European defense. Ok. What about the politics behind?

One of the most irritating things — as well as one of the weak points of politics in the sovereign age — is this habit of talking about one’s ideas without actually doing politics. That is, without ever getting to the essential point: saying, or at least suggesting, what policy should follow from those ideas. What the concrete actions of the national government should be, in other words, once those ideas become a policy, a majority, executive power, a signature on a decree, an order given to an official, an instruction sent to a police headquarters, a rule written into the Official Gazette.

Of course, doing this is sometimes disastrous. When Meloni tried to identify the practical consequences of her political ideas on migration, she proposed the “naval blockade of the Libyan coasts”, which, quite apart from any consideration of international politics, would be an act of war, and therefore prohibited first by the Italian Constitution, and then by the treaties as well. But at least, in that case, the political translation of the idea was visible: wrong, impracticable, dangerous, propagandist as much as you like, but visible. One understood what action was being imagined.

Or, if we take Vannacci, we find the opposite case. He ranted about Paola Egonu for an entire book, without ever suggesting, inspiring, or even allowing a genuinely political action to be glimpsed. And so the question becomes inevitable: what exactly should the government do, given that Egonu has dark skin? Establish a second-class citizenship? Or, as the English used to say centuries ago, a “special citizenship”? Revoke her citizenship? Force her to sing the national anthem every morning at dawn, perhaps in front of an official from the Ministry of National Identity with a stopwatch and a raised eyebrow?

What?

There is no proposal. What is missing is the passage from invective to law, from personal irritation to public decision, from ideological posture to government action.

And this shift of the discussion towards empty rhetoric becomes at least alarming when we talk about the new European defense. In the sense that, fine, let us suppose Europe really does build itself a mighty army. Let us suppose that, from tomorrow morning, according to some people, it “carries more weight on the international chessboard”. Very well. Lovely words. A conference sentence, an editorial sentence, a sentence for a panel with the name card in front of you and the little bottle of mineral water.

Now, however, there are two possibilities: either the problem really was Europe’s physical weight, in which case we need to understand how many tonnes of geopolitical weight are needed in order to be taken seriously, or you are not saying what what you propose actually implies.

When the war against Ukraine began, we were told that Europe was irrelevant because it was too weak militarily, and that everything would have been different if Europe had had a powerful army.

In what sense?

In practical terms, what are you saying? That we should have started a war to protect Ukraine, which was not — and is not — a member of the European Union? What policy are you proposing, exactly? Because here we are no longer in the domain of posture, of muscular declarations, of “we must command respect”.

Here we are in the domain of consequences.

And consequences, unfortunately for rhetoricians, have the nasty habit of looking very much like dead bodies, missiles, bombed cities and ultimatums.

Having this immensely powerful army, should we have gone to war with Russia? And especially, will we go to war with Russia when/if we have it?

[ ] YES

[ ] NO

Because this is the point. Since we had no mutual defense treaty with Ukraine at the time of the Russian attack, going to war with Russia would have been a decisive event in the fullest sense of the term: it would not have been a legal automatic mechanism, it would not have been the application of an already-written clause, it would not have been the consequence of an obligation previously undertaken. It would have been a clear, voluntary, deliberate political decision.

So?

Is this why you want a strong European army? So that you can decide, when necessary or when it seems necessary to you, to wage war against Russia?

The same applies to the Gaza crisis, or to the Middle Eastern crisis in general. Italian newspapers are full of “analysts” — and by now I honestly suspect that the term “analyst” refers more to sodomy than to reasoning — who repeat: “Ah, if Europe had a single army, we could finally have our say.”

Very well.

But if you want to “have your say” only because you have an army, then it means you intend to use that army. Otherwise you are not talking about foreign policy; you are talking about theater. You are saying that you want to sit at the table with a pistol in your holster, but then, when someone asks whether you are prepared to draw it, you start talking about values, presence, authority, strategic weight, Europe’s role in the world, that is, about that lexical fog inside which Italian commentators manage to hide anything except a decision.

So?

Would you have waged war against Israel in order to defend Gaza? We can discuss the moral principle, certainly. We can discuss international law, proportionality, war crimes, historical responsibilities, borders, occupation, terrorism, civilians, anything you like. But we must always take the consequences into account. Because as soon as we move from “Europe must count for more” to “Europe must act”, the verb “to act” suddenly stops being an elegant conference word and begins to resemble something much more practical.

Should we have gone to war, having a powerful army that makes us “carry weight”, against Israel?

[ ] YES

[ ] NO

Because when we leave the domain of rhetoric, we enter the domain of consequences. And in the domain of consequences it is not enough to say that Europe must have a voice. One must say what that voice should say, to whom it should say it, with which instruments it should impose it, and above all what it should do if the interlocutor replies: “No.”

That is where politics begins. Not in the indignant communiqué. Not in the editorial with three quotations from Kissinger and two from Altiero Spinelli. Not in the sentence according to which “Europe must be a protagonist”. Politics begins when one says what practical action the government, whether European or Italian, must carry out, and when one accepts the need to talk about the consequences of that action.

So, dear “analysts” of European weakness over the events in Gaza, what policy are you suggesting?

War against Israel, yes or no?

And the same applies to the Iran/Hormuz question. This crisis too immediately wakes up the anal-ysts who fill the newspapers with articles that are not at all stale and repetitive, and all of them, with admirable herd-like originality, end up saying the same thing: if only Europe had powerful armed forces, we would have a say.

But there is one thing people do not want to understand, or perhaps they understand it perfectly well and prefer not to say it, because saying it would force everyone to leave the warm broth of rhetoric and plant their feet in the mud of political decision.

It is not enough merely to “have” armed forces. If you want to matter thanks to your armed forces, you also need a credible willingness to use them.

An army is not an institutional ornament, it is not the centerpiece of sovereignty, it is not a little flag to place behind the minister during press conferences. An army is an instrument of coercion, that is, an instrument which serves, in the last resort, to force someone to do something they do not want to do, or to prevent them from doing something they do want to do. And this, curiously enough, implies the concrete possibility of war.

So how exactly would you have used them in the case of Hormuz?

War against Iran?

War against Israel?

War against the United States?

Because, depending on the answer, everything changes. Foreign policy changes, Europe’s position in the world changes, its relationship with NATO changes, its relationship with the US changes, its relationship with the Gulf changes, its relationship with energy changes, its relationship with European public opinion changes — an opinion that may love the abstract idea of a “strong” Europe very much, but might love a little less the concrete idea of its children being sent to fight in the Strait of Hormuz in order to prove that at last “we have a say”.

This is the political part missing from the idea of “let us build ourselves a strong army so that we count”. The rest of the sentence is missing. Count in order to do what? Count against whom? Count with what mandate? Count up to what point? And above all: when the moment comes in which “weight” must turn into action, what action are you actually proposing?

A political discourse, or even just a discourse on a political theme, should always ask for, indicate, or at least inspire some action by the political class in government. Otherwise it is not politics: it is commentary, it is mood, it is venting, it is a television-lounge pose, it is that thing whereby someone pronounces solemn words such as “strategy”, “vision”, “international weight”, “autonomy”, and then, as soon as you ask him what the government should concretely do on Monday morning, he starts coughing into his handkerchief.

The discourse of “let us spend money on defense”, so far, translates into something fairly clear: let us spend more on defense, possibly by buying from European companies. Given the employment, industrial and technological returns, this might even be fine. One may agree or disagree, one may discuss priorities, public budgets, welfare, healthcare, schools, infrastructure, but at least the political link is understandable: investment is made in a sector, a supply chain is created or supported, employment is generated, industrial capacity is produced, and perhaps one even avoids always depending on the American supplier of the moment, who today sells you the missile and tomorrow explains on Truth Social that perhaps you are not likable enough.

The trouble begins when the anal-ysts — now basically a YouPorn category, something like “analyst sex”, or something of the sort — keep sticking onto this reasoning the clause according to which we need to have a powerful army “in order to count for more” in this affair or that one.

Because this is where the donkey falls. If you want to count for more because you have a strong European army, you must also show a marked willingness to use it. It is not enough to possess the instrument; you must make the possibility of employing it credible. And now the question becomes: how do we show this marked willingness?

With what foreign policy?

And against whom exactly should we wage war in order to “carry more weight”, given our hypothetical powerful army? Who is the concrete recipient of this weight? Russia? Iran? Israel? The United States? Some militia in the Mediterranean? Some government in North Africa? Or must the European army exist only as a large armed ornament, to be displayed in official photographs while everyone nods gravely and says that at last Europe “speaks with one voice”?

Because the single voice, if it has cannons behind it, sooner or later must also say something. And that something, in foreign policy, cannot remain a metaphor forever.

When I ask this question, the anal analysts always come out with another stale and repetitive sentence, namely the famous Latin motto: si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war.

Fine, nice motto. It sounds good. It has that compactness of an inscription carved into marble, that solemnity of a civic-education textbook written by a retired colonel, that patina of ancient wisdom which, in Italy, is always enough to make any banality look profound. It seems sensible.

No, it is not.

It does not work and it has never worked. In fact Rome, which prepared quite a lot of war and did so with a certain conviction, asked for, wanted, and had very little peace. Let alone built it, something at which — if we exclude the various and frequent genocides, the deportations, the cities razed to the ground, the slaves dragged away by the thousands, and the occasional transformation of a neighboring people into geopolitical fertilizer — Rome was, how shall we put it, rather poor.

No, I am sorry: the history of Rome catastrophically disproves the “Latin motto”. If preparing for war was supposed to produce peace, then the Roman Empire was an eleven-century experiment designed to prove the opposite. A political and military machine constantly forced to fight, repress, conquer, defend borders, put down revolts, massacre external and internal enemies, move legions from one province to another, invent new fronts, new barbarians, new traitors, new casus belli.

Clearly, it did not work.

It did not work for eleven centuries in a row. That seems to me fairly clear proof: not all Latin motto are reliable.

Corollary: it is about time anal analysts stopped thinking that if you have to say bullshit, it is better to say it in Latin. No, it does not work.

Stercus accidit.

OOPS!

This whole mass of militarist nostalgia, honestly, even when it is served in political, strategic, or even “scientific” sauce, has become tiresome. It has become tiresome because it presents itself as realism, but too often it is merely warlike romanticism wearing a tie. It has become tiresome because it pretends to speak the language of responsibility, while systematically avoiding the most responsible question of all: what concrete action are you proposing, and what consequences are you prepared to accept?

It all belongs to the great genre of “let us discuss around politics, but not politics itself”, which by now has turned public debate into an unbearable racket. Everyone talks about posture, weight, deterrence, credibility, strategic autonomy, the European voice, international projection. But as soon as one asks which government should do what, against whom, with which instruments, under what mandate and with what risks, a very dense lexical fog suddenly descends, in which the tank becomes “capability”, war becomes “presence”, bombing becomes an “option”, and the dead become a “strategic cost”.

And it is about time we put an end to it, because when rhetoric commands armies, things end badly. They end badly because armies are not metaphors, they are not talk-show arguments, they are not emotional props for commentators eager to feel like Churchill for ten minutes. Armies are real instruments, made of real people, real weapons, real orders and real consequences.

And when they are invoked only in order to “carry more weight”, without having the courage to say where, how, against whom and up to what point, one is not doing foreign policy.

Someone is playing with war.