The Surprising Reason Europe Came Together Against Putin

The Surprising Reason Europe Came Together Against Putin - from Politico

A major advance in translation technology means that Ukrainians can inform and debunk in real time. The world hasn’t seen a weapon quite like it before.



By CLAIRE BERLINSKI
02/03/2023 04:30 AM EST

Claire Berlinski is a Paris-based journalist and the editor of the Cosmopolitan Globalist.

Since Feb. 24, when Russia launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine, we’ve heard from many quarters that Europe is united as never before. “Fifteen years ago, during the financial crisis, it took us years to find lasting solutions,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her State of the European Union address to the European Parliament on Sept. 14. “But this year, as soon as Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine, our response was united, determined and immediate.”

Apart from Hungary (which continues to pay Russian President Vladimir Putin obsequious court), Europe has indeed displayed an uncommon unity since the invasion began. Converging on Brussels within hours of the invasion, European leaders surprised the world by swiftly passing package after package of sanctions designed to crush Russian finance, deprive it of revenue from energy exports, hamstring its defense sector, punish its elites and shut down its propaganda organs.

Von der Leyen attributes this uncommon unity and efficiency to Europe’s “courage and solidarity.” The Biden administration attributes it to the president’s diplomatic prowess: Administration officials told the Washington Post that Biden had engaged “in discreet diplomacy with European allies, and in recent weeks he ha[d] encouraged them to take action.” One European diplomat attributed it to Putin: “Putin has done much more than any other to unite the Europeans and to go for a stronger European Union.” All of this is true. The prospect of invasion by Russia concentrates the mind wonderfully.

But there is another, less widely acknowledged source of Europe’s newfound unity: The latest version of Google Translate, which has turned the ancient dream of a world without language barriers into reality.

Jérôme Piodi, a French Eurocrat who has spent more than a decade in public administration in the European Parliament and in related Parisian ministries, said the key factor in making progress in Europe is a common understanding of complex ideas. “Until very recently, access to instantaneous translation of speech and ideas was reserved to a certain kind of elite — the kind who could spend money to pay translators,” Piodi said.

Europe has more than 200 native languages and mutually incomprehensible dialects. All of its 24 official languages are highly developed, each with its own media, textbooks, movies and language academies. These languages, and their use in schools, workplaces and families, define a country’s identity.

But we’re now living, for the first time, in an era where everyone in Europe — from politicians to cab drivers — can understand one another. It’s true that previously, diplomats could communicate through translators and, typically, in English. Now, ordinary Europeans can understand one another, instantly and accurately, and because of the compulsive lure of social media — and Twitter’s decision to automatically translate every tweet — Europeans can and do talk to each other all day long. Talking to Ukrainians, and hearing directly from them, has hardened public support for sanctions and weapons transfers in the EU, despite Russian threats and soaring energy prices. Eurobarometer polling shows that 74 percent of EU citizens back the bloc’s support for Kyiv.

This public support for Ukraine has translated into action. The West’s assistance to Ukraine has also been notable for the way Western politicians have responded to their citizens’ sentiment, rather than shaping it. At every stage, citizens have pushed their leaders to move faster and further. We’ve seen this recently in German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s decision to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine after an eternity of hesitation and dithering. He faced mounting public fury and protests, withering criticism and an outraged social media campaign to #FreeTheLeopards. In late January, Scholz relented and freed the Leopards — a decision lambasted by Putin in a flamethrower of a speech on Thursday.

Google Translate isn’t the complete explanation for the newfound European unity, of course, but it’s an underappreciated part of the story.

“It’s had a huge effect on people and their ability to share ideas on social media,” Piodi says. “Twitter is a small window on the world; Google Translate made the window bigger.”

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But the story now becomes melancholy. With Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, it is all threatened. Recently, Musk tweeted, “In coming months, Twitter will translate & recommend amazing tweets from people in other countries & cultures.” It’s unclear whether he understands that Twitter already does this. 

In reality, dozens of Ukrainians have told me that since the takeover, Twitter’s service has suffered to the point of compromising their ability effectively to use it. They don’t see tweets from accounts they once followed and don’t know if the outside world sees theirs. Many tweets are no longer translated at all. No one knows if this is because Twitter is suffering a technical breakdown as a result of the purging of its workforce, or if it’s deliberate.

Less conspiratorially, it’s easy to imagine that this is the unintended consequence of changes to Twitter’s code. Musk has also tweeted that he’s turned off large parts of that code, which he believes suffers from bloat. It’s possible that this bloat was not as superfluous as he imagined. Twitter did not reply to a request for comment, presumably because Musk fired Twitter’s media department.

Some Ukrainians are worried about Musk’s susceptibility to manipulation by Putin. On Twitter in October, Musk proposed a peace deal that would allow Russia to keep the annexed region of Crimea and force Ukraine to drop a bid for membership in NATO. Ukrainians were appalled.

These may be the last days of Twitter, as many have written — or perhaps just the last days of Twitter in Europe. Since Musk’s arrival, Twitter has become a sewer of Holocaust denial and other content that violates EU digital regulations. There are growing concerns here, too, about the security of users’ data. EU commissioner Thierry Breton has reportedly given Musk an ultimatum: Comply with the law or leave.

But if Twitter does disappear from Europe, and with it, translated tweets, Europe will again become a Tower of Babel, siloed by country and language. This would be a victory for Putin and a loss for the rest of us — at least until a new platform comes along and sees the value in everything Google Translate and social media have achieved just in the last few years.

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