Defending Europe against the Russian threat is a matter of lives, not ideologies

I'm increasingly perplexed reading certain messages in some media outlets and on some social media accounts.

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One message I'm seeing with some frequency is the one that asserts the idea that Europe cannot defend itself or does not deserve to be defended because it is suffering from a crisis of values. I have been criticizing this crisis of values ​​for years, but frankly, I don't understand this argument: it's as absurd as claiming that Spain does not deserve to be defended against a threat because of its crisis of values, which is very acute.

I have the feeling that this way of thinking is more common in those countries that, due to their geographical distance, perceive the Russian threat as more distant and unrelated to their daily problems. In countries like Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, all this is more clear because they have the misfortune of sharing a border with Russia. In the last century, these countries suffered Russian invasions during the Soviet era. In the case of the Baltic countries and Poland, these invasions were accompanied by mass deportations to Siberia.

You only have to look at what Russia has been doing for the past three years against one of its neighboring countries to understand how little the Kremlin cares about the ideology of those attacked. In Ukraine, unarmed civilians of different ideologies and beliefs have suffered and continue to suffer from Russian war crimes. Putin's army cares very little whether the massacred Ukrainians are conservatives, liberals, or socialists, or whether they are Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Jews, or atheists. If any European expects Russia to spare their lives because of their ideology or religion in the event of an invasion, they can forget it. Just ask any Ukrainian.

Preparing Europe's defense against the Russian threat is a matter of saving lives, regardless of the status of the people to be saved. All human lives are important. If someone were to tell me that they are only prepared to defend the Spanish people from their ideology or their religion in the event of a foreign invasion, I would tell them they are anything but a patriot, because we are all Spanish, whatever our way of thinking.

The same can be said of Europe. Right now, our continent faces a common problem that hasn't occurred since World War II: a military power led by a thug who believes he has the right to invade his neighbors, a thug who has been issuing threats against various European countries for several years to force them to do what he wants. This problem affects us all.

What the European institutions must also do is stop wasting time on ideological nonsense that only divides and weakens us. While we rearm and prepare for new aggression (just follow the Russian state media to know what the next targets to hit are), it is absurd that the European Union leadership continues to implement policies that damage our economy, precisely when we most need optimal economic conditions to prepare our defense.

Those who continue to believe in green and degrowth utopias must begin to change their mentality, because if under normal conditions it was immoral to develop these policies, with Europe under threat it is even less understandable to be doing these things, unless they want to offer a great advantage to Russian imperialism.

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Photo: Eurocorps. Eurocorps soldiers on a shooting exercise with assault rifles FN SCAR.