Description
The surface appearance of the Ukraine-Russia War was one of unity and “civilisational solidarity” (Foley and Unkovski-Korica, 2024) between the states and peoples of the broadly defined NATO bloc. Efforts to understand the war through the objective lens of competitive rivalry, conflict and uneven-combined development have therefore centred on the macro dynamic of growing multipolarity. By contrast, this research examines how waging a civilisational war (albeit vicariously) has contributed to reorganising the NATO bloc itself. It analyses the uneven distribution of the costs and consequences, centring on the core problematic of NATO: namely, the possibility of European power(s) achieving “autonomy through alignment” (Lavery and Schmidt, 2021) with US strategy, given Europe’s military dependence. Three vectors of intra-NATO redistribution and reorganisation are considered: between Europe and America; within the multilevel European power structure; and between social classes. NATO’s maximalist response to Russian aggression, I argue, has confirmed strategic heteronomy: Europe’s dependency, that is, upon the agency of an increasingly unpredictable external power. Statistical data confirms the Ukraine war as a pivotal conjuncture in solidifying Europe’s post-2008/9 competitive weakness and military dependence. Conversely, the European Commission under German leadership has strengthened a foreign policy portfolio based on a defensive and Atlanticist account of civilisational defence and solidarity: maximally anti-Russian, anti-migrant and pro-Israeli. The tension between these facts have rarely been examined. Drawing on a neo-Gramscian framework, this research argues that the absence of open internal conflict results from the success by which European states and ruling classes have passed the costs of war onto the domestic working class. The ideological success of the Ukraine conjuncture (2022-3), in a broader context of endemic exogenous crises, therefore permitted class pacification which in turn allowed European elites to accept re-subordination to American power.
