Before embarking on his first visit to the White House since Donald Trump returned to power, French president Emmanuel Macron huddled with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and came up with a common position: the Europeans were willing to put tens of thousands of their own troops in Ukraine after a truce is struck with Russia. The plan would involve the deployment of a 30,000-strong European force concentrated in multiple Ukrainian cities behind the ceasefire lines, and rely on the United States to serve as a so-called “backstop” to make it a more credible deterrent in the eyes of the Russians.
Macron pushed this point repeatedly in his meetings in Washington this week. The French president even appeared to try to bounce Trump into becoming a part of his scheme. It didn’t work. Trump merely re-stated his position that a peace settlement needed to be negotiated as soon as possible.
But could Europe handle the Ukraine file on its own even if it wanted to? Despite hurried pledges by Britain and France to increase defence spending in the past few days, one can’t help but be sceptical.
Between the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Europe was content with watching its defence capacity atrophy and its readiness decline. This was by choice; Europe, after all, was enjoying a presumed peace dividend after the Soviet Union came tumbling down. While the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo in the mid to late 1990s forced European armies into action, great power conflict was treated as a thing of the past. Nato’s expansion to former Soviet states and Washington’s willingness to maintain a position of primacy on the continent meant that European governments had little incentive to worry much about security.
Author
Events on Europe and Eurasia
