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After last Friday’s disgraceful roughhouse treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House, the 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,” Mr Macron observed 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 Donald Trump’s administration is laying waste to decades-old assumptions governing transatlantic relations. Appearing to prioritise a reset of the US relationship with Russia over international law and the unity of the west, Mr Trump is pursuing a peace deal with Moscow on 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 Mr Putin’s illegal invasion, and for the sake of its own future security interests, Europe’s response needs to be unified, robust and ambitious. In that respect, the London defence summit convened by Sir Keir Starmer on Sunday was a useful start, but multiple uncertainties remain.
The bullying and taunting of Mr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office meant the conference rightly became an occasion for a counter-display of emotional solidarity, embodied in the bear-hug the Ukrainian president received from Sir Keir in Downing Street. Substantively, 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, Sir Keir announced that a “coalition of the willing” would be created to deter Russian violations of any future peace deal. By presenting their own plans for a ceasefire, significantly increasing defence spending, and pledging “boots on the ground” to police a peace agreement, European leaders aim to persuade Mr 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 will need to step up alongside Britain and France with substantial troop contributions, and relations between Kyiv and Washington will need to be patched up. Achieving the latter will be anything but easy. But Mr Zelenskyy’s affirmation on Sunday that he remained willing to sign a minerals deal with Mr Trump represented a recognition of this grim necessity.
The prospect of Kyiv being bounced unwillingly into a ceasefire without guarantees, as Mr Trump licenses a territorial carve-up to reward Mr Putin’s murderous aggression, is intolerable. Through diplomacy in Washington, but also through military assistance on a scale that will 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 Mr Trump seeks to forge a new understanding with Mr Putin’s revanchist regime, he is indifferent to the impact on European security and interests. As Sir Keir commented at the close of Sunday’s summit, Europe stands “at a crossroads”. Strategic autonomy, and far greater sovereign capability, will be needed to navigate the challenging route ahead.
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