EU remains fundamentally divided over how to deal with Vladimir Putin
Judy Dempsey is a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and editor-in-chief of the international relations blog Strategic Europe.
Europe is facing one of its most serious crises since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
As Russia continues to deploy tens of thousands of troops along the border with Eastern Ukraine, the European Union is struggling over how to respond to President Vladimir Putin's demands.
Putin has insisted that Ukraine should never join the NATO military alliance, should stop the expansion of the alliance to other countries in the region and recognize Russia's security concerns. This is despite the fact that Russia has undermined the security and territorial integrity of Ukraine by invading the eastern part of the country in 2014 and is now threatening to invade it again if the West does not meet its demands.
NATO is united in its response, with the Biden administration taking a tough stance toward Putin. The military alliance has sent troops to the Baltic states, Poland and Romania in order to strengthen these flanks of NATO that border with Ukraine. Putin's intimidation of Ukraine has given the alliance a new sense of purpose.
The same cannot be said about the European Union. It is divided over what sanctions to impose on Russia if it were to invade, again, Ukraine. It is divided over how to protect Ukraine. And it is divided over what kind of political and security relationship it wants with Russia.
On the sanctions issue, several EU countries but also the United States want Germany to stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Led by Russia's state-run Gazprom energy giant, the project would bring more gas directly to Germany via the Baltic Sea. Not only would it weaken Ukraine as a major transit route for Russian gas exports to Europe, it would make Germany more dependent on Russian gas.
So far, Germany's Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has no intentions of stopping the project that successive German governments have supported. If it were stopped, it would mark a major shift in relations between Berlin and Moscow. It would show that Germany was prepared to abandon Ostpolitik, or eastern policy, that was first started in the 1970s.
The belief at the time was that by forging trade and economic and political ties with the then Soviet Union, it would decrease tensions, create confidence and even bring Moscow closer to the West.
German governments have not deviated from this policy, despite Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014, Moscow's cyberattacks on the German parliament, the erosion of human rights in Russia and the imprisonment of the leading oppositionist, Alexei Navalny.
Several EU member states have criticized Germany's stance toward Russia, especially during the Ukraine crisis. Poland has demanded that Berlin stop Nord Stream 2 but also support Ukraine militarily, which is something Berlin will not do. It fears this would lead to further escalation and even lead to a military conflict between Russia and Europe. The security of Europe would be threatened.
For France, that security is already being undermined. President Emmanuel Macron believes that the Ukraine crisis shows how Europe's security architecture, established after World War II when NATO was set up and taken for granted after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, needs to be fundamentally revised.
Macron, who visited Moscow earlier this month, followed on Feb. 15 by Scholz, has been highly critical about the Russian military deployments on Ukraine's border. Even if Putin did de-escalate, the view from Paris is that the tensions would continue unless the Europeans and Russia together discuss how to make the European continent more secure and stable.
Paris, for example, wants to revive arms control negotiations that would include discussing conventional and nuclear forces. Such talks and treaties were abandoned by Russia and the U.S. over the past decade, creating a dangerous, unpredictable security climate.
France has won some support from Germany for these ideas. But Poland and the Baltic states are highly suspicious of such ideas. Poland believes France wants Europe to create a strategic autonomy in which the EU, led by France, would develop its own security and defense policies and structures.
For Warsaw and other Central European members of NATO and the EU, this is a red line. For them, strategic autonomy would weaken the trans-Atlantic alliance and NATO. Above all, such a development would play into Russia's hands. After all, Moscow's long-term goal has been to divide NATO in a profound way that would break the military and defense bonds between Europe and the U.S. Until now, the latter has been Europe's security guarantor.
But the Ukraine crisis, and America's focus on the economic and military rise of China, has convinced the French political and defense establishment that it is time for Europe with Russia to discuss the continent's security architecture.
It is hard to see this debate starting as long as Russia continues to threaten Ukraine. Ultimately, because of the divisions in Europe, it is the Biden administration and the Kremlin who hold the cards for making Europe stable, or unstable.