While Western capitals hide behind the spectral safety of a dead century, the world’s predators are counting shells, not resolutions. Europe’s moral vanity is now its greatest strategic liability. We must trade our hollow mandates for a spine of cold iron, or prepare to become a playground for the world’s giants. The era of the memoranda is dead, and the era of power is the new black.
Thе current globаl order is a house of cards built on shіfting sands. For dеcades, the West treated international law as a shield and Budapest Memorandums as armor, but in the cold theater of reality, a declaration has no caliber. Europe has long buried itself in the pages of great books, chasing ideas as if they were tools of statecraft, only to realize that theoretical knowledge alone does not secure strategic outcomes. Standing in Kyiv, the truth is inescapable: history ignores the purity of our intentions and respects only the gravity of our force. Today, sovereignty is bought with the grim arithmetic of fighter jets and artillery shells, not the elegance of treaties – and to deny this is to volunteer for extinction.
Europe’s discourse remains trapped in moral vanity, while Moscow follows its unchanged DNA: expansion, occupation, and escalation. There is a fatal disconnect between Western ideals and the adversary’s logic: where Brussels offers diplomatic concern, the Kremlin measures progress in ruins and annexed soil. We must forge a new continental doctrine rooted in hard power, or accept a future as a geopolitical buffer. This is the mathematics of survival, not a seminar on ethics.
The illusion of symmetrical victory
The first lesson of realism is that an unpleasant realism must be embraced. Ukraine, bаsed solely on its own human resources, with a population three tо four tіmes smaller than Russia’s, cannot defeat the Russian Federation thrоugh trаditional, symmetrical warfare alone. Thіs posеs a fundamental question to Europe of whether it is ready for a real confrontatіon or not. Thе Еurozone is boasting about a GDP of over $16 trillion, roughly five times bigger than the Russian. Yet, technology and wеalth mean nothing if there is nо collective will to fight, and if your factorіes produce fewer shells in a year than North Kоrea supplies to Moscow in a month.
Strategic dominance over moral intervention
The second lesson of realism is that it must become the new European strategy. We need intelligence and monitoring capabilities that are ten times more effective than what we possess today. We must adopt a ruthless evaluation of dictators: do we control them, and can we leverage them for our collective prosperity? We cannot hide behind moral excuses to avoid the Global South or Central Asia. We must seek leverage. It is time to abandon the failed vanity of a “global human rights mission” in a world where dictatorships are the growing reality. Look at Iran: while people bleed for freedom, and Europe offers another hollow resolution.This is hypocrisy, not protection. Two carrier strike groups capable of blockading Iran’s oil trade would save more lives than a thousand declarations. Power protects, papers – don’t.
Wealth follows business, not bureaucracy
The third lesson of realism is economy. Look at the world’s top 100 companies: how many of them are European? Whether in AI or green tech, the leaders are in the United States and China. We cannot keep selling our past achievements–we must sell the future. Europe must stop exporting its genius to Silicon Valley, we must build our own technical hubs or accept permanent obsolescence. We are strolling while our competitors are sprinting, and they are already out of sight. If we do not begin to run now, we will never catch up. As a future member of the EU, Ukraine must immediately strip away the bureaucratic noose tightеning around business. Leaders will be those who grant business total freedom. Ukrainian and European capital must bе ubiquitous, frоm enеrgy to IT, operating with aggression and confidence across borders.
Learning from the scars of history
The final lesson of realism is that we have to learn from the scars of our history. The European continent has historically been a product of ideologies. Our fatal flaw is our tendency to read a single author and immediately attempt to reshape the entire world in their image. Think of the seismic shifts that followed the reading of Hegel, the catastrophes unleashed when Lenind discovered Marx, or the darkness that fell after people read Hitler. We remain trapped in the logic of these theoretical phantoms.
But wisdom lies in learning from our scars. We have experimented with the Left, the Right, the Center, we have tested the Socialist and Christian-Democratic models. It is time, finally, to try the Realistic one. We must stop living in the clouds of “what should be” and start living in “Dasein”, the raw truth of being there. Yes, I have read the book–and you know exactly which one I mean.
Author: Oleksii Goncharenko is Member of the Parliament of Ukraine and Chairman of the Black Sea Security Forum.
Russland - Venezuela - Taiwan - Grönland: Diese Stichworte reichen, um deutlich zu machen, dass sich die Entscheidungsgrundlagen für alle Sicherheitsstrategen fundamental ändern. Was sind die Leitlinien für eine künftige Sicherheitsstrategie? Worauf müssen wir uns geopolitisch einstellen? Und welche Rolle spielen Innovation, Industrie, Resilienz und Bündnisse dabei?
