Europe Reinvents Its Security System—for the Short Term

I t would be a platitude to state that the Russia-Ukraine war has had a massive impact on the European security system, but it is essential to emphasize that the fast and profound reconstruction of this traditionally well-structured system addresses primarily the most immediate security challenges, while midand long-term problems remain clouded in uncertainty. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, unleashed on February 24, 2022, after eight years of violent conflict, produced a painful shock for most European politicians and publics. Although Russia, through its invasion of Ukraine, hoped to create confusion and discord among its neighbors, the European Union has risen to the challenge, recognizing the invasion of Ukraine as a direct threat to the security of all stakeholders in regional peace. The immediacy of this threat has brought together Europe’s interest-based and value-based policies and focused them on the common goal of ending the war with a just peace, ensured by resolve to increase investments in collective security. Europe has sustained its remarkable unity behind the commitment to ensure Russia’s defeat, as the proceedings of the 2023 Munich Security Conference confirm.1 Impressive as these efforts have been, however, perhaps inevitably they deal only with the foreseeable future, the horizon of which may turn out to be very close indeed.