After the US’ disgraceful roughhouse treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the White House on Friday last week, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a pithy summary of first principles regarding the first full-scale war between nation states on European soil since 1945.
“There is an aggressor: Russia,” Macron wrote on social media. “There is a victim: Ukraine. We were right to help Ukraine and sanction Russia three years ago — and to keep doing so.”
That this needed saying underlines the extent to which US President Donald Trump’s administration is laying waste to decades-old assumptions governing transatlantic relations.
Appearing to prioritize a reset of the US relationship with Russia over international law and the unity of the West, Trump is pursuing a peace deal with Moscow on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s terms. At the same time he is seeking to plunder Ukraine’s natural resources, while demanding obeisance and gratitude from Kyiv in return.
For the sake of Ukraine, which has fought with such bravery for three years to resist Putin’s illegal invasion, and for the sake of its own security interests, Europe’s response needs to be unified, robust and ambitious. In that respect, the London defense summit convened by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Sunday was a useful start, but multiple uncertainties remain.
The bullying and taunting of Zelenskiy in the Oval Office meant the conference rightly became an occasion for a counterdisplay of emotional solidarity, embodied in the bear hug the Ukrainian president received from Starmer in Downing Street.
However, Europe’s strategy for dealing with an unpredictable and ideologically hostile White House is a work in progress.
Alongside much-needed commitments to boost military assistance to Ukraine, Starmer announced that a “coalition of the willing” would be created to deter Russian violations of any peace deal. By presenting their own plans for a ceasefire, significantly increasing defense spending and pledging “boots on the ground” to police a peace agreement, European leaders aim to persuade Trump to offer the US security guarantees that are indispensable if such a force is to be deployed.
For this balancing act to have a chance of success, as yet unidentified NATO members would need to step up alongside the UK and France with substantial troop contributions, and relations between Kyiv and Washington would need to be patched up. Achieving the latter would be anything but easy, Zelenskiy’s affirmation on Sunday that he remained willing to sign a minerals deal with Trump represented a recognition of this grim necessity.
The prospect of Kyiv being bounced unwillingly into a ceasefire without guarantees, as Trump licenses a territorial carve-up to reward Putin’s murderous aggression, is intolerable.
Through diplomacy in Washington, but also through military assistance on a scale that would require more flexible fiscal rules in Brussels and in national capitals, Europe must build on the London summit to give Ukraine agency and a voice in determining its own destiny.
More broadly, the evidence mounts that as Trump seeks to forge a new understanding with Putin’s revanchist regime, he is indifferent to the effect on European security and interests. As Starmer commented at the close of Sunday’s summit, Europe stands “at a crossroads.” Strategic autonomy, and far greater sovereign capability, would be needed to navigate the challenging route ahead.
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