’s travel order. The official said, “I don’t understand the strategic choice made here. If you truly believe that the EU is the destiny of your country, then you would make sure to come here first to signal that importance.”
100 TANKS WILL GO A LONG WAY FOR UKRAINE, FIGURATIVELY AND LITERALLY
Maybe it’s because Britain has provided Ukraine with generally unqualified political and military support in its defensive war against Ukraine. Maybe Zelensky wanted to show his gratitude for that support and draw a subtle contrast with the equivocating weakness that has often defined the EU’s support for his cause.
The contrast between what the U.K. and the EU have done for Ukraine is stark, after all.
Under three successive prime ministers — Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak — the U.K. has led global efforts to rush anti-tank weapons and modern battle tanks to Ukraine. The British government is now discussing providing advanced fighter jets to Kyiv. London has also ended nearly two decades of lucrative appeasement of corrupted Russian finance. It has sent U.K. special forces far closer to the front lines and on far more dangerous operations than the forces of any other Western nation.
Of critical importance to Zelensky, the U.K. has quietly pushed the Biden administration to take a less risk-averse approach to its dealings with Russia over the war. On the flip side, the EU spent the run-up to the war guzzling on cheap Russian gas. Since then, the EU has only slowly provided financial and military aid to Ukraine.
Indeed, considering the EU’s supposed strategic interest in preserving peace and democratic sovereignty on the European continent, the EU’s provision of support to Ukraine has been obviously inadequate thus far. That is certainly true when one compares them to U.S. support for Ukraine. Even then, it is the smaller EU nations (and economies) of the Baltics and eastern Europe that have led efforts to provide greater military and financial aid.
Western European EU governments such as Germany, Italy, and France openly flirt with their fears that Putin might escalate against them. Their hesitation was encapsulated by the weakness that the EU showed during a sanctions showdown between member state Lithuania and Russia last summer. The EU’s inability to take sufficiently bold action in its own member states’ defense attests to the lie of narratives such as Emmanuel Macron’s “strategic autonomy” doctrine.
Still, this deluded arrogance isn’t that surprising. Consider the EU’s approach toward the U.S. EU politicians were repeatedly warned that the U.S. would eventually grow tired of paying for the defense of wealthy European nations so that those governments could spend generously on domestic priorities instead. In 2011, then-U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates warned the Europeans that “If current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, Future U.S. political leaders, those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me, may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.”
Yet when Donald Trump came along, many European politicians were shocked. It shouldn’t be surprising that they are now shocked Zelensky doesn’t trust them as much as he trusts the U.K.
Humility is not a popular word in Brussels and Strasbourg.
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