The emergency summit convened by President Macron in Paris three days after the Munich Security Summit and the frustrated European responses to the American-Russian peace talks revealed how terrified establishment European leaders are of the new political realities brought forth by the Trump administration.
Yet, Europe’s strategic irrelevance is neither the result of three days, nor the result of three months since Donald Trump won the U.S. elections. As President Trump has pointed out numerous times, it is the consequence of three years of flawed European strategy in Ukraine and 30 years of flawed European defence and deterrence policies.
It is difficult to underestimate the significance of the start of serious peace negotiations to end the war and the bloodshed in Ukraine. This should have been the highest priority for all parties since the full-scale Russian aggression of February 2022. Of course, there is nothing to cheer about the fact that Europe is only in a second-row seat on issues of decisive importance for the continent’s security. Unsurprisingly, the Trump team will look at the negotiations primarily through the lens of American interests.
The European old guard, many of the European leaders in power, the Brussels bubble, and the mainstream European press all have reason to be fearful. However, these fears of the European political elite transcend the questions of international security and the fate of Ukraine. After so much blood has been shed, so much treasure has been wasted, there are other questions looming above the heads of Europe’s old guard: what if the peace negotiations succeed? What if peace—albeit an imperfect one—proves to be a better option than war?
We are not naive. There are countless ways the negotiations can fail, and any deal would involve risks and difficult compromises for Ukrainians and Europeans. Just as the war was never about the war to end all wars, any deal reached will not be a seal to eternal peace, and all parties will have to work hard to avoid future war. That said, there is finally a chance that a modus vivendi which secures the sovereignty of Ukraine with sufficient security guarantees and a path to reconstruction and long-term-development of the war-torn country could be worked out, as long as Russia doesn’t make any further large-scale aggressive moves in Eastern Europe.
If such an agreement is reached, the European old guard would be confronted with some difficult questions: Was the European strategy right? Was the war not existential in its deepest meaning to Europe after all? Couldn’t a similar deal have been struck three years ago, if three years of considerable Western military and full political support didn’t bring Ukrainian victory? Did hundreds of thousands of people really have to die?
Would continuing the war really be preferable to a settlement? Stay the course? When, for two years now—even with the backing of a friendly Biden administration—Ukraine has been on the losing side and Ukrainian defences are cracking primarily due to manpower shortages? Does Europe really have a winning strategy? When even three years of presumably Russian existential threat wasn’t enough to make a visible leap in European defence capabilities? Winning against a nuclear-armed, China-backed Russia with the population and resources of Ukraine, while 15 years of Western policy proves that Ukraine was never an existential question to the West? If Ukraine is so crucial, who prevented Germany or France from significantly raising their defence spending, or Poland from preparing its peacekeeping troops? The usual suspects, Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, populism? Really?
In light of all these looming questions in the event of a workable settlement, one haunts the European old guard the most: what if the European electorate would come to think that leaders like Trump or Orbán were right about Ukraine all along?
Instead of expediency and accusations, the best thing Europeans could do at this point is something very British: align themselves with the Americans and get the best deal out of the Russians as possible. With all the new ingredients, now is the time to be an Atlanticist!
