EUROPE NEEDS MORAL REARMAMENT

by Cemil Kerimoglu

Preparing for the civilizational confrontation with Russia that lies ahead, and in fact is already ongoing in Ukraine, will require more than weapons, industry, and budgets. Europe also needs moral rearmament. In fact, it is the pre-requisite for success of the physical rearmament program that European leaders and policymakers at least finally recognized as necessary and inevitable. The continent has spent decades wallowing in guilt about its past, and that guilt has become a strategic liability. It is time to recognize how heavily this burden is being used against the West by its enemies. And it is time for the West to get rid of that guilt.

Russia heavily exploits the West’s guilt complex in its rhetoric. Its propaganda leans on the idea that the West is forever stained by its colonial history and therefore unfit to defend its interests. Every firm response to Russian aggression is twisted into a supposed act of Western expansionism. Both the Soviet Union and Putin’s Russia have long tried to portray even the weakest Western pushback against Russian aggression as evidence of a colonial project aimed at them. Today, Russia even presents Western support for Ukraine as a colonial war against Russia itself!

At the same time, Russia cynically casts its own invasion of Ukraine as an anti‑colonial struggle. This messaging is designed to paralyze Western confidence. A society trapped in self‑reproach is a society that hesitates. Russia knows this and uses it. The more Europe indulges in self‑flagellation, the easier it becomes for Russians to undermine Western resolve.

Part of this strategy relies on resurrecting the ghosts of Europe’s Nazi past, especially Germany’s. By labelling any form of Ukrainian nationalism as "Nazism," Russia plays directly into the Western neurosis. The tactic works because it lands on sensitive ground. Whenever Europe stands firmly against Russian encroachments and hostility, Russian officials and propagandists claim that old "Nazi spirits" are rising again. Even in recent months, as Europe increased its support for Ukraine due to Washington’s instability, Russian voices compared Europe's stance to Nazism. Russia's intention is thereby to shame Europe into moral confusion, so that the Russians can present themselves as the "righteous" side.

This is why Putin and Russian commentators, capitalizing on the current pro-Russian US administration, recently evoked the Soviet‑American alliance of the Second World War. They wanted to wrap themselves in the memory of fighting Hitler and present their assault on Ukraine as the same kind of struggle. The goal is to make Europe feel ashamed for supporting Ukraine and resisting Russian aggression, as if doing so were a betrayal of its own historical lessons.

The same tactic appears in the rhetoric of parts of the German Left that are sympathetic to Russia. They point to Germany’s past to scold it for supporting Ukraine. The message is always the same: because Germany once committed terrible crimes, it must now silence itself and stand down in the face of Russian brutality. Russia and its advocates know which emotional triggers work. Europe has many. But if these triggers are neutralized, Russian leverage evaporates.

Admitting past crimes is honourable. So is apologizing for them. Europe's willingness to atone reflects its humanity. Yet this virtue becomes dangerous when it is used by hostile actors that feel no shame themselves. Europe cannot allow its enemies to turn its conscience into a weapon against it. Europeans may choose to remember their history and learn from it, but they must not let outsiders use that history to manipulate them. Only Europeans have the right to judge the faults of their ancestors. No one else can claim that authority.

For this reason, Europe needs a moral reassessment of the Second World War narrative. Above all, this is needed in Germany, whose leadership will be decisive in any future mobilization for European war effort. This reassessment does not mean denying Nazi crimes or going into revisionism. It means moving from total self‑condemnation toward a fairer, more nuanced view of history.

Different actions of Nazi Germany carried different moral weights. For example, the persecution and murder of Jews and Poles were crimes that deserve condemnation – albeit without guilt-complex and moral self-flagellation. But the invasion of the Soviet Union is another matter.

Germany, and the rest of Europe, should not feel guilty towards Russia for that campaign. The Soviet Union was the greatest threat to European Civilization at the time, just as its successor state is today. Confronting that threat was not a crime against humanity. It was a recognition of reality. The Soviet Union needed to be attacked and destroyed. The tragedy was that the only major European power who clearly saw that danger at the time, and was willing to act, was a regime that had already isolated itself morally and alienated many other Europeans – its natural allies. And hence it couldn’t convince enough of them to join in its just cause.

Essentially, a just cause was being pursued by an unjust state.

"Are we the good guys?"

Furthermore, Russia's claim to be fighting a noble "anti-colonial" struggle against the West is not only manipulative – it is laughably dishonest. For if there is a colonial empire in this war, it is Russia itself.

No one denies that the colonial record of the European powers is mixed and includes injustice. But the West has nothing to be ashamed of in the way its enemies, above all Russia, want it to be. Most former European colonies – despite the legitimate grievances they may hold – benefited in tangible ways from European presence. Roads, railways, schools, hospitals, modern bureaucracies, and legal systems were built. Diseases were treated. Lifespans rose. One need only look at the population boom in post-colonial Africa, driven by medical advances and humanitarian aid brought by the West, to see how beneficial this legacy has been.

Were there abuses? Certainly. But in the final balance, Europe’s colonies were left better off than they had been before European contact. Africa, for instance, was not some flourishing civilization interrupted by colonialism – it was a deeply underdeveloped place even before contact with Europeans. European colonization often brought the first semblance of modern infrastructure, public health, and administration. The notion that the continent’s current challenges are simply the fault of colonialism is both historically false and politically convenient for the West’s enemies.

Russian colonialism, by contrast, brought none of these benefits. Wherever Russia went, it made things worse. This is not a matter of opinion, but of historical fact. The peoples who once lived under Russian or Soviet domination – Poles, Balts, Ukrainians, Finns, and others – did not flock to Russia after independence. They built their own futures in their newly independent countries, and they built them better. In fact, it was Russians who migrated into these countries, eager to live among their former subjects rather than in the destitute realm they left behind. Also, unlike Africa before European colonialism, Poland, Baltic territories, Ukraine (Ruthenia), Finland were already developed and prosperous before being subjugated by Muscovy-Russia. Russian rule sent them backwards; in contrast, Europeans uplifted the colonies which they ruled.

Satire of the fact that Europeans made Africa much more orderly and safe

This tells you everything you need to know. When the Baltic states regained their independence, it wasn’t Estonians or Latvians who rushed to settle in Russia. It was the Russian settlers and their descendants who chose to stay. They preferred life among their former subjects to life in the "ancestral homeland" they claimed such an attachment to.

The pattern repeats itself across Russia’s other former holdings. Ukraine, for example, has always been more developed and culturally sophisticated than the Muscovite-Russian heartland. In the 17th century, it was Ukrainian scholars, theologians, and writers who brought learning and cultural refinement to Muscovy. Kyiv was a beacon of civilization while Moscow (its conqueror) was a civilizational backwater. Even during the Soviet period, Ukraine remained richer and more productive than much of Russia.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, before his brief rebellion, openly admitted that one motive behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was plunder. Moscow coveted Ukraine’s richer lands and industries, just as it had in the past. This isn’t new. For example, what came to be known in history as the "Russian Civil War" was, in essence, an attempt by the impoverished north-eastern Muscovite realm to seize control of the wealthier and more developed Ukrainian territories.

Even today, the contrast between Russian and European colonialism is visible in the direction of migration. It tells the real story. Ukrainians, Balts, and Poles have stayed and built. Russians, however, leave to those very places they colonized before, and also further west. But it is the opposite of the pattern we see with former European colonies. Africans, South Asians, and others continue to seek a future in Europe. Whatever their historical grievances, they choose to live among their former colonizers. Because, unlike in the case of Russians, the societies built by Europeans are prosperous, sophisticated, and offer opportunity and human dignity.

This is the crucial difference. Russian colonialism was extractive, repressive, and backwards. It dragged down the peoples it ruled. Western colonialism, even when marred by exploitation, often brought advancement. This is not to whitewash anything. But we must be clear-eyed about history, especially when the very country with a centuries-long record of brutal expansionism dares to lecture others on colonial guilt.

The hypocrisy of this so-called anti-colonial movement runs even deeper. In practice, it has rarely functioned as a consistent moral principle. Instead, it has often served as an ideological weapon – one wielded selectively, and almost exclusively, against the West.

During the peak of decolonization in the 1960s, when African nations were gaining independence, many of the most vocal anti-colonial activists were also passionate supporters of the Soviet Union – the most brutal colonial empire at the time. They condemned British and French imperialism with fervour, yet remained silent on the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. The same pattern continues today.

Many of those who rail against the West for its colonial past – and accuse it of perpetuating neo-colonialism today – are some of the most ardent defenders of Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine, which is nothing less than a colonial war waged with terror, looting and crimes against humanity.

The reason is not hard to see. Since shedding its artificial European veneer with the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia has been the vanguard of Third Worldist anti-Western resentment. Therefore, it is admired in the Global South and in the anti-colonialist circles within the West itself in spite of its colonial crimes, which were even more brutal than European ones. Essentially, the anti-colonial movement is less about defending the oppressed than it is about attacking Western Civilization. At its core, it has often been not anti-colonial, but anti-Western – and sometimes, quite plainly, anti-white.

Somehow forgot to mention of Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Chechnya, Dagestan, and Tatarstan, among her list of victims of colonialism

This double standard is staggering. Over the centuries, Russia has killed, deported, and subjugated more non-white peoples than most Western empires combined. Entire Turkic, Uralic, and Caucasian peoples have lived for centuries under brutal Russian domination – stripped of their resources, languages, and identities. Today, large swaths of the Russian Federation are home to indigenous non-Russian peoples who are still subjected to cultural Russification and economic exploitation. From the Siberian Yakuts to the Bashkirs and Chechens, Moscow’s grip remains tight.

Yet Western anti-colonial activists who claim to stand for justice rarely mention them. They remain fixated on "Islamophobia" in Europe while ignoring the Russian wars in Chechnya – two genocidal campaigns that flattened cities, killed tens of thousands, and continue to cast a shadow over the region. Even Turkey, the leading Turkic power and self-declared champion of pan-Turkism, seems more interested in scolding Europe and the United States than in confronting Russia’s centuries-long oppression of Turkic peoples.

Nowhere is this moral inconsistency more obvious than in the treatment of settler populations. When Algeria won independence from France, millions of French settlers were expelled – often violently. When India became free of British rule, few questioned the departure of the British. In both cases, the world accepted that colonizers had no rightful claim to stay.

But when the Baltic states regained independence after the fall of the Soviet Union, no one called for the expulsion of Russian settlers – many of whom had been brought in after World War II to replace the native populations, large portions of which had been murdered or deported to Siberia. In Latvia and Estonia in particular, this demographic shift was not accidental. It was a deliberate policy of ethnic dilution implemented by the Soviet Union.

Latvia, still not fully decolonised

Moreover, these Russian settlers were not innocent bystanders. Many were complicit – directly or indirectly – in the brutal Soviet occupation of these countries. Yet when Latvia or Estonia tried to assert control over their own language, culture, and citizenship policies after independence, they were morally hamstrung by the prevailing sentiment in the West. They were not praised for their restraint. Instead, they were chastised by some Western circles for "violating human rights" of Russians. If they chose to expel those Russian settlers (and their descendants), such an act would have been frowned upon in the West. Russia capitalized on this sentiment, using it to paint itself as the protector of "oppressed Russian minorities" and to cast the Baltic peoples – victims of occupation – as perpetrators.

Meanwhile, no one wept for the French who were killed or expelled from Algeria. No one demanded that India extend political rights to the British who had ruled them. Those colonial removals were accepted, even justified. But in the case of Russia, the rules changed.

Here, the anti-colonial movement revealed its true face. The French in Algeria were labelled as "occupiers" who had to leave. The Russians in Latvia, in contrast, were cast as "victims" whose presence must be honoured and preserved. Never mind that the Baltic peoples had far stronger moral grounds to expel their colonizers. Never mind that they showed restraint far beyond what was shown to the French in Algeria. In the eyes of the Left the Baltic peoples were wrong – because in this case the colonized were Europeans and the colonizers (i.e., Russians) were not. And therefore, in this twisted moral logic, Russians could not be colonialists.

Russian propaganda has mastered a grotesque reversal: it casts its victims as perpetrators. It has learned to manipulate Western concepts like "human rights" and "minority rights" to shield its own colonial legacy. In this twisted narrative, the descendants of Russian settlers – often brought in to replace native populations that were brutalized, massacred or deported – are painted as innocent victims, while the nations they helped subjugate are branded as "fascist" for wanting to reclaim their identity and independence.

Worse still, large parts of the Western establishment have accepted this inversion. Because in this case, the colonizers weren’t Western – they were Russian, and therefore, in the eyes of the anti-Western Left, beyond reproach. French settlers in Algeria or British officials in India were vilified and expelled, often violently, with the tacit or open approval of the global anti-colonial movement. But Russian settlers in Latvia or Estonia? They are treated with sympathy. The West mourns for them, not for the native populations they displaced.

This double standard is alive today, and it reaches deep inside Russia itself. The so-called "autonomous republics" inside Russian Federation, like Bashkortostan, Tatarstan or Yakutia are not genuine expressions of self-rule. They are occupied territories, ancestral homelands of non-Russian peoples who have lived for centuries under Moscow's boot. And yet, when voices from those republics speak of independence, they are met with warnings – including from so-called Russian liberals – about the fate of the ethnic Russians who live there. The concern, once again, is not for the colonized but for the colonizers.

This is nothing less than moral inversion. The burden of guilt is again shifted from the abuser to its victims. The Bashkirs, Tatars, and Yakuts are told to think first about the human rights of those whose very presence is the legacy of conquest. When the French were driven out of Algeria, few in the West raised such concerns. When India gained independence, no one demanded guarantees for the British who had ruled it. But now, the descendants of Muscovite settlers in northern Asia are to be protected at all costs – while their hosts remain voiceless.

This is the moral trap that Europe must escape. If it is to prevail in this historic confrontation with Russia, it must shed the burden of self-imposed guilt. Europe owes no apology to anyone. It does not need to explain itself. Its civilization has been the greatest force for advancement in human history. The world is better because Europeans exist. Even Russia, in its brief and partial flirtation with European values, briefly became less cruel. The rest of the world, whether it admits it or not, has benefited greatly from European Civilization.

The tables must now turn. It is not Europe that should feel shame. It is Russia. It is not Europe that must apologize. It is Russia that owes an apology – to the peoples of Eastern Europe, to the nations of Central Asia and the Caucasus, to its own colonized republics, and above all, to Ukraine.

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