The current EU architecture does not work because it aggravates the inability to formulate a vision of perspective consistent with its raison d'être.
Propaganda in a state of war is a necessity. But if those in command end up believing in the propaganda they tell, disasters will ensue.
For Ukrainian propaganda, the origin lies in the annexation of Crimea to Russia, which the West would have shelved without reacting as it should have, because since that annexation Russia felt encouraged to go further and that Crimea. And Donbass must instead return to Ukraine not only to restore the borders recognized in 1994 but because giving up the territories occupied by the invasion would lead as a next step to the invasion of the whole of Ukraine.
The propaganda of the EU countries is based starts from here: if Russia is allowed to threaten the whole of Ukraine, at a later stage it will try to return to what were the borders of the USSR to the West: the Baltic countries. Europe, starting with the Scandinavian countries and those already included in the old "iron curtain" (Poland first and foremost) would have something to fear. The whole of Europe, up to Lisbon.
Geography, demography, not to mention elementary logic, should make us consider the part concerning Western Europe imaginative: but the thesis concerning Ukraine is taken seriously, in addition to high level representatives of the institutions of that country, by Poland and the Baltic and Scandinavian countries adhering to the EU.
How much can this feeling influence the negotiations? After the Trumpian turnaround, stripped of the character's disturbing boasting, it is widely believed that negotiations should be resumed by resolving the knot that was left open when, after a lightning visit by Johnson to Kiev at the end of a daring trip, Zelensky (in full autonomy, he said) decided to quit negotiations going on in Istanbul: whether unanimity should be required for the decisions of the powers guaranteeing Ukrainian state’s security which, according to the hypothesis then advanced, were the permanent members of the UN Security Council would have been guarantors, in addition to Germany, Italy, Poland, Canada, Israel, Turkey.
Therefore, Russia had posed as a decisive condition the ability to exercise a right of veto, being alone in front of NATO countries only (including the four largest EU members, France, Germany, Italy and Poland). What would it mean now the hypothesis of a presence of EU armed forces in Ukraine on the border with Russia, if the two most powerful members of the UN Security Council (USA and China) abstain from intervening as guarantors (with Turkey and Israel busy with other conflicts) is quite clear: it would be an armed truce on the border between the EU (Ukraine) and Russia (Donbass and Crimea included) decided by two people, Putin and Trump (on behalf of the EU of which Ukraine would become a member).
The tale on which the propaganda about the war in Ukraine was based would turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy: not because Russia would invade Europe but because the EU (in renewed harmony with the UK) would declare war on Russia (in a state of armed truce) as a hostile country thanks to a decision taken by the USA, returned to being a hegemonic power in a bipolar (anti-Chinese) scheme.
Western Europe, enlarged to the UK, would thus deny the solemn wish, with which the UN Charter opens, formulated precisely on the basis of the lessons learned from the wars that had marked European history. This is the step that the rulers of the fate of the peoples of Western Europe are about to take.
And yet, if we consider that the price for Europe's mistakes will still be high, now an opportunity presents itself: it will be possible to pay it to correct the course rather than to persist in subservience and self-harm. Proposals are emerging in this direction from those (leftist) Europeans who in these years of war have maintained a clear vision and, without conceding anything to Putinism and without kneeling at the feet of the obscene king Trump, have committed themselves to defending the reasons of Europe: not that vassal of the American empire in decline but that which has eradicated Nazi-fascism from its culture and its constitutions and now knows how to recognize it in all its forms.
Europe, despite the plans of the two autocrats who put themselves at the top of the world, can finally find a new space and power, based on democracy: starting from including Ukraine in the European Union, once it has abolished martial law and restored democracy in all aspects with the truce.
The cost of its reconstruction will be high, but it will be a question of rebuilding a piece of Europe. And the resources that Trump is so interested on will be internal to the European market. Going further, European military spending, which is already higher than Russian spending, can be rationalized and the liberating step of dismantling NATO can finally be taken and thanking the US for their help, freeing them from the burden of managing the military bases that would pass to the EU.
And the common debt can thus be directed where it is needed: to boost the income of the most disadvantaged as well as the impoverished middle class, to modernize the productive apparatus keeping pace with the technological innovations that are developing in the world and to resume the path towards environmental balance (which increasingly appears as a rebalancing that must heal deep wounds now inflicted on the planet).
To conclude about the question from which we started, the interposition force on the border between Ukraine and Russia should return to being under the banner of the UN, coming from continents that cannot be either Europe or North America. The EU would t
And as for its rules, the current EU architecture does not work because it aggravates aphasia, the inability to formulate a vision of perspective consistent with its raison d'être. The main reason is that much of the left has forgotten it and lost its way, but the unanimity rule aggravates with its paralyzing effect.
Well, it is better to lose pieces than to lose one's raison d'être: losing a Farage has not done any damage (it might have done it to the UK), the presence of other Farages is hurting the EU. The majority of the Italian people, Meloni or not Meloni, would know which side to be on.