Reflecting about current happenings in the Ukraine places one face to face with the realization that a decision to invade, attack, declare war against another country is a truly radical one. It is completely different from the decisions that say, European leaders have become accustomed to arrive at in recent times, for better or for worse.

A decision to wage war is not like issuing a prohibiton against some general strike -- or like a Brexit, or the launching of an austerity policy -- or like a declaration of civil disobedience, or of a mobililisation against urban terrorism... It is a decision that will send women and men in military fatigues to advance into other peoples’ territory where they will find other men and women, armed and ready to fight them. There will be deaths on both sides.

One side or the other might win but a stalemate could also ensue. Whatever the outcome, people will die, and not just soliders, ordinary citizens as well, the so-called collateral damage.

A decision to wage war means the sanctioning of death in numbers that one cannot control beforehand. It’s terrible.

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THE LONG TERM

Life is so short. Perhaps this is what makes so many of us evaluate how things  pan out from a short term perspective. Causes and consequences that define the future are hardly taken into account if they go forward or backwards beyond four to five years.

This encouarges the development of short run (one might call them superficial) remembrances and appreciations of goings-on. Explanations of current realities are anchored to rationales that do not go a long way back in time. Yet in reality, on closer examination, one will discover that causes and consequences that refer to what has been close to us in time, are themselves related to causes and reasons which go further back. Because of this distance, the effects of the latter are overlooked, but they still run deep. In fact they need to be understood  for what they really are -- the foundation on which rest the edifices of today.

It is in this manner, I guess, that we should consider the main developments in our modern history, such as Independence, the departure of British forces from Malta and the island’s accession to the EU. Yet we fail mostly to adopt such a perspective, preferring the short run.   

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A NUCLEAR EUROPE

With the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, new doubts and proposals are surfacing in Europe.

A nuclear power has unleashed war against another European country. Its nuclear arsenal gives it a vital superiority over others.

In its own defence against this, Western Europe relies on the American “umbrella”. However, since Donald Trump served as US President such protection is no longer regarded as a sure thing. So, Europe needs its own autonomous nuclear capability.

France has its nuclear “deterrent” but it cannot be considered as sufficiently effective compared to the arsenals of the Russians and the Americans. The same  holds for the nuclear arsenal of the UK which moreover is considered as less than trustworthy in a European role. Without the substantive participation of Germany in a European nuclear facility, Europe will not make it -- so it is being argued.