The War in Ukraine and its Consequences on the European Union

The war between Russia and Ukraine is one of the most serious crises that the European Union has faced after World War II. This war has affected all political, economic, social and security sectors of this union. As a buffer country with a geopolitical and geostrategic position between three powers, namely the European Union, Russia and the United States, Ukraine is of great importance and any action and movement requires the sensitivity of these three powers and their mutual reactions. According to John Mearsheimer, the moves made by the United States to expand NATO to the east are the main reason for Russia's attack on Ukraine. This war, with the asymmetric pressure of the crisis on the member states of this union, has increased the platform for the politicization of national identities and the combination of these two factors, along with the low competence of transnational institutions, has caused differences in the views of European countries to reach a common policy. 

Research question: 

The main question of this article is what were the consequences of the Ukrainian war crisis on the European Union?

Methodology and theoretical framework: 

The current research has used the method of future research and scenario writing. Scenario writing is one of the basic techniques of future research method that focuses on creating and reconstructing future events and trends based on the collected evidence, data and information. In scenario-based planning, several distinct scenarios must be prepared in order to cover a wide range of different futures and obtain a reliable approximation of future trends and realities. The existing limitations on the number of scenarios are mostly due to the perceptual, analytical and cognitive limitations of humans and not the limitations related to the complexities of the real world. Scenarios always contain some contents that challenges our worldview and mental structure, otherwise we will remain locked in the same old mental structure and have to face its unfortunate consequences.

This invasion is considered to be the largest conventional military attack on European soil since World War II and it is referred to as the new crisis of the European Union. This crisis has revealed most of the realities and weaknesses of this union in political, economic, social and security fields. The European Union is a united body in the form of economic-political regionalism and multi-level governance consisting of 27 European countries. The initiators of the European Union integration plan claimed that the national sovereignty of the governments would be replaced by collective decision-making and the independent role of the Parliament, the Commission and other EU institutions. In the past decades, this union has faced crises such as economic crisis, debt, immigration, Brexit, Corona, the discussion of the limits of the powers, competences of the European Union and its institutions towards the member states has been one of the basic issues.Although according to some experts, the emergence of challenges and crises helps to transform and strengthen the unity in this union, but the war in Ukraine and its political, economic, security and social consequences, not only did not help this process, but also highlighted the role of the state over national differences and led to the divergence of the European Union. The findings of the research indicate that the war between Russia and Ukraine and its consequences, the imposition of Western economic sanctions against Russia, have stopped the export of oil and gas to Europe and reduced the economic growth of the member countries and due to the increase in energy prices and the inability to provide energy resources and the creation of a gap between the members of this union in the way of dealing with Russia, it has led to public protests. In addition, the war in Ukraine and its consequences have changed the swing of the pendulum of this union towards statists (against transnationalists) and led to the divergence of this union.

The findings of this article are that the crisis of the war in Ukraine has had many consequences on the European Union which has led to the divergence of this institution and as a result, the reduction of its power in the international system. This problem was caused by the deepening of the differences within this union, the vacuum of powerful leadership and the different positions of the member states after the war.In this article, an attempt has been made to investigate the causes and factors of the war in Ukraine by using the scenario writing method in order to examine the consequences of the Ukraine crisis in creating differences between the members of the European Union and weakening the position of this institution in the international scene. The Ukraine crisis has increased the differences among the EU member states with the three sides of asymmetric distribution of the crisis pressure, the politicization of national identities and the low competence of European Union institutions. This crisis has increased the differences between the member states of the Union so that the crisis management policy has been reduced from the transnational level to the national level and this issue is defined as divergence. In fact, the emergence of factors such as the emergence of monopolist nationalism, the expansion of far-right political parties or TAN (Traditional-Authoritarian-Nationalist), war and the trend towards geopolitics have challenged the process of European integration. This retreat in the process of convergence and as a result divergence at the level of the European Union has brought different scenarios and consequences. The possible future scenario of the European Union is its transformation into a confederation group with veto power for each country and one of the most important consequences is the change of the European center of gravity, the destruction of the idea of independent European defense, the dominance of the United States in the Trans-Atlantic relations and the weakening of the position of the European Union in the game of power and global leadership.