Maintaining European unity is key for survival

A freshly released International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook brings no comfort to anyone within the G7, especially in the US and the European Union (EU). The Brexit aftershock is still reverberating around the world.

The North American Treaty Organisation (Nato) summit in Warsaw, Poland desperately looked for enemies. Escalation is the best way to preserve eroded unity and it requires confrontational nostalgia. Is the extended EU conflict with Russia actually a beginning of a mega-geopolitical and geo-economic dilemma? Finally, does more Ukrainian calamities pave the road for a new cross-continental grand accommodation of either austerity-tired France or uber-performing Germany with Russia, therefore the end of the EU?

Consequently, nearly all scholars would agree that the Franco-German alliance actually represents a geopolitical axis and the backbone of the union. However, the inner unionistic equilibrium will be maintained only if Atlantic-Central Europe skilfully calibrates and balances its own equidistance from both assertive Russia and the omnipresent US. Any alternative to the current union is a grand accommodation of either France or Germany with Russia. This means a return to Europe of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries – namely, with direct confrontations over the continent’s core sectors, perpetual animosities, wars and destructions.

Both Russia and the US have demonstrated the ability for skilful and persistent conduct of international affairs, passions and visions to fight for their agendas. Despite of any Grexit or Brexit, it is a high time for Brussels to live up to its very idea and to show the same. Biology and geopolitics share one basic rule: comply or die.

- The reader is a chairperson and professor in international law and global political studies based in Vienna, Austria.