Europe’s sitting duck

I’m just going to go ahead and say it.

Our prime minister does not understand the urgency of the situation we are in.

When I say ‘we’, I refer to every person living in Europe who wishes to avoid seeing their city become the next Kharkiv.

Considering that Malta is practically the only member state that declared it is not going to tap into a potential €800 billion pot for defence projects, I would say ‘we’ with a very specific focus on Maltese people.

In spite of the prime minister’s efforts to pay lip service to the idea of peace, all the posturing in the world couldn’t hide the fact that Robert Abela was out of his depth.

Context: the emergency summit convened by the 27 heads of state of the European Council. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click that link first.

Abela’s government depends on an ongoing war against its domestic critics.

Even amid all the chaos that followed the US’ decision to cut off Ukraine’s legs before peace negotiations even began, the government dispatched Labour MEP Alex Agius Saliba and justice minister Jonathan Attard to promote their efforts to kill off magisterial inquiries once and for all.

On the international stage, Abela presents Malta as a promoter of peace. Mahatma Gandhi, but with a yacht and a gym membership.

But, yet again, even with the slick moves that foreign minister Ian Borg used to string together an OSCE summit and a previous peace summit, Malta’s calls for peace ring hollow.

To begin with, I am sick of the Labour government using the Constitution as if it were some immutable stone that cannot be moved nor reshaped. For every constitutional right the government claims to uphold, I can think of at least another five that they completely disregard.

In his very first comments to the press after landing in Brussels, Abela used Malta’s infamous ‘neutrality’ cop out to its maximum effect. Three times, to be specific.

“You could say that our country’s position is unique, though we’re not the only ones who have constitutional obligations towards neutrality…possibly, we are the country that holds that principle most dearly. I’d like to give my first comments in that context – that this principle is not up for discussion.”

“As a country that is led by a socialist government, (cue laughter) we need to understand how we’re going to reconcile investment in things like education and pensions with investment in weapons. We will certainly not participate in this investment in weapons. First of all, we are precluded from doing so through our Constitution…”

And one more time towards the end:

“I believe the only lasting solution is peace. I also understand that Ukraine was a victim of unjust Russian aggression. That is the starting point. Malta gave its contribution – within our Constitutional limitations – to help Ukrainian people, but I can never agree with this train of thought that seems to have picked up, that we must keep spending more and more on weapons to end this conflict.”

A lot of verbiage to unpack there. First, the obvious – that is, besides the fact that, for all his talk, Abela still voted in favour of the resolution to spend more on weaponry. ‘You guys spend all you want, just leave us out of it.’

The major fault line of this argument is that, purely because of the government’s insistence on the immutability of our Constitution and its stated refusal to make use of rearmament funding, Malta has declared itself a sitting duck. It is in a position that is even more isolated than Hungary, which has been aligned with Russia since day one of its invasion.

If a bloodthirsty Russia had to turn its eye further towards Europe, Malta would be the only country that refused to participate in Europe’s biggest war preparation effort in decades. We’d get caught with our pants down solely because Abela wants to present himself as a peace loving socialist who loves the Constitution.

The neutrality clause in Malta’s constitution generally adheres to the principles of the Non-Alignment Movement, a dominant political trend in former prime minister Dom Mintoff’s time. Former prime minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici formally enshrined the clause in the Constitution.

While the Constitution does explicitly prohibit participation in a military alliance like NATO and the use of Malta as a military base with very few exceptions, it does not say anything about precluding Malta from directly aiding victims of what Abela himself acknowledged as an unjust aggression.

It also does not say anything that prohibits Malta from securing peace by being prepared for the very real possibility of war.

This is where the biggest blindspot in Abela’s rhetoric is. When push comes to shove, hostile nations like Russia do not care whether you offered an olive branch or a missile. When you’re attacked, the results will be the same.

Does Abela think that anyone else from NATO or the EU will consider Malta a top defence priority if and when such a worst case scenario unfolds? Or will they simply recall Abela’s glib remarks about how “others can choose to invest in weapons” while “we were given a guarantee that we can stay out of it” before swiftly proceeding to tell us to go shove it where the sun doesn’t shine?

The fact is that other countries with serious leaders have suspended all pretensions of normalcy and are thinking way outside of the norms that they are used to.

One glaring example is Germany, a country that spent decades ruminating its dark history throughout World War II and had resolved to stand for peace and stability after unification.

Following the election of incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz, one of the very first things the German government did was to suspend its constitutional debt brakes to support more military spending. His predecessor, Olaf Scholz, regularly flip-flopped on providing aid to Ukraine, but in the end, oversaw the provision of over €12 billion in military aid to Ukraine.

While it is obvious that Malta does not have that kind of firepower at its disposal, our cowardly Constitutional cop out serves absolutely nobody.

It is especially disgusting in the context of Malta’s failure to police illegal Russian oil transfers in its territorial waters, its refusal to take action against sanctioned Russian citizens with Maltese passports, the lax efforts to seize Malta-based Russian assets, and our gratuitous, fawning approach towards two autocrats in charge of the world’s most dangerous superpowers – Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Abela’s capitulation is a privileged stance based on the delusion that Malta is a peaceful corner of the world where none of this is happening. Warring leaders come here to melt their tensions away in the baking Mediterranean sun and then shake each other’s sweaty hands before calling it a day.

My only hope is that if and when there is to ever be another time in which bombs are dropped on our country, Malta will somehow find its own Zelenskyy to bravely take charge in the face of impossible odds.

Robert Abela would just tell the enemy’s tanks to pull through right up on our doorstep.