The justification of the triumphant ease of a leisurely war (the capture of Crimea without a single shot) is being replaced by the legitimization of war as such

The social contract "As long as there is no war" is cancelled in exchange for freedom. Judging by the case of treason against the mother of seven children, the war is recognized by all. And the justification of the triumphant ease of a leisurely war (taking Crimea without a single shot) is replaced by the legitimization of war as such. The justification of war, archaic in nature, is accompanied by an equally archaic fetishization of sovereignty.

Speculation on sovereignty is a sure sign of isolationism. At the end of World War II, one of the future architects of a united Europe, Jean Monnet, believed that the main post-war danger for the continent would be "the restoration of a Europe consisting of sovereign states subject to the temptations of protectionism." This did not mean that Monnet insisted on the abolition of sovereignties. It meant that the fetishization of sovereignties would have serious negative consequences for Europe, its economy, politics, and for the European values being rethought, accompanied by the impossibility of getting rid of the legacy - economic, political, psychological - of the world war.

"If the countries of Europe adopt a position of isolation and confrontation," wrote Monnet, "the creation of armies will again become necessary... And Europe will again begin to live in a state of fear." (The eminent Russian philosopher Lev Shestov, in his 1920s work Potestas clavium, wrote that if the peoples of the European continent had not allowed themselves to be drawn into the First World War, during those lost years "all of Europe would have turned into paradise.")

Characteristic in this sense is the dialogue about patriotism and sovereignty between the emigrant Josef and his friend, the old communist N., in Milan Kundera’s novel Ignorance (the action takes place in the first years after the Velvet Revolution, when the return of exiles to Czechoslovakia became possible):

“National independence has long been an illusion,” said N.

- But if the country is not sovereign and does not strive to become so, will anyone be ready to die for it?

- I don't want my children to be ready to die... To die for your homeland, that doesn't exist anymore. Maybe for you, during the years of your emigration, time stopped. But they, they don't think like you anymore."

Sir Michael Howard wrote about the same phenomenon in The Invention of Peace, when he noted “the general reluctance of Western urban societies to suffer heavy losses” and called this era “post-heroic.” Democracies do not fight among themselves: Kant’s idea of “perpetual peace” based on republican government and the unifying force of world trade works to a certain extent.

But it is difficult to captivate with this idea a world where death for a prophet is glorified, and an unknown death on the fields of Donbass is compared with the heroism of soldiers of the Great Patriotic War. Where the first person of the state goes to the Tolerance Center on the day of the Holocaust in order to declare the current Ukrainian government the heir of the "Banderites" and to repeat, in essence, Stalin's toast to the Russian people of May 1945, and at the same time to present the percentage rate of Jewish participation in the Great Patriotic War.

Europe was stolen from Russia. And along with it, the European value of peace.

Europe has been stolen from Russia