Call it sabotage: Europe is finally confronting its vulnerability trap

What’s in a word? When a European leader recently upgraded the description of the disruptions that countries on the continent were facing to “sabotage”, a moment of clarity was reached.

Previously, bureaucrats congealed around obscure technical terms such as “hybrid operations” or “grey zone attacks”. But few of them cut through with the public, still fewer put pressure on the hidden perpetrators.

In a world that is moving towards fast-lane politics and international diplomacy, there is a sense that those standing on the middle of the road are going to get run over. Europe has a problem in that virtually all its peers see the EU as a bloc stuck in a vulnerability trap that it cannot properly address.

However, Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief and a former Estonian prime minister, is leaning forward into this threat landscape. Her use of the term “sabotage” should now determine how prepared the Europeans are to deal with new and unsettling intrusions.

There is a daily reminder of this in the headlines surrounding the disruptions. Last week, it was scores of flights forced into security alerts by emailed threats of a bomb on board. There was also the evacuation of Dublin-based newsrooms with the most popular morning broadcasts taken off the air.

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It gains headlines to target a newsroom because in a world of disinformation, putting media organisations on edge has value in and of itself. But damage can be done to anything and from anywhere.

As Kevin Doyle, executive editor of the Irish Independent that was also targeted, wrote at the weekend, the shop next to his office was part of a chain that saw its refrigerators overheat in a hacking operation at the start of the week.

We live in a world in which digital controls govern the temperature of a home or TV screens that, then, suddenly broadcast a fake public safety warning. Doyle’s analysis speaks to real-world examples that are intimate parts of our daily lives.

The context of negotiations and high diplomacy cannot be detached from the intensification of the electronic traces laid down by these sabotage operations.

Later this week, Ireland hosts a Europe-wide political conference that represents its umbrella voice on the Ukraine war. Ireland is a small country with a threadbare security apparatus, and quite naturally, its citizens now worry about what is coming their way at such a high-profile juncture.

The meeting will come days after Abu Dhabi has hosted the next instalment of the envoy-led talks on the Russian war on Ukraine. Those discussions are a potential turning point for a negotiations process that has a clear challenge to move into practical progress on ending the war and years of stalemate.

Might the “sabotage” that Europe is facing right now amount to atmospherics accompanying the talks process? As Doyle observed: “Drone attacks in Ukraine feel far away, but last week’s attacks do not.”

Technical language alone has not worked to resist this rising tide. Security experts have called for more investment in tools that negate or more rapidly track down the sources of the disruption.

High-intensity hoaxing can be accommodated as part of the modern way of life. The Covid-era restrictions on lifestyle and public safety have a legacy. Human beings are conditioned to making changes in patterns of behaviour as part of society-wide adjustments.

What the situation does demonstrate is something shifting at a higher plain. The solutions to the present deterioration in public confidence in its safety are, nonetheless, up for grabs across Europe.

On the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the continent is on a precipice

When Jared Kushner, the US envoy on the diplomacy with Russia and Ukraine, issued a rare public message earlier this month, it talked about the “security architecture” of the continent. Again, language matters. When someone uses such phrasing, it usually denotes that they are not in favour of the current set-up.

Decades of Gulf diplomacy have shown that “security architecture” is a bluff phrase designed to advance alternative or revisionist agendas. That is not to say that Europe is being harried to advance to a position that it does not currently hold.

On the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the continent is on a precipice. The expansion of Nato in the years since the wall came down was the primary vehicle of its security. As a military alliance, few can question its supremacy when united.

The fact that voices within the US – Nato’s most important member state – are sketching out alternative security architectures solidifies the sense of a breach point is being reached. That incidents from within and outside European countries have reached the point of daily occurrences is now a fact of life as the current year draws to close.

Changing the mindset of Europeans to see this “sabotage” as present, therefore, is not just a small, practical adjustment in public messaging. It is a political response to the changing higher-level landscape that has already come out of the Ukraine war.

Much is in play as Europe is challenged to secure its own domain at a time of global flux.