Russia-Ukraine war: Why Europe risks another bleak
year in 2026
Marco
Carnelos
26 December 2025
As the US retrenches, European leaders are
militarising without strategy or capacity, deepening economic decline,
democratic strain and geopolitical risk across the continent
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/europe-risks-another-bleak-year-2026-why
Addressing his party on 14 December, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz made headlines
with remarks unprecedented in postwar Europe.
Dear friends, the decades of Pax Americana are largely
over for us in Europe, and for us in Germany as well. It no longer exists as we
know it. And nostalgia won't change that. The Americans are now very, very
ruthlessly pursuing their own interests. And this cannot have a different
answer than that it is time that we also pursue our own interests. And dear
friends, here we are not weak, we are not small.
Pax Americana, the US-led security order that has come to define American
and European partnerships since the end of the Second World War,
is now being openly questioned.
Indeed, Merz has crossed a line that few European
leaders have even contemplated since the Cold War - triggered by the shock
generated by the new US National Security Strategy (NSS), issued earlier this month.
The document no longer even identifies Russia as a threat, describing it instead as a factor
in the Trump administration's efforts to reach peace in Ukraine, an objective now presented as a strategic interest
for Washington, alongside the stabilisation of relations with Moscow.
To rub salt into the wound, the NSS states that
"the perception and reality of Nato in constant expansion must stop". In a
single sentence, nearly three decades of western narrative, which has brazenly
denied any link between Nato's eastward expansion and the war in Ukraine, were
quietly discarded by the alliance's leading power.
It is no surprise, then, that the NSS was
received in Europe with consternation. But what is harder to justify is the
sense of surprise. The document merely puts into writing what US President
Donald Trump has been stating, with characteristic bluntness, for over a
decade.
European elites were even forewarned last February,
when Trump dispatched Vice President JD Vance to the Munich Security Conference
to deliver an unequivocal message about what lay ahead.
Merz's remarks followed similar declarations from Nato
Secretary General Mark Rutte, who delivered an apocalyptic speech in Berlin, as well as from France's Chief of Defence Staff General Fabien Mandon and Nato Military Committee chair Admiral
Giuseppe Cavo Dragone. In an interview with the Financial Times, Cavo Dragone went so
far as to advocate pre-emptive or preventive hybrid attacks against Russia.
It is difficult to avoid the impression that this
chorus of fearmongering is intended to build public support for the EU's
recently announced 800 billion euro ($942bn) rearmament plan, ostensibly
designed to fill the vacuum left by a US administration increasingly determined
to disengage, while confronting a heavily exaggerated Russian threat.
Rearmament without strategy
This narrative becomes even more disturbing when
viewed against the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party with
clear ideological
links to Nazism,
at a time when Germany is being urged to rearm on a massive scale. Yet this
contradiction appears lost on Europe's liberal elites, who remain fixated on
the supposed threat posed by "Russian autocracy".
Merz has made clear what this means in practice. If
Germany fails to expand its military rapidly enough, compulsory military
service may become "inevitable". Similar sentiments are now being
echoed by ruling elites in the UK, France, Italy, Poland and across the Nordic and
Baltic states.
The premise underlying these calls, however, is highly
questionable. The claim that Germany, or Europe more broadly, faces an imminent
military threat from Russia is deeply contested.
Moscow appears to lack both the resources and the
capability to invade Nato countries. After nearly four years of war, it has not
even succeeded in occupying all of Ukraine.
Likewise, Germany and a number of other European
states lack the capacity to reintroduce conscription at scale or to
rapidly convert their industrial base to a war economy. Its volunteer forces
are shrinking and ageing, recruitment targets are consistently missed and
training systems remain sluggish.
Germany's industrial base has been hollowed out, while
its automotive sector is struggling under pressure from Chinese competition. Ultimately, its poorly concealed
ambition to maintain its industrial edge by pivoting towards weapons
manufacturing is easy to proclaim, but far more difficult to realise.
Similar structural constraints affect much of Europe.
The result is a surreal situation in which
militarisation is presented as a substitute for diplomacy, as if conscription
could fill the political vacuum created by the near-total abandonment of
serious diplomatic engagement across the continent.
Some describe this moment as a Zeitenwende, a historic
turning point framed as Europe finally assuming "responsibility" for
its own security. In reality, it represents little more than burden-shifting
within the Atlantic alliance, which it could have potentially withstood were it
not for the fact that the main escalatory power remains firmly across the
Atlantic. At the same time, Europe is now expected to provide the workforce,
social discipline and political compliance.
Strategy, therefore, continues to be conceived and
remotely controlled by Washington, while Europe bears all the risks and
consequences.
Europe's hollow power
If Merz and his EU counterparts believe that massive
rearmament offers an escape from the cul-de-sac they have created, they are
deluding themselves.
Since 2022, European leaders have undermined their
own energy
security,
lost competitiveness, hollowed out industrial capacity and embraced
deindustrialisation as a virtue - all in the name of a war they are unlikely to
win, not least because it is being fought through a strategy they do not
control.
In regular times, this would induce political vertigo.
Instead, the German chancellor has the audacity to insist that his country is
neither weak nor small.
Across Europe, factories are closing, energy prices
are skyrocketing and supply chains are migrating. Yet EU decision-makers
persist in a state of cognitive dissonance, functioning on autopilot. There
appears to be no vision. Diplomacy has vanished. No credible new
security architecture for the continent is even discussed.
Instead, everything is filtered through a single
matrix known as Russophobia, a sentiment masquerading as strategy.
And then there is the mother of all
paradoxes. The EU claims to defend freedom while openly discussing and
approving coercive laws that restrict freedom of thought and expression at
home.
Can it seriously be argued that French President
Emmanuel Macron respected the will of voters in the most recent elections? Or
that the events surrounding Romania's recent electoral process were remotely
normal? How is it possible that EU institutions can increasingly sanction
individuals without due legal process, simply for holding dissenting views?
Militarisation is now chosen over common sense and
realism. Fear is obsessively instilled into public opinions and unconvincing
narratives are replacing strategic thinking.
Rather than reconsidering this self-destructive
trajectory, Merz, together with European Commission President Ursula von der
Leyen and much of the EU leadership, has doubled down.
They attempted to confiscate frozen Russian assets
held in European banks to finance the war in Ukraine, ignoring warnings from
the European Central Bank and discreet alerts from ratings agencies about the
risks to Europe's financial credibility.
After the political folly of seeking
Russia's "strategic defeat", the economic damage inflicted by
sanctions and the abandonment of Russian gas, Europe nearly added financial
self-sabotage to the list.
Strategic self-harm
Will European leaders ever learn a lesson?
Fortunately, their plan failed miserably. Last
week, the European Council declined to approve the measure. Belgium, Hungary, the
Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy and even France raised objections. Instead, the
EU opted to burden its already strained taxpayers with a new 90 billion euro
loan to Ukraine.
When historians look back on this period, they may be
surprised to conclude that it was a relatively obscure Belgian prime minister,
Bart De Wever, derided by much of the mainstream press, who played a
decisive role in saving Europe's financial credibility.
Looking ahead to 2026, there is little evidence that
Europe's leaders are prepared to abandon their mistaken course. There is,
however, a faint glimmer of change. Macron has signalled a renewed willingness to engage in dialogue with Russia. It is an
encouraging albeit insufficient step.
Any genuine shift would require two fundamental principles to be upheld: the
first is the indivisibility
of security, the
idea that one state's security cannot be pursued at the expense of others in
the same region.
Eastern European states, including Ukraine, cannot
plausibly insist that their security depends solely on Nato membership if
Russia perceives that outcome as an existential threat. Security arrangements
must consider all parties' perceptions, rather than privileging some at the
expense of others.
The second is recognition of the security dilemma, a
core concept in international relations theory. When one state enhances its
military capabilities, others may perceive this as threatening, regardless of
intent.
Applied to Europe today, the question is obvious: why
should Russia view the EU's 800-billion-euro rearmament programme as purely
defensive when EU member states already spend more than four times as much as
Russia on military procurement?
Without integrating these principles into European
strategic thinking, particularly in negotiations over Ukraine, 2026 risks
becoming yet another bleak year for peace on the continent.
