The challenges facing European security are great. A new Prague-based initiative seeks to tackle them by listening to everyone who has a stake.
In The Plot Against America, fictional candidate but real-life aviator and isolationist Charles Lindbergh defeats incumbent U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the promise that “this great country will take no part in the war in Europe.”
The reality in the White House today is beginning to mirror Philip Roth’s harrowing alternative history, in which the United States embarks on an “independent destiny.”
The security arrangements and world order that have bound post–World War II Europe and North America are in jeopardy as Donald Trump repeatedly threatens to go it alone. From talk of abandoning NATO and disparaging its commitments to come to the defense of fellow members to his citing of “Europe’s” wars, this new normal cannot be wished away.
Europe has to shed its American-made security blanket. It’s time for European democracies to determine their own security. Yet debates on European security are still too often reduced to armaments and confined to executive-level circles.
In order to address those shortfalls, a new pan-European citizens’ grouping has been established: the Prague Security Network.
Time For A New Approach
To be involved in this effort from its inception has been a privilege and an education. Having moved from the UK to the Czech capital, a city shaped by an occupation within living memory, the importance of the Prague Security Network’s goals is clear.
Rooted in multilateralism, international law, and human rights, the Prague Security Network sets out to facilitate the honest social dialogue necessary for comprehensive collective security.
With conventional approaches to defense being tested in unconventional ways, such as Moscow’s ever-evolving disinformation efforts, raw defense investment must be complemented by the type of broader societal resilience that long protected Europe. Now at risk of erosion in the face of new threats, that collective sentiment needs to be rekindled, and this can only be done by opening up the discussion to include voices not usually heard at defense-policy roundtables in global capitals.
The challenges facing European security are great. Across the continent, political forces skeptical of bolstering Ukrainian, and therefore European, defenses against Russian aggression have already taken root – Czechia’s governing coalition, Fico’s Slovakia, and Vucic’s Serbia, to name a few. On the positive side, Victor Orban’s recent landslide defeat in Hungary shows that these trends are not inevitable and can be successfully challenged.
Building societal resilience through constructive engagement amid growing disillusionment and reluctance to protect a free and sovereign Ukraine will be critical.
For this to succeed, the concerns of those most affected, whether states, organizations, or real people, must be heard. And the phenomenon of “Westsplaining” – the tendency for Western commentators and policymakers to explain Russian aggression and expansionism to its very victims – must be overcome.
Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Jan Smolenski, a lecturer at the University of Warsaw, and Jan Dutkiewicz, a contributing editor at The New Republic, lashed out at “the unending stream of Western scholars and pundits” that all-too-readily “condescend” and “ignore voices from the region” while “claiming to perfectly understand Russian logic and motives.”
Complementing Existing Frameworks
Challenging this dynamic in a way that complements existing international frameworks is a central goal of the Prague Security Network.
Established stalwarts such as NATO and the Munich Security Conference, among others, remain critical pieces of the security puzzle. But national and supranational officials often dominate discussions at those tables, while key perspectives are missing. At a recent Munich panel on industrial cooperation in the defense sector, for example, no one represented labor.
Missing out on input from obvious stakeholders cannot happen if continental consensus is to be achieved on the back of grassroots commitment to peace and security. Refugees, trade unionists, young people, should all be heard, as should tricky socio-economic, ethical, and democratic issues that are not traditional staples of elite-level defense policy discourse.
The Prague Security Network’s co-founders include former ministers and parliamentarians, current and past government advisers, academics, trade unionists, and representatives of civil society from across Europe, including the UK, Poland, Finland, Estonia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.
But most importantly, the aim is to engage and involve, from the bottom up, societies that seek to preserve their free democracies – something that is a lived reality in places like Prague or Tallinn, or currently under the gun in Kyiv.
Engagement Is Key
Accordingly, the Prague Security Network seeks to root European defense discourse in democratic life through the hosting of public forums, publishing analysis, and engaging civil society with academics, policymakers, and politicians of the defense-policy world.
Tanweer Ali, co-founder of the Prague Security Network and an assistant professor at the Prague University of Economics and Business, points to recently held discussions as an example. Victoria Vdovychenko of the Future of Ukraine program at the University of Cambridge’s Center for Geopolitics, and defense and international security consultant Toby Dickinson were invited to talk about Ukraine’s most pressing security challenges.
Saying the conversation “illustrated precisely why security cannot remain the exclusive preserve of specialists,” Ali continued, “Victoria brought first-hand insight into how Ukrainian society is driving technological and strategic innovation under existential pressure, while Toby offered a frank account of the political will and financial trade-offs that European publics will need to confront.”
The result, Ali concluded, was “exactly the kind of dialogue the Prague Security Network exists to foster: honest, informed, and grounded in lived reality, rather than abstract theory.”
The Prague Security Network looks forward to further such discussions in the coming months. As the network grows and develops its online presence, those interested in contributing or engaging can get in touch at praguesecurity@centrum.cz.
Hal Hooberman is an editorial intern at Transitions. He is studying towards an MA in Balkan, Eurasian, and Central European Studies at Charles University, Prague.
Disclaimer: Transitions’ executive director, Jeremy Druker, is a member of an informal social media group of individuals interested in this initiative, but has not played any role in getting it off the ground.
