By Marc Champion / Bloomberg Opinion
It’s reasonable to be disappointed or worried — even disgusted — by the outcome of Donald Trump’s phone call with Vladimir Putin this week; but not surprised.
The U.S. president didn’t fail to end this war, because he never tried. His focus was from day one to achieve a reset with Russia that would deliver an economic bounty to the U.S. American participation in the war was an obstacle to be removed before that could happen, and doing so via a peace settlement — rather than Ukraine’s abandonment — was a better look. It wasn’t, however, essential.
“This was a European situation, and should have remained a European situation,” Trump said on Monday. So, with that cleared up, what now?
First, unless Congress forces Trump’s hand, he can leave the long, thankless task of mediating a peace settlement to the pope, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or whomever wants to take it on. In the meantime, he can focus on making money.
From Moscow’s point of view, this could hardly have ended better. Putin has made a vague new offer to begin direct talks with Ukraine and set his demands out in a memorandum. We can take a good guess at what that will include, because the Kremlin has repeated its conditions for peace many times. Now that Trump has left the building, Putin has less incentive than ever to reduce them: Ukraine would have to hand over unconquered as well as occupied areas of territory that Russia has formally annexed, forswear any ties to NATO and demobilize most of its armed forces.
This is why the Ukrainians have little choice but to fight on. Without the future ability to defend itself, their country will no longer exist as a sovereign state. As far as Moscow is concerned, Ukraine is a Frankenstein nation, patched together from others, with Kyiv and most of the lands it rules rightfully part of the so-called “Russian World.” The country’s distinct language, culture and history are, in this view, fake.
“How can this heritage be divided between Russia and Ukraine? And why do it?” Putin wrote in a 6,900-word essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” in 2021. A few months later, that treatise was put in the hands of officers sent to lead his invasion. It set out his true casus belli.
To foreign policy “realists,” this is fate, because Russia is a great power and Ukraine isn’t. Continuing the war with or without U.S. support would, at best, involve Ukraine’s continued daily sacrifice of lives and territory, possibly for several more years, so why do it? Whether the Ukrainians can sustain even this level of defense, rather than suffer a catastrophic breakthrough for lack of arms and ammunition, is now up to Europe.
Will this wealthy, yet atomized continent have the political will and industrial capacity to supply Kyiv’s forces with what they need? Ukrainians know their fate should they surrender from what already was done in Russian-occupied territories: torture, executions, show trials, transformed school curricula and the abduction and brainwashing of their children. Italians and Spaniards don’t feel that imperative.
The easy answer to both questions is no. Europe’s leaders have known since Trump’s election that U.S. withdrawal was likely. They have said all the right words but — apart from frontline states such as Poland and the tiny Baltics — their actions have fallen far behind. Yet this is pessimism, not realism.
What happens next is a choice, just as it was a choice for Trump not to use the tools at his disposal to pressure Putin, or for the U.S. to ensure South Korea’s continued existence since the 1950s. Ukrainian forces are, without question, in a bad position, but they will go on fighting because they must. And the United Kingdom, France, Germany and most of northern and eastern Europe recognize that Ukraine’s defense is in many ways their own.
These countries have the financial means. What they lack is the industrial capacity to fill the void that U.S. departure will leave behind, as well as the collective sense of urgency to do what it takes to remedy that. Just look at the new UK-EU security and defense policy agreement, which tied supposedly vital defense measures to disputes over unrelated issues such as youth mobility, ending as little more than blather.
Europe would have to dig deep, but it doesn’t have to provide everything. Ukraine made about $750 million worth of military equipment a year before the 2022 Russian invasion. This year it has the capacity, if not the funds, to make about $35 billion worth, including a world-beating drone industry. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said 40 percent of the weapons used at the front are today produced in his country, and that proportion continues to rise.
A Danish-led program to fund unused Ukrainian production capacity already exists and can be expanded. Europe’s governments and arms manufacturers, meanwhile, can focus on filling the critical gaps in aircraft, missiles, air defense systems and more that Kyiv can’t produce for itself. This is hard, but not a pipe dream.
Companies such as Rheinmetall AG, KNDS Group and BAE Systems Plc have already opened offices in Ukraine, understanding the opportunities for research and lower-cost production there. Ukraine’s defense can and should viewed as a catalyst to accelerate European security, not a hurdle.
It takes an optimist to think the continent’s leaders will look beyond parochial debates to make that happen, but no more so than to believe that Ukrainians would be able to defeat Russia’s initial assault on Kyiv in February 2022.
There’s nothing inevitable about allowing Russia to subjugate Ukraine. Trump had the resources to ramp up financial and military pressure on Putin until he sat down for genuine peace talks; he just opted not to use them. Now it’s Europe’s turn to choose.
Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.
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