From the European Welfare State to the Warfare State
How the EU and the UK are trying to delay peace in Ukraine to feed the war machine and impose austerity
While negotiations for a ceasefire in Ukraine are underway and signs of détente between Washington and Moscow are mounting, the EU is putting obstacles in the way of the peace process wherever it can. French President Emmanuel Macron's attempt to send NATO troops to Ukraine, for example, can hardly be understood otherwise. Moscow has made it clear from the outset that it will not accept such troops under any circumstances, and it is indeed a no-brainer that only neutral troops can ensure a ceasefire.
Since taking office, EU foreign policy chief-coordinator Kaja Kallas has openly opposed peace negotiations. The tenor of her public remarks: Moscow cannot be trusted, Putin does not want peace. In December, she tweeted: “The European Union wants Ukraine to win this war. We will do whatever it takes for that.” In other words, the only way forward is not diplomacy, but a victorious peace, even if reality has proven it to be unattainable. While there is growing resentment towards Kallas in some EU countries because her line does not represent all EU governments, open opposition has hardly been audible so far.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen supported Kallas' position in early February: “My vision of Ukraine is the same as it has been for the last three years: It must win this war.” On February 23, she added on Danish television: “We risk that peace in Ukraine is actually more dangerous than war.”1
This is a remarkable statement. After all, due the war in Ukraine the risk of nuclear war is higher than it has been since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Back then, humanity only escaped nuclear annihilation by the skin of its teeth. Can peace actually be more dangerous?
The claim that Ukraine can win the war and recapture the lost territories is equally out of touch with reality. As early as fall 2022 and 2023 respectively, the Chiefs of Staff of the Pentagon and the Ukraine army publicly admitted that the war had reached a stalemate and that neither side could win. This even proved to be overly optimistic, the situation has only deteriorated for Ukraine ever since. The country is suffering territorial losses and has almost completely lost its gains in the Russian region of Kursk. Every day that the war continues brings the country closer to collapse, sacrifices more lives and piles up higher debts. Yet leading EU politicians still refuse to acknowledge these facts. Not only are they failing to take diplomatic initiatives and make realistic proposals to save Ukraine from even worse, they are also torpedoing the ongoing negotiations.
In the context of the negotiations on a partial ceasefire in the Black Sea, which also involve the question of lifting sanctions against the Russian agricultural bank Rosselkhozbank, Anitta Hipper, European Commission spokesperson for foreign affairs, declared on March 26: “Unconditional withdrawal of all Russian military forces from the entire territory of Ukraine would be one of the main preconditions to amend or lift sanctions.“
It is hard to imagine that Ms. Hipper, or any other representative of the EU, actually believes that Russia will withdraw from the Donbass and Crimea, let alone unconditionally. Tying the lifting or even amendment of sanctions to this condition de facto means advocating for their indefinite continuation. The EU is thus giving up a decisive means of exerting pressure in the negotiations. After all, why should Moscow make concessions without the prospect of anything in return?
In all of these cases, a paradoxical pattern emerges: although the EU should have an existential interest in putting out the fire on its own doorstep, it is pouring oil on it and trying to continue a hopeless war. In doing so, it is sacrificing both its own security interests and the survival interests of the Ukrainian state, which it has claimed to protect for years. Furthermore, the EU is contributing to its own geopolitical isolation instead of positioning itself as a mediator between the major blocs – the only rational option given its geographical position.
How can this seemingly irrational behavior be explained? Indian historian Vijay Prashad suspects that the EU's political elites are primarily concerned with preserving their prestige. In other words, too much political capital has been invested in the narrative of a victorious peace, too many lives have been sacrificed to this narrative, too many billions of dollars and euros have been spent on it.
If Moscow now agrees to a ceasefire and ultimately to a peace treaty, the claim that it is impossible to negotiate with Putin would also be refuted. The question of why the EU did not support the peace negotiations in Istanbul in spring 2022, which almost let to an end of hostilities, would be inevitably raised. Hundreds of thousands of casualties could have been prevented and Ukraine would have been spared major territorial losses.
Moreover, the panic-fueled rearmament of the EU and Germany in particular could end up being scrutinized. If it becomes clear that Russia's aims in this war were rather regional and not at all aimed at devouring the whole of Ukraine and NATO as a dessert, then the possibility of a new peace order could emerge on the horizon – including the option of ensuring greater security through disarmament in the long term.
But such prospects run counter to the apocalyptic scenarios of a Russian invasion, with which hundreds of billions of euros for armaments have been whipped through European parliaments, including amendments to the German constitution that allow for limitless military spending. All major EU governments and the British adminstration have staked their political bets on this one card. Is that the reason why they cannot change course? Are they willing to sacrifice the possibility of peace in order to maintain a failed narrative? After all the serious mistakes of the last three years, that would indeed be the most serious of all.
In fact, even more is now at stake. The scenario of a Russian attack on NATO, however far-fetched it may be, not only legitimizes rearmament in the EU, but also the dismantling of the welfare state, which Europe supposedly can no longer afford in the face of this existential threat. The Financial Times summed up the program as follows: “Europe must trim its welfare state to build a warfare state”. If a peace deal is concluded too quickly, the project of tightened austerity for rearmament could falter. How would majorities agree to the dismantling of public health services, education, public transport, climate protection and social benefits if there is no longer an all-consuming, insatiable monster marching towards the West?
Noam Chomsky once remarked that the dismantling of the welfare state in favor of the military-industrial complex is an old project dating back to the times of the New Deal. According to Chomsky, social benefits whet people's appetite for more self-determination and democratic rights and thus stand in the way of authoritarian rule. Military spending, by contrast, generates high profits and growth without the dangerous gift of social rights. Neoliberal forces in the EU have been pushing to curtail public welfare and to raise military spending for decades. Keeping the monster alive is of great avail to legitimize a new round of austerity. It would not the first time that war has been used to weaken the working class.
In addition, there is another conceivable motive for the EU's reluctance to engage in constructive diplomacy: the preparation of a new „stab-in-the-back myth“. If the EU maintains the narrative of an achievable victorious peace – knowing full well that it is a pipe dream – while Trump brokers a compromise peace, the US neoconservatives and their European acolytes can circulate the idea that the Trump administration stabbed the Ukrainians and their supporters in the back and is responsible for the territorial losses. This, in turn, would allow to sweep the disastrous mistakes of both the Biden adminstration and European leaders under the carpet and put all the blame on their political opponents. Elements of this narrative are already being worked on eagerly on both sides of the Atlantic.
However, such a strategy is utterly destructive. It will only feed forces inside and outside Ukraine that want to undermine peace and fuel the fantasy of reversing the losses with more weapons and continued war. For Ukraine, this could make the path to civil war more likely; for Europe as a whole, it would mean more instability and the risk of a renewed confrontation with Moscow.
If the Europeans care about their own security and that of the Ukrainians, then the only sensible alternative is honesty. Western strategies in Ukraine have failed. An exclusive focus on arms deliveries and a refusal to engage in diplomacy have proven to be mistakes. Europe must recognize the realities and try to make the best of a bad situation and prevent worse. And that means actively contributing to the peace process with constructive proposals instead of torpedoing it from the sidelines.
This article has also been published in a slightly different form in the New Left Review on April 3, 2025.
Spanish version in Revista Contexto. CTXT
Fabian Scheidler is the author of the book “The End of the Megamachine. A Brief History of a Failing Civilization”, published in many languages (www.megamaschine.org). As a journalist he works for Le Monde diplomatique, Berliner Zeitung and many other outlets. www.fabianscheidler.com