The European Union’s push toward military preparedness, the multiplying hybrid attacks across the continent and the rise of extremist parties are three facets of the same historical phase. This is the argument presented by Lucia Annunziata, an S&D Member of the European Parliament elected on the PD list and a substitute member of the European Parliament’s Security and Defence Committee, speaking on the Adnkronos live “Lavori in Corso” at the European Parliament.

‘Not rearmament, but defense suited to the new war’

“We still have not made clear — or perhaps we have not understood well — that this is not about rearmament, it is about defence,” the MEP remarked during the debate, which also included Salvatore De Meo (Forza Italia/EPP). “And why is it about defence? Is it because we have few weapons? No — because we do not have a defence suited to what war has become. That must be said.”

Annunziata stresses she is not a warmonger, “but I think that if things change we must change with them, try to understand them and be part of them.” Modern conflicts, she explains, no longer require massive tools like tanks, submarines and aircraft carriers: war “will be a mix of lighter elements, mostly linked to technologies,” starting with those that “keep people away from the front line.” NATO experts, she recalls, foresee conflicts between the satellites of major powers, while on the ground the emphasis will be on “speed and on critical nodes” such as power stations.

“There will be a phase in which war will be more ‘cruel,’ because with drones they can reach your home while you are having lunch,” she continues, noting that it will also be in some ways “cleaner”: the world of steel that produced the two world wars “has effectively gone. It no longer exists. Today there is the world of technologies.” Hence it is appropriate to speak not of rearmament but of defence readiness, involving also the civilian sphere. The MEP concludes by invoking the Italian Constitution, which provides that a State must defend its citizens.

Behind hybrid attacks is Putin; he wants to test NATO’s Article 5

On the issue of hybrid attacks that are multiplying in Europe — for example the nearly 600 drones flown over sensitive targets in Belgium in a single year — Annunziata says she is “personally convinced” that Vladimir Putin and his revisionist ambitions to rebuild the Russian empire are behind them. “There is something in these operations that is very Putinian,” she observes, stressing that the Russian president “is the only one who would actually have an interest” in keeping this kind of pressure on Europe.

“He is a person who has a problem: he must win. All his capacity and political strength depend on his victory, because it is a pact he made with Russia: ‘I will bring you back to the great empire’,” the MEP adds, noting that, for now, the Russian leader is not winning because of Ukrainian resistance.

Her suspicion, she explains, is that Putin “is testing Europe’s determination” and its ability to react, in order to probe the responsiveness of NATO’s Article 5, the collective defence clause, “to see whether we have, after all the talk, the actual capacity to go to war.” In this context, hybrid attacks are “the most effective way to keep all our control mechanisms engaged,” while simultaneously acting psychologically on the European population by creating a sense of insecurity.

Deindustrialization at the root of the extreme-right victories

Turning to domestic politics, Annunziata identifies deindustrialization as the “real problem in Europe” behind the rise of extremist and populist parties: that single word, she says, explains the last decade. “Europe suddenly lost its industry. Technology decided not to produce it anymore, leaving it to the Americans and only comfortably collecting taxes from those in high tech,” she continues. “We face a situation where we have lost heavy industry, and we are still in that state. I believe this is the point: currently there is no industrial engine, nor even a strategy for reindustrialization.”

From this follows, according to the MEP, the need to develop “a more structural way of thinking, a more precise and articulated analysis,” without being paralyzed by political defeats. “In politics you win and lose; managing the world is as fragile as we are. But we must also take care to perform analyses that are somewhat more precise than the ones we are making.”

In this light, Annunziata says she is convinced of the necessity to distinguish the “huge differences” among formations commonly labelled far right: for example between Germany’s AfD and “more pragmatic, economically oriented right-wing parties” like those in Sweden and France. Between Rassemblement National leader Marine Le Pen and AfD’s Alice Weidel, she observes, “there appear to be very different traditions and political lines,” while acknowledging that both would pursue issues such as remigration and cultural and identity themes like the fight against ‘woke.’