INTERVIEW || Putin says that Russia is “ready” for a war with Europe today if the Europeans want it, but for José Azeredo Lopes it is difficult to “realistically foresee that Russia has any capacity to attack Europe”. This does not mean, however, that there are no threats on the horizon, admits the former Portuguese Defense Minister. “Putin knows how to touch on the points that, for us, are very sensitive, that unnerve us, that make us afraid” and, after almost four years of large-scale war in Ukraine, the EU continues to sleep. “If we cannot do without 1% of our wealth, I allow myself to doubt the model we are designing”
Vladimir Putin said this week that “if Europe wants it”, Russia is “ready” for war. If a conflict broke out tomorrow between Russians and Europeans, how would everything work out on our side?
It’s a difficult exercise, because it assumed that there would be an invasion or attack and I’m not sure that it will be like that. I think we will feed this concept of threat to see if we are prepared to have sufficient deterrence capacity to guarantee our security. The European tradition is, basically, that we get used to certain things very quickly and forget what we previously considered urgent. Speeches about Russian threats, about the danger to Europe, don’t last long in politics, so we have to keep feeding this idea a little. [de invasão] to see if we have support in the budgetary effort, to see if we can mobilize political will around the cause.
So you don’t consider that Putin’s threatening statements involve a potential land invasion of European territory beyond Ukraine?
No, I cannot realistically foresee Russia having any capacity to attack Europe. Particularly in the last year and a half, we have been trying to anticipate what will happen. Will it be an invasion? Are you going to attack the Balts? Will we suffer attacks by 2030? Then it moved to 2029 and now some talk as if they were imminent. Political and military discourse is increasingly influenced by this construction of threat, it is an instrument, a political tool, if you like, for mobilizing public opinion.
Invasion or no invasion, how ready is Europe to deal with a potential wider conflict?
It seems clear to me that we are not ready, it is not even a pessimistic thing, we are obviously not ready for a conflict at this point, although I must say that, often, we think that realities are absolutely static, when this is not the case. We are not ready now, and this is said by everyone – we are not ready to face a potential threat from Russia, because that threat does not have to mobilize divisions, it does not have to mobilize aggression as happened in February 2022 with Ukraine.
In this context, how do you look at these statements by the Russian president?
Like political conditioning. Threat management is something that Putin does skillfully, always invoking destructive capacity, nuclear capacity. He said that the war against Ukraine has been surgical but that with us it would be brutal – this is also a way for Vladimir Putin, politically, to dissuade us from starting to have a more muscular voice. I remember that these statements were made after NATO had admitted the hypothesis of preventive actions in the face of Russia’s hybrid war, of taking actions as an anticipatory response.
Are you referring to the type of actions Russia has already taken to destabilize European nations?
Yes, this is not a typical conventional war, but one that results from the manipulation of information, disinformation, cyberattacks, drones that coincidentally appear in our airspace. This is what gets us off, and how it gets us off, Putin knows how to touch on the points that, for us, are very sensitive, that unnerve us, that make us afraid. And of course, it’s easier for a Portuguese person to talk about all this than for an Estonian.
Does it therefore exclude the hypothesis of a conventional war between Russia and Europe?
The hypothesis of an invasion does not seem realistic to me at all. And whoever said this is based on data that I can’t even figure out where they found. Furthermore, this is contradictory to our official discourse. We say that, in the last year, Russia will have conquered, at most, 1% of Ukrainian territory, and we give this as an example of Russian incapacity. Now, if you can’t even ‘solve’ the Ukrainian case, as you clearly and fortunately can’t, would you be able, at the same time as you are occupying Ukraine, to attack Europe? There is no military support capacity for Ukraine, would there be any for us? No matter how late we are, and are, in preparing our defense and security, I honestly think that the idea of imminence serves to keep us on track, to make us accept decisions that we would not normally accept, such as a budget increase for Defense.
And what remains to be done in terms of this necessary defense reinforcement?
What we have not yet been able to face is this issue. What did we do, in three and a half years, almost four years of war, to prepare? That’s the big question. What have we done since 2014, when Russia occupied and annexed Crimea? What relevant things did we do to prepare our defense? We always said that we only needed 2% of our GDP, now it is no longer 2%, it is 5%, and what we were unable to resolve is borderline painful, for example, in terms of military mobility – the need to have, once and for all, a single European space to mobilize military personnel, capabilities so that military personnel from site A can be used in site B immediately.
Recently, the president of the European Commission highlighted the need for a “Schengen area in Defense”.
Yes, but this after three and a half years? Do you understand why it’s a little annoying? In the EU we talk a lot about unity, but we continue to be very ununited, and in Defense even worse. We have been discussing for decades what we can do to secure funding for the Ukrainian war effort over the next two years.
A discussion that, lately, has revolved around Russian assets frozen in the European banking system since the start of the war, the use of which is being contested by Belgium.
I am very critical of the confiscation of Russian assets – but let’s see, in this case we are talking about a modest 180 billion euros. This means for European States, over the next two years, a financial effort of approximately 1% of European GDP. 1%! If we are unable, after more than half a year, and in an issue crucial to our existence, to give up 1% of our wealth, I allow myself to doubt the efficiency of the model we are designing.
We say that we have to rearm, but we remain divided on how, on who to buy weapons from, on how to create a real European industry, it is still up to each State to decide… Does anyone believe that it will give a quick and efficient result? I don’t believe. We are creating a very competitive system at an intra-European level, in which the Germans but also the French stand out, and everyone will want to get their fair share. As for little ones, like us, I allow myself to doubt. Many States end up thinking: ‘depending for the sake of depending, I prefer to depend on the USA’.
Would you say, then, that we are still far from guaranteeing our self-sufficiency in matters of defense and security?
I would say that we face a series of tremendous obstacles in finding a credible solution for our defense efforts. I am not criticizing anyone, but rather our inability, as Europeans, to speak and act like Europeans. And then people always say that this can be solved by spending a lot more. But the mythology today is about the 5% [do PIB para a NATO]and any day is 10%, but how to use it? Then others come to say that, to achieve this, we have to renounce the welfare state. Why? It is a disturbing ideological discussion, it seems that some want to take advantage of the need for defense to achieve a change in the State model. I think it’s wrong and I don’t think it takes us anywhere. I don’t think we have to be a state without a social dimension to be able to defend ourselves. Now is it easy to explain this?
This is one of the biggest questions today, how can we communicate these needs to populations at a time of great political and economic fragility?
I admit that it is not easy and the war in Ukraine itself is costing us a lot politically. And if we look at today compared to 2022, is Europe stronger or weaker?
What do you think?
I would say that we are weaker, less democratic, very divided, less capable of acting politically, and unfortunately our opponents know this very well. Russia knows us extremely well, and unfortunately for the Távoras, the less committed way in which our transatlantic ally regards us has become more pronounced in recent years, and I say less committed to say the least. We are in a situation we never imagined possible.
And now we have European leaders fearful of the possibility of the US’ president of Ukraine in the negotiations they have ongoing with Russia.
And almost four years later [da invasão em larga escala]we cannot afford at this point a cessation of hostilities under these terms [impostos por Moscovo]it would be a strategic defeat. But at the same time, we look across the Atlantic and we only see clouds, we don’t see encouraging signs. We thought our marriage would never end, like those old couples who get angry and make up, thinking that nothing will jeopardize their union. Today we realize that this is not the case – and we have not yet been able to digest this once and for all.
Accept once and for all that the traditional transatlantic alliance is over?
We always keep hoping that it’s just a fuss, that it’s because Trump is in power, when we have to accept that, in geopolitics, we are definitely no longer a US priority. We cannot ask for the return of the spouse who decided to leave home, we have to accept this fact without drama, and show the ability to make a living and reconstitute the fundamental feeling of communities, which is to feel safe, and not under permanent threat from Russia. And what I find extraordinary is that, after almost four years, we have not taken decisive steps to change our external action.
We have to face this as a fact of life, it is not pleasant but it is a fact. We can imagine the most exciting scenarios we want about imminent threats, they want to try to convince us that Russia is at Rossio tomorrow, that is not plausible. But at least let us take advantage of the time we have to take measures that free us from this feeling of geopolitical anguish.
