It is very likely that the European Union’s response to the “America First” policy of President-elect Donald J. Trump will be its own variant of “Europe First.” Neither policies should be viewed as bringing dramatic change to the already existing transatlantic trends of closing down and fortifying borders, focusing on defence/warfare, abandoning social inclusion policies, and embracing nationalism.
There are now large-scale wars raging on Europe’s edges, and escalation is underway. Europe’s economy has been weakened, and its dependency on technology, resources, finance and labor is becoming increasingly apparent. But despite such perilous context and the appeal that “Europe First” might have to right-wing politicians, Europe’s inward orientation and militarization might strengthen the centripetal forces pulling it apart and accelerate the continent’s descent to global insignificance.
Europe’s citizens are experiencing an array of existential problems, many of which revolve not around the great power competition but around households and women’s bodies, social reproduction and depletion. These problems are even more pronounced in NATO’s vulnerable Eastern Flank, where Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has rekindled fears of its further incursions into Europe, and reconstitution of the Russian empire and Cold War occupations/spheres of influence.
Yet Europe is primarily an aging continent with a shrinking work population. A housing crisis and high youth unemployment rates are clouding prospects of Europe’s revival. More than a quarter of young people now live in overcrowded housing and/or are unable to leave their parents’ homes and start families of their own. In just ten years, the average age of women having their first child within the EU has increased from 28.8 years in 2013 to 29.7 in 2022. That same year (2022) Europe had its lowest number of live births since 1960. Fertility rates have also declined to become one of the lowest in the world.
Delayed motherhood and a decline in population rates have not been compensated by productivity gains. Despite decades of women’s advances into the labor market, a gender gap in labor participation persists, costing Europe some 370 billion in potential GDP contributions. After years of austerity politics and the shock of the COVID pandemic, European care economies – and its providers – are at the breaking point. Deeply unequal and gendered, care labor tends to depend on women and, increasingly, on immigrants. Peripheral wars and climate change are washing refugees up on Europe’s shores, creating a reserve labor army while feeding anti-immigrant sentiments. Combined, Europe’s demographic decline and dependence on migrant labor and care fuel anger about gender politics and racialized others, strengthening the right-wing political projects and weakening the Union.
Europe is also short of manpower to defend itself. While politicians clamor for military Keynesianism and war economy as the panacea for the loss of industrial capacity, the lack of bodies may be more acute than the shortage of ammunition. The lack of soldiers is most obvious in Ukraine, where the U.S. is now asking the government to drop the recruitment age from 25 to 18. The Ukrainian government, at the same time, presides over a country whose population has already shrunk by more than 20 million since the 1990s and dreads sacrificing its entire youth on the frontline while Russia sources its soldiers from North Korea and Yemen.
Depletion and depopulation, indeed, haunt all of Europe but especially NATO’s Eastern Flank. In recent decades outmigration and low birth rates from the Baltics and the Balkans have led to population losses of more than 20%. Without immigrants, who are mostly Ukrainians running away from the war, even Poland would be losing people. Russia deftly uses these statistics in its information warfare. Meanwhile, the rest of Europe is beginning to wrestle with the need for renewed military conscription.
Problems of social reproduction cannot be resolved with a magic wand. Family-friendly policies, abortion bans, financial inducements to propagate – none of them have thus far worked to reverse the declining birth rates. The prospect of raising children for war is even less likely to encourage mothers to have more children. Europe desperately needs more rather than fewer immigrants, more rather than less investment in social infrastructure, more rather than less integration between its less and more populated peripheries.
And yet, political will is taking it in the opposite direction. Security, it has been well established, is a politically expedient speech act, especially when violence is real but mediated, democracy reconciled with militarism, and the fantasy of fighting infinite wars at a distance has already been entertained. Fixing social and economic problems, building consensus around redistribution, addressing climate change, changing demographic composition of a polity, or fostering innovation would require patience, skills, and time.
Faced with polycrisis, argue Catherine Hoeffler, Stephanie Hofmann, and Frederic Merand, the EU has shown notable improvements in its security and defence competencies. According to their analysis, other crises, such as economic and humanitarian crises, are more likely to lead to negative politicization. In other words, security builds unity and cohesion when politics is messy, geopolitical realignments are already under way, and horse-trading tactics among the EU veto players no longer bear fruit. No wonder that the EU now plans to shift its social cohesion funds into defence.
Thus, if Europe sleepwalks into another great war, it will not be only because of real or imagined threats, but because war has become easier than governing, and an appealing political solution to its elites.
This blog is part of the ‘NATO’s Eastern Flank’ series. Find all of the blogs here.
Learn more about the related conference NATO’s Eastern Flank: Challenges and Implications in the Context of the Ukraine War.
