Europe's Great Delusion

As much as European leaders try to pretend otherwise, the continent is nowhere near ready to emancipate itself from the American security umbrella.

Last year, the European Union mobilized $19 billion in military and financial aid for Ukraine. What would’ve been a respectable figure was instead surpassed by the $22bn the bloc spent on importing Russian oil and gas, a vital export that continues to fuel Putin’s war machine. It’s a sobering contrast that perfectly juxtaposes the inherent hubris of the actors in this play. They’re out of their depth when it comes to maintaining a united front on the world stage and their actions rarely match their rhetoric.

If there’s one thing unelected European officials are indisputably skilled, it’s the weaponisation of language. Case in point: drafting sternly-worded tweets that carry no diplomatic weight.

Following the verbal spat between American President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky in the White House last week, an avalanche of tweets and statements came pouring from European leaders, who not only condemned Mr. Trump’s treatment of Zelensky as unfair but also reiterated their support for Ukraine in repelling the Russian invaders.

Such talk manifested itself in a hastily-organised summit in London on Sunday, where Keir Starmer hosted several European leaders to chart a new course for the war, one veering away from dependence on America. Few concrete decisions were made but each attendee pledged to replace any loss in American aid and vowed to support Ukraine, financially, militarily and diplomatically, until the war could be won on terms deemed satisfactory to Kiev.

The event may very well have set into motion a paradigm shift in geopolitics, with senior European bureaucrats now openly questioning for the first time their reliance on the Trans-Atlantic, which has formed the cornerstone of European security in the post-war era.

Yet behind the scenes in Europe’s capitals, a dispiriting refusal to abandon the dogmas of old still lingers. Beyond the warm words over the past few weeks, London and Paris are largely sticking to the tired national strategies they have clung to for much of the past 50 years. The French talk of European autonomy but in reality are pursuing national autonomy; the British pretend they are a mini America but, instead, are becoming an ever cheaper imitation.

The absurdity of the European position was perhaps best captured in its full hubris last year by the historian and writer Anne Applebaum when she won a prestigious German peace prize. During her acceptance speech, she maintained that victory was more important than peace, asserting that the West’s ultimate goal should be regime change in Russia. “We must help Ukrainians achieve victory, and not only for the sake of Ukraine,” she said. “If there is even a small chance that military defeat could help end this horrific cult of violence in Russia, just as military defeat brought an end to the cult of violence in Germany, we should take it.” This is the Second World War model in its distilled form, a model which has shaped the parameters of most neo-conservative operators, guiding them to engineer regime changes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, to disastrous results.

The UK and European Union governments face two interlinked dilemmas in their approach to the Ukraine peace process initiated by the Trump administration. It is not clear from the conclusions of Sunday’s London summit whether they will be able to navigate these dilemmas, or even fully recognise them.

The first dilemma is how to strengthen Ukraine’s position in peace negotiations without simultaneously emboldening Ukraine to reject a US-Russia deal. Such a move might provoke Trump into abandoning Ukraine, shifting all responsibility for Ukraine over to the Europeans — who cannot, in fact, meet this responsibility, no matter how often they convince themselves otherwise. More on this later.

The second dilemma the UK and EU face is how to make themselves look important and “relevant” (something that the European elites see as vital, though it is not incumbent on the rest of us to do so) without making promises they have no intention of actually fulfilling.

Against all of this, Brussels remains hesitant to define what a lasting peace looks like. A return to pre-2022 borders seems hopelessly unfeasible at this stage of the war. That much was made clear by the total failure of the Ukrainian army to dislodge Russian troops from their entrenched positions along the border during the Summer 2023 counter-offensive, a campaign that yielded very little tangible results and whose small gains have since been erased by subsequent Russian counteroffensives.

Not only has Europe failed to grasp this, it has also failed to map out a strategic path to victory. Politicians, journalists and academics parrot meaninglessly that Europe will do whatever it takes. Or they assert that Putin will blink first, if only the war goes on for a little while longer. Or that the Russian economy will collapse as sanctions take their toll. But solidarity is not a strategy. Virtue signalling is not a strategy. Sanctions are not a strategy if the primary goal is to minimise the pain to ourselves.

A strategy is something that is costed, politically stress-tested, and that responds to different scenarios. A strategy has primary targets, together with an agreed definition of second-best outcomes. A strategy also has a clear exit route mapped out. Europe has nothing.

Donald Trump wants peace, now. Volodymyr Zelensky and his European supporters want victory, later. This is what the very public disagreement in the Oval Office on Friday was all about. Peace through victory — essentially the Second World War model — is the lens through which virtually all European leaders, and most commentators view the Russia-Ukraine conflict. America sees it differently.

It is dangerous for Europe to insist, instead, on victory. For while Trump has talked a lot of nonsense about Zelensky and the war, he is right in one critical aspect: without America, there is no road to victory for Ukraine. This is not primarily about weapons, ammunition, and financial aid, but about satellite support and intelligence. If the US were to switch off the satellites and stop the flow of information, the Europeans have no way of plugging the gap. Britain has been prepared to run down its military stocks and by one estimate, only has 14 pieces of heavy artillery left in Estonia. Without the US, it’s over for Ukraine.

Before any real progress can be made on this front, European leaders need to sober up to reality. The narratives they’ve been feeding themselves for the last few years have blinded them to the facts on the ground.

Unlike what some in the mainstream media like to portray, Putin is not just some stereotypical bloodthirsty, war-mongering barbarian, trying to carve out a neo-imperialist empire for himself. He is a cold strategist, playing chess on a higher frequency to most of his peers. Ukraine represents a piece on the board - to strengthen Russian territorial integrity, to keep Russian shipping lines operational, to maintain the monopoly over oil and gas imports into Europe.

Here is the fundamental driving force behind the war: Russia moors its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea and has done so for 300 years. The engineering of NATO membership for Ukraine began at the NATO Bucharest Summit of 2008. If successful, this meant US warships moored in Sevastopol, something Russia could never accept, just as America would never accept Chinese warships moored in Pearl Harbour. In addition, Sevastopol is Russia's only warm-water port, as the rest freezes in the winter, rendering the Russian Navy ice-bound, vulnerable and useless. Clearly, Russia could not accept losing Sevastopol. And thus - post Bucharest 2008 - began the events leading to Maidan 2014, Russia seizing Crimea and the war in 2022. So, isolating Russia isn’t a winning strategy, much as cornering a wounded animal would be.

Another crucial point is Western leaders’ ignorance as to how the war is going. It was actually over within weeks of it starting. By June 2022 Russia had seized control of eastern Ukraine, which is all it wanted because it provided a land bridge to Sevastopol and Crimea. The Russians dug-in behind five defensive lines and have remained there ever since even as brave Ukrainian soldiers were killed in their hundreds-of-thousands trying to breach the lines whilst journalists in the West lied about Ukrainian successes and Russian defeats to manufacture consent amongst the general public to perpetuate the war.

This leads us to where we are today: stalemate. Russia, operating on sunken-cost, cannot withdraw or end the war any time soon without some tangible victory to celebrate after the sheer magnitude of resources they’ve invested into the conflict while Europe can’t bear the damage to their prestige that will come from backing down. It’s the classic case of an unstoppable force colliding with an immovable object.

This speaks to the subtle ingenious of the mineral deal Trump hopes to negotiate with Ukraine. It is astonishing just how many nominally intelligent people fail to understand the purpose of the deal: using American megacorps as human shields for Russian aggression creates a durable, implicit security guarantee without formalizing it in terms Putin can reject. The minerals proposal is an attempt to replace the Washington Consensus approach of rights and duties, written and then just as quickly ignored, with a paradigm of powers and incentives. America won't defend Ukraine because they "have to" (like NATO) but because they want to.

Without a costed exit strategy now, and as America turns away, how then is the EU to defend itself in the future? Even if the EU were to set itself an agreed trajectory towards military spending of 3% of GDP by 2030, and to pool their procurement to make defence spending more efficient, I struggle to see how the continent can find the unity and determination to replace the US as guarantor for our security. Kaja Kallas, High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, laughably exemplified Europe’s myopic attitude to strategy when she said “the free world needs a new leader”. This is preposterous, typical of European grandstanding. The EU, with its veto rights, its qualified majority voting and the explicit exclusion of defence from the single market, is structurally unsuited for foreign and security policy in a Hobbesian world.

If Europe does indeed want to replace America as the sole arbitrator over the conflict, they must ask themselves how they hope to enforce their demands.

With what industry? European leaders have spent the last three decades castrating their own industrial bases, shifting supply lines to China and undermining attempts to reach energy self-reliance. Germany closed down all of their nuclear power plants, which made them more reliant on Russian gas and oil. Even amidst the backdrop of this increasingly delicate situation, Rachel Reeves, the UK Chancellor, contemplates scaling back the scope of her country’s mini nuclear power project. This does not sound like a government intent on insulating their country from supply-side shocks.

With what army? Even after a war has been raging in their backyard for three years, most European countries still don't satisfy the NATO spending requirements of 2.5%. The UK army is the smallest it has been since before the Napoleonic Wars. Instead, they have been relying on the benevolence of American taxpayers to subsidize their national defense.

The truth is: the EU can posture about disentangling themselves from American influence all they want, but taking concrete action is a lot harder than talking. These lofty ambitions do not reflect the reality on the ground. The EU is a vassal of the American Empire by design, not just from Washington but Brussels itself, who felt comfortable outsourcing their security because their leaders are feckless cowards who shy from responsibility. Nothing will fundamentally change until Europeans accept that.

Anyone who considers themselves a realist must speak to the unfortunate realities we are saddled with. Contemporary Europe is anti-masculine, anti-vigour, anti-innovation but instead the biggest spenders on welfare. We are anesthesising ourselves to the pain of life, making it only natural that vigorous cultures will replace us. There is no sense of sacrifice or service amongst the European people. It’s been taken away from them after being coddled for sixty years.

Nobody in Britain or Europe should deceive themselves into thinking they can successfully continue on their own for very long if Washington pulls the plug. Europe could spend 10% of its GDP on defense, but the simple fact is that most Europeans are unwilling to die for their own country, much less a foreign one. Giving up the welfare state for Ukraine is a proposal that's not going to fly anywhere, lest politicians are willing to flirt with assured electoral oblivion.

A structural increase in defence spending would require sacrifice. The US spends 3.5% of its GDP on defence. In 2023, the 27 EU countries spent an average of 1.6% of EU GDP. This gap of almost 2 percentage points arises because we Europeans spend the money on other things. Germany has a gold-plated social system. People are entitled to a basic citizens’ income whether they work or not. Germany has also given itself a budget of €150bn for the energy transition. The US, meanwhile, has food stamps, and no net zero policy. You cannot do it all. There are necessary trade-offs involved which the Europeans have not even begun to discuss.

This molly-coddled, self-absorbed Europe is not about to fight and win a war against Russia. We applaud speeches calling for regime change in Moscow. But we want someone else to do it for us just like in the Second World War. The difference is that back then, America was willing to play a progressively stronger part. This time, the US is in open retreat.

Voters might support helping Ukraine in the short term when the level of assistance feels abstract but I suspect when the war continues to delay or escalate, there will be a growing discontent with the lack of tangible results on the battlefield, similar to what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If the Europeans were smart, they would take Zelensky to one side, without the cameras, and tell him that the game is up, and that he should cut a deal with Trump now. They should insist that what the President was trying to negotiate before the Oval Office showdown is as good as anything Ukraine will ever get — the minerals deal will keep the US engaged in the besieged nation’s future. For now, though, it seems clear that Europe and Ukraine are currently asking for more than Trump is willing to concede, especially since the White House is convinced that they aren’t ready for peace.

If, though, Ukraine continues to insist on it, and Trump loses his temper and walks away from the peace process and support for Ukraine, then Ukrainians may pay a terrible price for European theatrical posturing.