“Europe must take charge of its own defence,” says the new geopolitical cliché, but that doesn’t make much sense. “Europe” consists of countries whose interests differ unrecognisably depending on their distance from Russia. Donald Trump’s turn to Moscow is restoring the geography of the cold war. We’re seeing the return of “eastern Europe” and “western Europe”.
European geography changes periodically. Take the exiled Czech writer Milan Kundera’s 1983 essay “The Kidnapped West”. At the time, the Soviet satellites Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were referred to as “eastern Europe”. In fact, said Kundera, they were “central Europe” — part of the west until the Red Army “kidnapped” them in 1945.
“What is central Europe?” asked Kundera. “An uncertain zone of small nations between Russia and Germany.” And what was a “small nation”? “One whose very existence may be put in question at any moment; a small nation can disappear, and it knows it.”