Francisco Seixas da Costa, president of the Lisbon Club, defended this Friday that the Russian invasion of Ukraine generated “positive effects on cohesion” in the European Union (EU) and brought “greater relevance” to NATO’s role.
Seixas da Costa spoke to the Lusa office at the Security Conference – From Europe to the Indo-Pacific, organized by Clube Lisboa in collaboration with the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), whose start was secondary to the war in Ukraine, which started with the Russian invasion in February 2022.
“With regard to Europe (…) there was a seismic shock here with the situation in Ukraine, with an impact on European cohesion, but I would say in the most positive sense, as Europe started to unite more, and also in greater relevance of NATO’s role [Organização do Tratado do Atlântico Norte]said the ambassador.
“However, taking into account the importance of NATO for security in Europe, with a greater involvement of the United States, or at least as relevant as in the past, it is justified that the evolution of the EU takes place in the sense of creating its own dimension of defense and security?”asked the president of Clube de Lisboa, a center for reflection and debate on global issues.
Seixas da Costa recalled that, taking into account that most EU countries are members of NATO – only Austria, Ireland, Cyprus and Malta are not – it must be assessed whether it is worth creating a European create a security dimension or leave all those efforts to the Atlantic Alliance, knowing in advance that the United States will always be “indispensable” or “inevitable”.
“It happened in the First and Second World Wars and now in the conflict in Ukraine – whenever there is a crisis affecting European security, the United States comes into play. Is it indispensable or not?”he wondered.
Among European countries, he added, “there are different reactions depending on the sensitivity within countries regarding the transatlantic relationship”.
On the other hand, Seixas da Costa believes that “it is also important to understand the dimensions of security, especially the one that has gained importance in recent years, which is the question of everything that surrounds China, of the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean,” he added.
All this evolution, the Portuguese diplomat continued, raised another new question, which seeks to understand whether multilateralism has been endangered by this.
That is, does it jeopardize the discussion space in which countries have more or less equal weight? Or will the weight of the great powers – be it the United States, Russia or China – end in kidnapping, basically, the world order and make it more dependent on violence than on dialogue?”asked the diplomat.
Seixas da Costa, on the other hand, stressed that the Russian invasion of Ukraine also brought with it the need to debate energy and trade.
“We all realized that in this war in Ukraine both trade, in the field of grains, and in the field of energy, in the field of oil and gas, became tools of this war. in other ‘commodities'”he concluded.
The conference, which takes place this Friday, is divided into four panels – War in Europe, Security in the Indo-Pacific, Energy and Food as Strategic Weapons and Between Multilateralism and the Power of the Strongest – and brought together half a dozen European, American and Asian specialists.
Source: DN
