Europe’s handling of war on its doorstep breaks a decade-long streak of fumbled crises

IT TOOK FOUR horsemen to mete out God’s apocalyptic punishment. The biblical wrath conveyed by two of them will sound familiar to Europeans worn down by disease and now war in Ukraine. But a mere quartet of steeds would not have sufficed to deliver the calamities the EU has had to contend with in the past decade or so. No fewer than five crises have befallen the continent in that time: in addition to covid-19 and fighting on its doorstep, Europe has been visited by the protracted euro-zone slump, soon followed by a migration emergency and then Brexit. Any normal polity would be worn down by living in near-perpetual crisis mode for so long—not least since the episodes rarely showed the EU at its best. It is only the war in Ukraine that the bloc has handled remotely deftly. Is it possible that the EU has learned how to avoid turning problems into existential dramas?