„...only the dead have seen the end of war.“ This maxim, attributed to Plato, has never sounded more relevant. Today, one more sentence can be easily added to it: Europeans may not be interested in war, but that does not mean that war will not be interested in them.
For more than three decades, Europe lived with the illusion that history was over. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the continent accepted that the great wars remained in the textbooks, and the future belonged to trade, integration and the common market. Armies were reduced, military budgets – cut, and security was entrusted to NATO and, above all, to the American umbrella.
Then came February 24, 2022.
The war between Russia and Ukraine shattered not just European ideas about peace. It shattered the very philosophy on which post-war Europe was built. Suddenly, it turned out that tanks were redrawing borders, artillery was rewriting diplomacy, and drones were changing the way wars were fought.
But the biggest misconception was not that war was impossible. The biggest misconception was that Europe could remain a bystander.
Today, European countries are spending hundreds of billions on rearmament. Germany is changing its decades-old defense policy. Poland is building one of the largest armies on the continent. France is pushing for strategic autonomy. Great Britain is increasing its military spending. The Baltic states live with the feeling that the next crisis could be on their border.
This is not a preparation for peace. It is an admission that peace is no longer taken for granted.
The war in Ukraine has shown something else - no one wins quickly anymore. Russia expected a lightning operation. Ukraine counted on Western aid to tip the balance in a short time. Instead, the world has received a war of attrition that is gradually consuming economies, budgets, political capital and human lives.
The paradox is that the longer the conflict continues, the more Europe becomes a participant in it - even without officially fighting. The weapons are European. The money is European. The sanctions are European. The consequences are too.
European societies once believed that they could build prosperity without thinking about security. Today they understand that security has a price. And that price is rising with each passing month.
History has never been particularly kind to civilizations that think they can escape it. The European Union long believed that economics was enough to replace geopolitics. Russia has proven otherwise.
However, the real danger is not just in the Ukrainian trenches. It is in the gradual destruction of trust mechanisms between the great powers. Arms control treaties are falling apart. Diplomatic channels are narrowing. Nuclear rhetoric is becoming normalized. The world increasingly resembles a system that lacks the safeguards built up decades after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And when trust disappears, even one mistake can cost more than an entire war. That is why the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is not just Ukrainian. It is not just Russian. It is not even just European. This is the first major war of the new multipolar world – a world in which economic sanctions, technological rivalry, information operations and military power operate simultaneously.
How this war will end, no one knows.
But it is now clear what has ended. The illusion that Europe has left history has ended. Because war never asks whether societies are ready for it. It simply comes. And when it comes, it no longer matters whether we were interested in it. It only matters whether we were ready. Europe has woken up, but the war – not!