Trump set out the original peace plan, following lengthy bilateral negotiations between the White House and the Kremlin. We finally have the terms on which the war can end tomorrow morning. They can be fine-tuned, but not rejected in their essence. So now, Kiev and Brussels must make up their minds. Their reaction? Good-old sabotage in the form of panicky statements and a counter-plan. For some reason, they seem not all that keen on stopping the carnage.
Needless to say, Europe’s bigwigs could not care less about the US President’s desire for wrapping it up by Thanksgiving Day. On the contrary, they appear willing as ever to throw a wrench into the whole thing, buying time all while coaching Zelensky to believe that he could somehow end up better on EU backing alone. But why on earth do Europeans want the conflict to drag on? Why not seize a rare opportunity to end a bloodbath that has cost our economies so dearly?
Two reasons, to begin with. Both ugly. Both political. First, they cannot admit they lied. For three years European voters were sold a fairytale: Russia is about to collapse, sanctions will break Putin, Ukraine is winning, every euro to Kiev is an investment in democracy. To stop now would mean standing up and saying: “We were wrong. We misled you. We threw away hundreds of billions. Your bills are through the roof because we got it catastrophically wrong.”
Second, and even more cynical: They need the war to go on because they have already wrecked the European economy and now require a permanent Russian threat to justify their attempt to restart its engines through rearmament. Cheap Russian gas is gone forever. German factories are closing. French and Italian industries are shrinking. Inflation is eating away wages. Farmers are on the streets. How do you explain this disaster to angry voters?
First and foremost, you keep the Russian bogeyman alive. Without a scary Russia playing Hannibal ante Portas, there is no excuse to funnel hundreds of billions of taxpayer money into “European rearmament”. No excuse to bankroll defence giants like Rheinmetall, Airbus, Leonardo and Thales with fat new contracts. No excuse to tell citizens their taxes must rise again “because of the Russian threat”.
Look at the numbers. The EU has already burned through close to €200 billion on Ukraine – and counting. Germany is adding €100 billion to its defence budget by 2030. France says it wants a “war economy”. The new EU defence commissioner talks openly about making Europe’s arms industry “great again”. Peace tomorrow could pull the plug on this gold rush overnight.
Trump’s team is waving a peace plan – freeze the lines, no NATO for Ukraine, security guarantees, Russia back in G8. Kiev is listening. Even Zelensky’s chief of staff is negotiating. Putin calls it “a basis”. Washington is tired of writing blank cheques. But von der Leyen, Macron, Merz, Starmer, Costa, Kallas and the rest are scrambling to water it down or sabotage it. Why? Because if peace returns, the Russian bogeyman vanishes.
If no Russian threat exists, voters will ask perfectly reasonable questions: “If Russia is no longer a menace, why are we still paying for all these tanks? Why are energy prices still sky-high? Why did we destroy our industry for nothing, if Russia could not be beaten in the first place?”
And thus, the war has now become the only lifeline of short-sighted and corrupt leaders and dignitaries who have ruined us. It hides their failures so far, protects their narrative and keeps the money flowing to the military-industrial complex and its friends, while our living standards are falling and a once all-mighty continent is sliding into irrelevance.
Do not be fooled. The Russian bogeyman does not live in the Kremlin. He lives in the Berlaymont, fed daily by pride, cowardice and greed. Until European voters force their leaders to undo him, the war, the decline and the great robbery will go on. Rearm, all right. We need it – not in order to counter Russia, but so as to have a persuasive say on both a regional and global level. Europe’s military might and growth need no human sacrifices. Go for peace and save what is still salvageable.
Mearsheimer knows: The Russian war machine adapts and grinds on