Book Offer
This will close in 10 seconds
If one were to read the tealeaves that are emerging from the White House in recent days, it would be hard not to get the sense that the United States intends to do some form of a deal with the Russians over Ukraine, with or without the consent of the Ukrainians.
Speaking in Brussels, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth essentially took Ukrainian NATO membership off the table and appeared highly reluctant to offer Ukraine any further security guarantees. Speaking in the White House, President Trump appeared to indicate that Russia should be allowed to hang on to whatever land it currently occupies, with the President essentially saying that the Russians had won it because they had paid a steep price in blood for it. The President is likely, it seems, to visit Moscow and attempt to deliver peace in person – with or without Ukrainian consent. To add an insult to the perceived injury, the American President appears to be intent on demanding access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, worth far more than the country has ever received in American aid. The whole business has echoes of the Munich Conference of 1938, where the Czechoslovakians woke up one morning to find that their allies had handed over a quarter of the country to Germany without consulting them in any detail.
This has, of course, outraged many European countries, who see the President’s conduct as rewarding Russia for an illegal war, and as abandoning America’s allies. To European eyes, NATO is being undermined and weakened, Russia emboldened, and the United States is essentially withdrawing to leave Europe at the mercy of the Russian bear. They’re all very outraged.
The problem is that they have no right to be.
The outrage they feel, after all, is not dissimilar to the outrage that a fan of English Premier League football feels when VAR blunders and awards an illegal goal against his team. It is the outrage of the spectator. The outrage of the fan. Europe is on the sidelines because without the United States, the defence of Ukraine is impossible. The Americans know this; The Russians know it; and the Ukrainians know it. In Ireland, our pro-Ukrainian disposition is a sort of amoral duopoly, wherein the country is both proud to support Ukraine and simultaneously proud of its moral conviction never to actually provide any military aid to Ukraine. “Someone else should do it” is the position of the Irish establishment liberal who strongly favours Ukraine and thinks that Vladimir Putin is a bad article altogether.
You can argue fairly, of course, that the US has some sort of moral responsibility here, and that Trump is abandoning that moral responsibility. I won’t argue with you, if that’s what you’re saying. Because your position wouldn’t be wrong – just naïve.
The American President seems to take the view that US defence spending should be allocated towards the defence of the American Republic, and that the American Republic is not especially threatened, militarily or otherwise, by Russia gaining some Ukrainian territory.
This peace deal, if it happens, will happen for one reason and one reason only: That European countries are too weak to tell the Ukrainians to ignore the US and fight on with European support. The European position is that Ukraine should fight and America should help them fight, while the EU offers some aid around the margins which amounts – more or less – to moral support.
There’s an irony here in that Donald Trump has no shortage of fans on the European continent, though most of them are simultaneously opposed to the militarisation of Europe. Yet, Trump’s policy is very clear: Defending Europe is no longer a top American priority. Therefore, logically, it must become a top European priority. In fact, this has been the consistent aim of Trump’s policy towards Europe across his first presidency, and these early days of his second one: To get the EU and European NATO countries to ramp up their defence spending. In this cause he has consistently cajoled EU countries to ramp up their military spending.
This is where we get to the basic long-term problem with Trumpist foreign policy, as I see it: When the US abandons the defence of Europe, or at least scales back its commitments, consider the incentives it creates:
First, for the EU and non-EU countries in Europe, which must invest in armaments. Second, for the Russians, who may well decide that military aggression is now safer given Uncle Sam’s preference for staying out of it. Third, for the Ukrainians, who will surely suspect that any ceasefire with the Russians will be temporary rather than permanent, and who will be heavily incentivised to militarise in preparation for a future war. In the simplest terms, when you take the big dog out of the yard, potential burglars become more emboldened.
For those in Ireland who ferociously oppose things like “an EU army”, then the basic reality is that Donald Trump’s policies on Ukraine and EU defence make that kind of thing vastly more likely. Why? Because Trump is correct. The US has no moral or legal obligation to fight Europe’s wars for it.
That, ultimately, is the job of young European men. Who will be called to military service, as a result, in far greater numbers than at any time since the end of the second world war.
This will close in 10 seconds