If the European Union is to protect its democratic way of life, the bloc must transition from soft power actor to hard power player, writes Judy Dempsey

“Europe has never been so prosperous, so secure nor so free. The violence of the first half of the 20th Century has given way to a period of peace and stability unprecedented in European history.” 

So begins the opening sentence of the EU’s first ever security strategy document, presented in December 2003.

Nearly two decades on, it’s worth revisiting this pithy analysis. It is optimistic. It speaks of an “arc of stability” around Europe. 

It is realistic. Europe has to consider terrorism, migration, hunger, conflicts, and bad governance. EU member states cannot go it alone in tackling these problems.

Now, however, this document must be reconsidered in the light of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This war taking place in Europe right now has several repercussions for the EU. 

It is not just about providing as much financial, political and moral support as possible to Ukraine and its refugees. Nor is it about increasing the sanctions on Russia (if indeed they will change Russian president Vladimir Putin’s attitude towards destroying Ukraine). 

The war in Ukraine is about the future security of Europe—and this includes the EU, NATO, all non-EU and NATO members and the countries of Eastern Europe. 

If Europe wants to protect its democratic way of life, it has to start embracing hard power, but hard power has never been an intrinsic component of the EU. 

Its foundations were built on democracy and a peace project—intentionally so, after the appalling destruction of World War II, the Holocaust and the centuries of wars and rivalry between France and Germany.

The peace project should have been revisited during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. The status quo prevailed. Yes, the EU began establishing defence structures, but they were focused on peacekeeping and crisis management missions. Hard power was not part of the kit.

 Defence was instead anchored in soft power. This entailed training national police forces in the neighbourhood, providing substantial amounts of development aid, and lifting trade restrictions. 

Ultimately, the EU attitude toward Eastern Europe was benign and meant different things to different member states, depending on their geographic location. And there was a perception that Eastern Europe was a part of Europe that straddled the EU and Russia. 

The war in Ukraine is finally changing this mindset. Across the EU, with variations of urgency, there is an emerging consensus that the war is about the security of Europe. 

When the war began, the EU went into overdrive, mobilising €1 billion for military assistance to Ukraine that would be taken from the European Peace Facility. 

This is an off-EU budget set up to fund emergency assistance measures. Essentially, it amounts to a military fund. 

There are several other defence packages, which include training the Ukrainian armed forces. This military assistance to Ukraine says two things about the EU. 

First, its soft power has been ‘upgraded’ to providing hard power support for Ukraine. It is sinking in that a Russian victory in Ukraine would have devastating consequences for the rest of Eastern Europe and, by implication, for the EU. 

EU member states are also slowly realising that the original peace project based on stability, security and democracy, has to be quickly overhauled. Soft power now needs hard power to defend values, citizens and democracy. 

Judy Dempsey is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe and Editor-in-Chief of Strategic Europe