“What we are experiencing now is the brain death of NATO”
French President Emmanuel Macron (Interview with The Economist, Nov 7, 2019)
Macron’s lament in 2019 echoed throughout the North Atlantic community. The lack of threat from the East and the high expenditure caused many to denounce the institution as a relic, sparking a legitimacy crisis.
These narratives now ring hollow. Russia, the former Cold War superpower against which the institution was initially formed, has once more staked its claim over influence in Eastern Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has woken Europe’s defences, reinvigorating NATO and exposing a response procedure which, far from that of modern nation states, harkens back to the interstate structure of over one thousand years ago.
Divided sovereignty along functional and territorial lines, porous borders, and security directives justified by norms and values point not to a modern European superstate but a system reminiscent of the Middle Ages. The neo-medieval imperial model, identified by Jan Zielonka in his seminal texts, lacks the hard borders, hierarchy, and colonial ambitions of its historic forebears. Instead, Europe opts for freedom of movement, qualified majority voting and the projection of its liberal principles, 21st century ideals that are strengthening the resolve of its members in response to their authoritarian neighbours.
The new system is fundamentally changing the way Europe identifies and governs itself, evolving with the decline of territoriality after WWII. Throughout the modern period, member states have independently established bilateral and multilateral relations, resulting in a complex web of alliances punctuated by microstates (Andorra, Liechtenstein, etc.) akin to free imperial cities. Just as ‘imperial circles’ of the Holy Roman Empire existed between the command of the emperor and state, Bottom-Up Regional Groups (BURGs)—a term coined by Cooper and Fabbrini—have emerged between EU and national levels of authority. These groups have evolved to institutionalize cooperation and can vary in membership from two to twelve states. BURGs have allowed Europe to respond to Russia’s belligerence flexibly. In particular, the Baltic Assembly succeeded in pressuring the Council of Europe into ejecting Russia and the Slavkov Group renewed a strategic commitment to the Western Balkans. In the following months, North Macedonia and Albania would officially launch EU accession talks, diminishing the Kremlin’s influence in the region.
The balance-of-power politics of Bismarck and Metternich have evidently given way to negotiation. European institutions have skillfully asserted their economic and diplomatic control over prospective members, encouraging aspirants to align regulation to European standards through financial and legal incentives. This contrasts with the forceful acquisition utilised by Westphalian states and more closely resembles the policy preferences of medieval powers. Civilian institutions such as royal marriage, inheritance, trade and the spiritual power of the Church were summarily favoured over war-waging as tools for expansion. Similarly, the EU has not obtained its former Soviet republics through conventional warfare, but through conditionality and leveraging discrepancies in power. For Moscow, independent policy decisions passed by the constituents of (what it sees as) its rightful sphere of influence have provided the grounds for war.
The multi-speed system has shaped European integration, with fault lines between the centre and periphery emerging in an archetypally medieval fashion. By merit of membership, highly integrated states can pursue further-reaching objectives, including defensive (PESCO/NATO), monetary (Eurozone), political (EU), and migratory (Schengen Area), just to name a few. Whilst imperial ‘grand strategies’ reverberated across the medieval world, NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept will inevitably impact non-members including Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Finland, and many others. Differentiated integration, whereby the former Eastern bloc countries could integrate according to the unique circumstances of each, has created staggered boundaries of non-governmental institutions. Much to Russia’s dismay, this has allowed Ukraine to slowly edge toward the West, firstly joining the Eastern Partnership in 2009 and then the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area in 2014.
Europe’s former Eastern bloc countries are members of select institutions, mostly opting out of the Eurozone and Schengen Area. Further afield, frontier states such as Turkey and Norway engage with Western and external organisations simultaneously. Through externalized controls, the EU has contributed to a system of overlapping institutions, where EFTA, NATO and the European Neighbourhood intersect with intergovernmental organisations such as the Nordic Union, Turkic Union and Mediterranean Union. Consequently, Europe’s perimeters have become like medieval border marches, grey zones of influence subject to competing jurisdiction. Until now, the system has benefited Europe by pacifying its immediate environment. With Russia’s invasion, however, limitations have come into sharp focus as the CSTO and Eurasian Economic Union have all encroached into Europe over the past decade. As Western and Eastern influences compete, strife and conflict ensues. The diffusion of power toward Europe’s outskirts has resulted in its cultural—but not political—influence, leaving Ukraine on the edge of two worlds.
With the petitioning of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, belief systems and values again justify security policies in Europe—hundreds of years since the end of the Reformation. In the 19th and 20th centuries, European powers competed over resources, having resolved the centuries-long European Wars of Religion in the Treaties of Osnabrück and Münster in the 1600s. Returning to a medieval system may sow unintended discord for the continent, replacing the ‘might is right’ power calculations of the previous millennium. Rather than ill-defined territory, religious division drove armed conflict in the Middle Ages. However, radical social regimes have jettisoned Christianity from modern governing structures, leaving human rights law as the basis for Europe’s moral views and legal precepts. The English School strengthens this theory, asserting that the conviction of ideas consolidates the international society. With liberalism supplanting religious doctrine, Europe must defend its moral integrity as Russia looks to export its culture war through populist governments in the West.
The new Europe has emerged as a polycentric, complicated set of overlapping institutions, with a bureaucratic core and flexible, fluctuating peripheries. Endowed with a strong moral and spiritual cause, the bloc may hold its own in a world where the values that have been upheld by America since the turn of the 20th century—namely liberalism and democracy—are being consistently undermined by emerging competitors. In the evolving landscape of multipolarity, the Global West is confronting 21st century challenges together, not as fractured and isolated states, but as an interoperable and adaptable nexus.
Artwork courtesy of the British Library’s Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.