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June 17, 2022 - 1:30pm
In Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Friedrich Nietzsche mused on the possibilities of the Russian threat to unite Europe into a great civilisational power, beyond what he saw as the petty nationalisms of the day. Only the threat posed by “that monstrous empire in-between, where Europe, as it were, flows back into Asia,” he wrote, would allow European civilisation “to acquire one will… a protracted terrible will which would be able to project its goals millennia hence”, ending “the long drawn-out comedy of its petty states”.
Whatever his own Nietzschean qualities, Emmanuel Macron appears to agree. Always a civilisational thinker, endlessly returning to the idea of Europe as a great civilisational power standing between the fading American empire and the rising Chinese civilisation state, Macron’s new-found commitment to Ukraine’s European destiny seems to stand within this vein of thought.
In Kyiv yesterday, affirming that “Ukraine belongs to the European family,” and signalling France’s support for the country’s EU candidacy, Macron appeared to be gambling that a Ukraine absorbed into a European sphere would not be a brake on his long-held dream of strategic autonomy (as many commenters on the fringes of both Left and Right assume) but instead a catalyst, spurring a European industrial and defence renaissance.
In a little-noticed speech, Macron declared that Europe required a “wartime economy”, forcing the continental bloc to “invest more” and “act faster” to “recapitalize their armed forces” and “assist their partners”, a clear reference to Ukraine. Yesterday, rumours emerged that Macron has ordered the French defence company NEXTER to accelerate production of the CAESAR howitzers that are proving so useful, if in limited quantities, in the artillery battles of the Donbas. With 25% of France’s CAESAR stocks already pledged to Ukraine, Macron has demanded NEXTER shift towards a “war-time” production mode.
Yet Macron is likely correct in assuming that America’s inevitable turn to the Pacific, to defend its imperial hegemony from China, will force Europe to defend itself from its civilisational challengers. It is a point that the most perceptive figures in America’s strategic establishment, like Elbridge Colby, have long made, and Europeans ought best heed it, for all our sakes, before it is too late. Macron’s long-criticised ambivalence over Russia’s potential, as an industrial and defence giant, to both add muscle to an autonomous European project and to challenge its Enlightenment norms seems to have been discarded, at least for now.
Instead, he now seems to view Russia’s imperial dreams as a spur to develop Europe’s own civilisational mission in response, with Putin’s aggressive civilisation state acting as the perfect foil, or Other, against which a coherent, self-reliant Europe can be defined. It is a Realist vision at perfect odds with the American brand of Structural Realism that views Ukraine as part of Russia’s natural sphere of interest, a situation about which nothing can or should be done.
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SubscribeInteresting article, if a little pessimistic. It’s probably more correct to say Nietzsche wrote there *might* (not would) be such a great increase in Russia menace. What he was definitive about was that Russia had a great reservoir of will to power, waiting to be discharged, though he wasn’t sure whether it would be for good or for ill. Turned out it would be discharged at least partly for good, in successfully resisting the Nazi war machine. Nietzsche’s successor Spengler was much more optimistic that Russia might eventually turn out to be a spiritual saviour to the West and the wider world. Recent events have cast much doubt on this, but too early to say Spengler’s prediction has been proved false, IMO. That said, is good Europe is becoming a little more realist. I’d 100% agree with Arix on Ce vis pacem para bellum. Maybe uniting on the need to square up to Russia will have many benefits, though I’d hope there can be a reconciliation after a few years.
It is always dangerous to say something about Nietzsche using a quote or two – if not foolish – as he himself loved to point out. It’s like seeing only one facet of a multifaceted crystal, where each face reveals an idea which argues against some of others and all of which are necessary to really understand him.