On Tuesday, after denying the hypothesis for weeks, for the first time the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Drunk he proposed asking Europe to send soldiers. He thus seems to have concretized the famous words of the French president Emmanuel Macron on sending NATO troops to Kiev. To which were added over time the speeches on the war economy evoked by Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, or even Olaf Scholz and others who speak of “preparing the minds of Europeans for war”. The militaristic verbal escalation is not surprising Romain Huet: “The vocabulary of war is now omnipresent in European public debate.” Nor does he see anything new in the threats coming from Moscow after the attack on Crocus City Hall on Friday, with the Kremlin trying to blame Kiev for the attack claimed by ISIS. Anthropologist at the University of Rennes 2, Huët specializes in ethnography of violence. In 2019 he published an essay on social uprisings against the established order, between 2012 and 2018 he followed groups of fighters in Syria on various occasions, and did the same in Ukraine after the Russian invasion. The result of this research is collected in the book War in the leadreleased for Presses Universitaires de France. According to Huët, this widespread familiarity with militarist language is an effect of the politics of fear: “We are immersed in an anxious climate that favors authoritarian turns and serves to prepare us for future conflicts.”
Professor Hüet, has the discussion on the possibility of a new war in Europe firmly entered the space of public debate?
It’s nothing new. Even before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, during the pandemic politicians were talking about the “war on Covid” (Macron declared “we are at war”, ndr), the expression “demographic rearmament” for aging societies has been coined. The threshold of tolerance has been lowered and consequently the possible indignation against the war has also decreased. The result is an atmosphere that makes war acceptable. It is clear, however, that a real war has been fought in Ukraine for two years. What’s new in recent months, I think, is the fact that European politicians are trying to awaken public opinion to avoid a Russian victory, which seems increasingly likely. And I believe Kuleba’s words confirm that Ukrainians are also starting to realize that they are losing ground. Having said that, I don’t think the prospect of having “European boots” on Ukrainian soil will ever materialize. And I have doubts about the real capabilities of France or Europe to arrive at a direct military confrontation with Russia.
Yet, after the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, and with the Kremlin and Russian services declaring they have evidence of Ukrainian involvement, we risk being dragged into the conflict, don’t you think?
It seems to me that the attack against Moscow provides nothing more than additional justification for the war it is waging. I don’t see how they can increase the intensity of the offensive on Ukraine. Since, I repeat, they are gaining ground in the field. It must also be said that Russian propaganda has always tried to justify the war by accusing Kiev of terrorism against the Russians. As for the atomic threat, it has been evoked since the beginning of the conflict, it doesn’t seem new to me.
Returning to the appeals of European leaders to “prepare for war”, do they resonate with people? Now there is the return of the threat of attacks on European soil…
I wouldn’t say the war-mongering discourse is gaining traction, at least if you look at the polls. In France, the popularity of Macron’s speech on sending NATO troops to Ukraine is very low, in most European countries people are not in favor of an escalation of the war. But the evolution of public opinion is measured in the long term. And on this level it is possible that common sense will end up accepting a new war. This is why I don’t believe much in the idea of sending Western troops to Ukraine now, but I think that Europe could find itself involved in other conflicts in the future. What happens today is that politics revolves around fear: the feeling of anguish is drawn heavily on. This also applies to the threat of terrorism, but let’s not forget that ISIS is weakened compared to ten years ago.
So at the stadium you would classify these speeches as rhetoric without direct effects?
If we talk about war in Ukraine, my feeling is that two events will be truly decisive for the fate of the conflict. The European elections, in part, and then the American elections above all. I believe that we are necessarily moving towards a freezing of the Ukrainian conflict, but everything suggests that we are preparing bigger conflicts. I am thinking of Taiwan and beyond. At least, current politics, with its revolving around the threat of aggression, seems entirely oriented in this direction. It’s a fact.
All this talk of war in the EU seems to go against the original idea on which Europe was built as a continent of peace…
The fact is that Europe is crumbling like all the institutions born from the ashes of the Second World War. My impression is that precisely this rhetoric on the mobilization of the Western geopolitical bloc arises from a growing feeling of impotence. The Western bloc has lost influence, new multipolar actors are arising in the world, from China to Latin America, and the West is struggling to maintain its grip.
Some compare the current situation to that immediately preceding the First World War, to the clouded judgment that led European leaders not to realize that their choices were about to unleash such a long and bloody conflict. How do you evaluate this parallelism?
I would focus on the phenomenon of the advance of nationalism and the return of protectionist policies and closure towards the rest of the world. The trend is quite clear in Europe, where nationalist right-wing parties are now winning everywhere. You Italians are an example. This too is a correlate of the context of anguish and fear that dominate current politics. Be careful, the fear that politicians leverage is not just geopolitical. There is ecological fear, fear of the end of the world. The renewed fear of terrorism. This atmosphere is clearly conducive to authoritarian turns, certainly not to democratic development.
In his book he talks about how the war is perceived in Ukraine, and explains that it is not experienced “just as a tragedy”. You speak of a certain “pleasure in living in an unstructured condition” on the part of the Ukrainians mobilized in the conflict. Do you think that this taste for the dissolution of institutions is spreading in our societies too?
It’s not our condition. It is true that we live in a climate of fear, but war only affects us indirectly. When it comes to really fighting it is clear that a transformation occurs in society and individuals, it is mandatory to reorganize. Today we Europeans are like spectators of history, we do not experience the great vertigo of war, which I verified by working in the field in Ukraine or Syria for my book. We are just immersed in an anxious climate.
Do you see alternatives to exacerbating this climate? Pacifist voices and movements are very much in the minority in Europe, the democratic or left-wing formations that in theory could counter the nationalist wave he spoke of are increasingly faded. In short, it seems we have few options…
I would be very happy to have an antidote to this climate. I can say that if we want to counter the current trend we should continually ask ourselves the question of how to keep our societies open, how to avoid closures and the spread of fear. I am inspired by Hannah Arendt, who saw the decline of humanity in the absence of social communication. Nobody can talk to each other anymore. Well, perhaps dialogue could be an area in which to invest. I also want to say, however, that I find the calls for peace and diplomacy rather naive regarding the conflict in Ukraine: I would start from the assumption that Russia does not want to negotiate because it thinks it will win. As far as Europe is concerned, the future, as I was saying, will depend a lot on who wins the presidential elections in the United States.