EU Ukraine Strategy should include the Eurasian Spine
- EU and strategic partners,
- EU strategy and foreign policy,
- Europe in the world,
- European defence / NATO,
The European Union needs to raise its head above the parapet to scan the geopolitical horizon to be able to deal more effectively with a number of key threats. This is particularly important because as Russia’s illegal war of aggression rages on, Moscow has been seeking to broaden its options geographically and strategically. In particular, Europe needs to engage along the Eurasian Spine: the line stretching from the Alps to the Himalayas and beyond. The multiple conflicts festering here will affect European security, peace, and prosperity for a long time to come. Moreover, it is in the EU’s enlightened self-interest to seize the opportunities for partnership presented by the Global South, enhancing in the process its own stability and security. Some of these areas in the Global South are also a source of direct threats and instability that can be exploited by Russia to aid its aggressive strategy. The EU, in a nutshell, needs to “Zoom Out” to rediscover the art it seems to have lost of playing the game of global geopolitics on multiple fronts simultaneously, backed up by hard power, in an era in which geopolitical changes will not only be persistent, but likely permanent as well.
(Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons & Egmont Institute)