With the historic US-Russia summit in Alaska fast approaching, European emotion over being left out of the negotiations is reaching fever pitch. Two feelings are clashing in the tender hearts and minds of the soft-spoken Euro-elites. There is anger at the perceived insult to Europe’s (delusional) sense of self-importance as a “great power” on the world stage. And then there’s panic at what Putin and Trump might actually decide about Ukraine, against Europe’s wishes. But the collective psychological Euro-meltdown is unnecessary. They needn’t worry, for a number of reasons.
It’s always been thus since WW2
To start with, none of this is new. In recent decades the Europeans have constructed their own imagined world in which Europe – effectively the EU, but this syndrome affects the British foreign policy elites too – is not just a big market, but some kind of “geopolitical player” in global affairs that has a fundamental say in how the world works. This sort of slippage from reality and embrace of fairy tales is understandable; after all, a whole generation of “international affairs” scholars really believed (some still do) in the existence of something called the “rules based international order”, and other such nonsense.
In the real world, however, the Europeans have never been at the table in any of the big East-West summit negotiations since the Yalta, Potsdam and Paris conferences in 1945-46. Some might point to Helsinki 1975 as the one exception, but that was not a select gathering of the most powerful to thrash out a major geopolitical deal. Instead, Helsinki was a very large conference of 35 states with political goals – a very different proposition.
Every single big moment involving serious, strategic negotiations with Moscow over issues affecting European security – chiefly concentrated towards the end of the Cold War – has been an exclusively American-Soviet/Russian affair. Geneva 1985, Reykjavik 1986, Washington 1987, Moscow 1988, Malta 1989, Washington 1990 and 1992, Moscow 1991, 1993 and 1994, Vancouver 1993 – all these were meetings solely between the US and Soviet (then Russian) leaders which decided the outlines of the new security architecture and geopolitical arrangement for Europe, as well as the vital parameters of strategic nuclear stability.
Even the later summits at Helsinki 1997 (at the end of Yeltsin’s presidency) and Vienna 2010 (Obama-Putin), well into the post-Cold War world, had NATO and European security interests very explicitly “on the menu”, without European participation. Yet there was none of the kind of wailing and handwringing that we see today.
Some will counter that in these previous cases there was more room for European input into the US position going into the US-Russia summits, as opposed to today – but is that really true? The fact is that American power has always shaped Europe’s own perspectives, and that US presidents have always pursued certain US interests (see Obama’s diplomatic reset and missile shield redeployments) regardless of what European capitals thought or wanted.
The one major exception to this pattern proves the rule. It was when America didn’t get involved, and let the Europeans broker a deal with Russia by themselves at Minsk in 2015, that the doors were opened to the current geopolitical mayhem on Europe’s border. If the Normandy format demonstrated anything, it was Europe’s incompetence and inability to secure its own interests when America doesn’t hold its hand.
Europe’s focus should be at home
At the end of the day, America deciding things alone with Russia has historically worked out very well for Europe’s net security, as we can tell in our daily experience within the borders of “Europe”. The actual members of NATO and the EU have remained at peace and secure from attack, and have been able to grow richer also as a result of the big deals agreed between Washington and Moscow along the way.
The heightened apprehension and sense of danger about what might result from the Alaska summit comes from the entirely manufactured – and literally illegitimate, in the sense of not having support in law – narrative that “Ukraine’s fight is Europe’s [or even NATO’s] fight”. Somehow, in the European mind, the fate of Ukraine has assumed an overwhelming importance for “Europe’s” own future. Terms and responsibilities have become tragically confused.
So let’s be clear here. Whether or not Ukraine’s heroic defence deserves European support in a moral sense – and, by all moral standards, it obviously does – is a separate and very distinct question from whether Europe has any actual formal obligation to Ukraine, and also from how important Ukraine’s fate actually is to Europe’s security. On both of these latter points the prevailing opinion in Europe is very strong – indeed, it is extreme – but that does not make it right or true.
The hard fact is that Europe’s responsibility, ie, that of both NATO and the EU, is firstly towards its own members and borders – and Ukraine is not a member of either organisation. Nor are there any mutual defence treaties (legal obligations ratified by democratically elected parliaments) between European countries and Ukraine. There are plenty of “pacts” and other purely political agreements (ie, declarations of government policy) but not legally binding obligations.
NATO governments decided to mobilise military aid for Ukraine to a remarkable degree – and even to get involved directly in supporting Kiev’s military operations with targeting intelligence and so on. They also decided to hand over vast sums of European taxpayers’ money to Ukraine. Both of these extraordinarily far-reaching decisions were taken despite this country not being a NATO or EU member.
But the whole point of working hard, as a nation, to gain membership of NATO and the EU, is that it is an exclusive club with benefits for members. Expanding key elements of this (security and funding) beyond our de-facto borders by government fiat is – or should be – highly problematic from an institutional and democratic point of view. European governments have used pro-Ukraine opinion polling results as cover for their policy; but things would likely look rather different if put to a vote.
This giveaway attitude is, of course, very much in line with the globalist thinking of European regimes. It’s the view that sees Europe’s hard-won wealth and civilisational accomplishments as a kind of common holding of the whole mankind and something to be “shared with the world” out of an invented sense of “responsibility” to global welfare. After all, it is this anti-national, rotten mindset that enables Europe’s scandalous foreign aid schemes and pro-“migrant” open-border policies, along with a host of other abominations emanating from continental chancelleries.
Despite popular expert and mainstream media opinion, strictly speaking, legally and even politically, the war is not fundamentally Europe’s problem – it is Ukraine’s problem. Europe has chosen to make it its problem. That may be a justified and welcome choice from a moral point of view with regards to the Ukrainian people, if not necessarily with regards to the European people who have to pay for this choice and who are at risk of being dragged into the war because of it. But it’s important to understand the element of deliberate choice of policy here.
Europe was not attacked; Ukraine was. EU member states are defended by NATO, and that defence works given that there is no actual evidence of Russian plans to invade NATO territory. The idea that Putin wants to roll across EU’s and NATO’s borders is a matter of opinion and speculation, not of fact. It also wouldn’t matter much even if he did want to come across, because he can’t: as Europe’s defence intelligentsia keeps reminding us, Putin can’t even defeat Ukraine so what hope does he have against NATO. Secondly, he’d risk nuclear war, which even his Soviet forebears didn’t dare. And thirdly, he doesn’t have a strong enough case for a war against Europe to present at home to his own regime and people – nothing even remotely comparable to the one against Ukraine.
Putin’s main conflict, in terms of the vital national interests of Russia, as he sees them, is with Ukraine. NATO is certainly the perennial geopolitical rival, but no more than it has always been; and with a potentially-friendly Trump in the White House, perhaps even less. That doesn’t mean we should be complacent. It is right to upgrade our defences and be ready to defend our own NATO borders and allies at any time, per our treaty obligations. But from that to the proposition that NATO needs to fight Russia in Ukraine by proxy right now, for Europe’s sake, there is quite a leap of logic.
None of this means that Ukraine is irrelevant to European security in real terms. Geopolitically and strategically, it is of course preferable if Ukraine got back all its territory or at least some of it, while retaining its independence, a strong defence force, a pro-Western government and the prospects for economic recovery. But even a much worse scenario in which Ukraine collapses and Russia takes over most of the country would be something that Europe could deal with defence-wise, as it did during the Cold War when the Soviets controlled East Germany and were a much more fearsome force. And the reason why Moscow didn’t attack NATO then is the same reason why it wouldn’t do it now: because that would mean nuclear war with NATO, which is not worth anything.
So, from a realist perspective, it is doubtful that there is quite so much as stake for Europe in the precise details of the Ukraine endgame (e.g., who controls what territories etc) as mainstream opinion suggests. Europe’s key interest at this point should be for the fighting to just stop, so the vast European expenditures on this Slavic war could be curtailed. The hundreds of billions thus saved could be re-directed to address the dire situation of European economies, and the armaments thus retained could be used to re-build our depleted arsenals. The risk of further escalation and of NATO overall being dragged into a war in the depths of Eastern Europe, for no good reason, would also be significantly reduced.
The urgent political crisis for European governments is not what’s happening beyond their borders, but what is happening at home. From Britain to France, Germany and beyond, Europe’s domestic situation is worsening rapidly on every count from immigration to economics and to the very social fabric of these nations. Talk of upcoming civil wars is rife. Anti-establishment parties now lead the polls in Britain, France, Germany, Austria and others – not because the citizens of these great countries have suddenly “gone mad”, but because they are despairing of the trajectory of their nations and of Europe as a whole.
The Anciens Regimes seem oblivious to the scale of these problems across the continent and Britain. The more they can focus on fixing their own societies, the better. If Trump wants to take on the task of finding some kind of deal with Russia to put an end to the slaughter and the costs of the Ukraine war, the Europeans should be grateful and wish him good luck – not try to sabotage his efforts or complain they’ve been left out. There’s nothing more they can contribute towards achieving the main goal (of stopping the fighting), and there is no need to anyway. Nor is anyone expecting Europe or its key nations to play a role, given their limited hard power.
A question of power
In this sense, the Europeans have set themselves unnecessary benchmarks for measuring their own “power”, which is distorting their view of Europe’s real interests. A great deal of misunderstanding and political grief tends to result from this. Bemoaning the fact that they are not present at the Alaska talks between Trump and Putin, each of whom control nuclear arsenals of over 5,000 warheads, just shows a fundamental lack of European appreciation of the balance of power in this world.
Of course that “Europe” – either collectively or as individual former imperial powers with illusions of running “global policy” – is nowhere close to being in the same league with the US and Russia from a military point of view; and it shouldn’t pretend otherwise. Nor is such a status required, as long as Europe’s defences remain credible enough, especially in nuclear terms.
Similarly, sniping at Trump over his peace drive because the previewed “details” – based on pure speculation – seem less than ideal for Kiev, shows that the Europeans don’t understand even their own fundamental interest here, which is in fact fully aligned with Trump’s: i.e. that stopping the war now, even through a “dirty deal”, overrides almost any other consideration, not least given Russia’s ascendancy on the battlefield.
The reason why the confusions and logical faults in Europe’s approach to the Ukrainian issue have gotten so out of hand is of course because Ukraine has become an ideological crusade for European establishments and beyond. This is possible to understand from an emotional perspective but it is not excusable in terms of statecraft. The Alaska summit may thus be an opportunity to reset the European conversation on these controversial topics.
Europe’s future security and prosperity depends on two things. One is what it does within its borders, not what humanitarian projects or adventures it pursues abroad or just across the border. The other is how it ensures that NATO remains a serious, nuclear-protected community of allies that no Russian leader would dare to attack. Whether a “good” or a “bad” peace deal emerges from Alaska makes little difference to Europe’s real priorities – as long as there is peace in the end.
Europe’s make-believe defence ‘pledges’