History never ends.
The Russian war of aggression on the Ukraine launched on February 24 last year returned to the plains of Europe the old massive wars between states.
Putting aside the bloody civil conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s, the Russian attack on Ukraine is the first invasion by one European sovereign state of another since the end of World War II.
An attack that in one year generated consequences that can be seen as
a change of era.
The war revived NATO.
Like the European Union, the Atlantic Alliance was born from the ashes of World War II.
Washington had not wanted in 1945 to abandon the western part of the European continent as it had done after the First World War and it was proposed to keep it out of the reach of Soviet communism, which had already occupied half the continent, all the territory that remained behind the 'Iron Curtain'. ' that split Europe for four decades.
The Atlantic Alliance had a clear mission until the end of the Cold War, to deal with the Warsaw Pact.
Then, when the communist military alliance dissolved after the breakup of the Soviet Union, NATO began to be viewed with suspicion because
its usefulness was in doubt.
For years, the European and American governments sought jobs for which it had not been created: it was used in the 1990s as a military force to stop, with successes and errors, the wars in the Balkans.
It was used in anti-terrorist operations and even in naval missions to prevent the arrival of barges of migrants and refugees from North Africa.
US President Joe Biden, Poland's Andrzej Duda, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg this Wednesday in Warsaw.
Photo: AFP
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The Administration of Donald Trump came to question the US commitment to NATO, its key to the vault, while French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of the organization being "brain dead".
Then the tanks moved and the big war returned to Europe.
The
imperialist ideas
, centuries past, of Russian President Vladimir Putin brought tanks and troops to its neighboring Ukraine, to European soil.
More than seven million, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration, fled to take refuge away from the bombs and Russia was totally isolated from the rest of its continent.
The isolation of Russia
The war also led to Russian isolation in Europe.
The Europeans managed in one year to get rid of their dependence on Russian hydrocarbons and approve sanctions against Moscow that they had never approved against anyone.
The Russian economy is feeling how these sanctions have little by little effect and how
the country is disassociated from the international financial world
.
Vladimir Putin was wrong in calculating Europe's resilience and its ability to change energy providers in a few months.
Gas in European wholesale markets is below pre-war prices.
If Europe imported from Russia before the war almost a third of the oil it used and more than 40% of the natural gas, today it does not import a drop of oil or derivative products and less than 5% of the natural gas because a small part continues to arrive via gas pipelines to Hungary and Austria.
Germany, which for decades maintained a globally competitive industry in part thanks to supplies of cheap Russian energy, was able to
shed that dependency
within months.
Europe imports more natural gas from countries such as Norway, the United States, Nigeria, Algeria or Qatar and with the paradigm shift it opens the possibility of imports from other suppliers that would arrive, such as the United States, in methane tankers.
The change in the energy paradigm also causes the energy cards to be dealt again in Europe.
Thanks to its leadership in renewable energy and its potential in green hydrogen, Spain is likely to become a European energy power in the second half of this decade.
Belgium can be the gateway for the diversification of natural gas for northern Europe because the country is already capable of importing almost three times its needs and is connected by high-capacity gas pipelines with its neighbors Germany and France.
Vladimir Putin's miscalculation
Putin erred in another calculation.
If he believed that as in 2014 when Crimea was annexed, Europe and the United States would let it go, the miscalculation is historic.
The triumphant walk towards Kiev was aborted
and Europeans, Americans and Canadians turned, with increasing force, to arming the Ukrainians to resist.
If in the first weeks they barely sent bulletproof vests, personal weapons or helmets, little by little they increased their support until they now promised that in weeks they will start sending powerful German Leopard 2, British Challenger 2 and American Abrams heavy tanks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin at a patriotic concert at a Moscow stadium on Wednesday.
Photo: AFP
Hundreds of artillery pieces or European armored personnel carriers, Turkish attack drones and ammunition taken from the arsenals of the former Warsaw Pact countries now members of the European Union and NATO defend the Ukrainians, who in full view of the evolution of the combats no longer accept anything other than the absolute withdrawal of the Russians from all the occupied territories.
Putin was also wrong about NATO's military reaction.
If he intended to drive Western troops away from his borders, he achieved the opposite.
Tens of thousands of men and tons of military material were mobilized to reinforce the eastern flank of the Atlantic Alliance.
Americans, British, Belgians, Dutch, Spanish, Italians, French, Germans and others sent military units, planes and tanks to countries like Romania, Poland or the three small Baltic republics.
The conflict also served to bring the United States closer to Europe again.
If the Barack Obama Administration began to talk about the "pivot to Asia", to give more importance to the confrontation between the two great powers, China and the United States, this war saw the Biden Administration return regularly to conclaves and civil meetings and military in Europe and how Washington increased by tens of thousands the number of soldiers redeployed in central and eastern Europe.
They are not the numbers of the Cold War but the trend is upward.
At the same time, the attack further solidified the European ranks.
Moscow gambled that Europe would drop its support for Ukraine as soon as it began to suffer the economic effects.
The continent would be cold this winter and inflation, with the historic rise in energy prices, would devour the pockets of Europeans, who would jump on their governments.
If in a few months between May and August the situation seemed to be heading in that direction, in recent months it has been seen that Moscow was missing the mark.
The economy performed better than expected, with the unemployment rate at 6.1% in December in the Eurozone, its lowest level since the creation of the euro more than 20 years ago.
The war also generated a movement that may be fundamental because it will take Europe decades to trust Russia again.
The Kremlin's country was left isolated on the old continent, with the only hand of its vassal Belarus, a puppet state controlled by Moscow and led by Alexander Lukashenko, known as "Europe's last dictator."
Brussels, special
BC
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