Donald Trump’s latest peace plan landed with a bang, leaving Europe in shock. The version leaked last week suggested US recognition of Crimea; the de facto recognition of Russian-occupied territories; no Nato membership for Ukraine; a lifting of sanctions; and economic co-operation between the US and Russia. European media called it capitulation and insisted it be resisted. Note the passive tense. But the sorry truth is, we Europeans have no alternative.
Inevitably, Trump’s most recent plan will not be the final one. We’ve seen diplomacy playing out in the days since, most visibly in St Peter’s Basilica, where Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky sat down for an impromptu encounter. But also online, where Trump threatened to take action against Vladimir Putin unless he stopped the nightly bombings of residential areas in Ukraine. Given the President’s unpredictability, none of us knows what the final version will look like.
But objectively, this deal is an unfair one. Russia’s leader is a dictator who invades foreign countries, who has killed opposition politicians at home, and who has thought nothing of deploying chemical weapons abroad to assassinate former spies. His annexation of Crimea in 2014 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine violate international law. Europe has every right to be outraged at a peace deal that would appear to vindicate Moscow’s actions.
And yet, this deal should be accepted. Of all the possible bad outcomes, it is the least worst.
Ukraine is fighting an overwhelming enemy while backed by an underwhelming alliance. Europe is far better at debating than actually fighting, preferring posing for photo-ops with Zelensky than making hard choices. Europe promises to support Ukraine for however long it takes. But it doesn’t have what it takes. It wants a Second World War-style happy ending; Trump isn’t about to hand it to them.
But if the Europeans had paused even for a moment to consider, properly, the military situation on the ground, they would have realised by the summer of 2023 that Ukraine was not winning. That it wouldn’t ever win. Instead, the media kept writing stories about the desolate state of the Russian armed forces; British tabloid newspapers treated us to tales of Vladimir Putin suffering from cancer; sanctions packages with gaping holes in them were reported uncritically, while the continued availability of iPhones and Mercedes cars in Moscow was practically ignored. Remember how we waited with bated breath for the Ukrainian spring counter-offensive that year? It happened; it failed.
Like it or not, Trump’s deal will save lives. It will stop the escalation of a regional war that could become a pan-European catastrophe. The West will still need to think hard about security architecture after the war ends. But this plan, or most probably a version of this plan, will trigger that discussion. If accepted, it could pave the way for Ukrainian EU membership. It would allow Europe to wean itself off its military dependence on the US without having to fight a hot proxy war at the same time, because, let’s not forget, Europe is in this bind because it relied too much on the US for defence and overspent the peace dividend as a result. Ideally, we would not start from here.
But since we are here, Europeans should reflect upon how peace diplomacy works. Peace negotiations, always and everywhere, start from an acceptance of the current military situation. This does not prejudice the final agreement. The Versailles Treaty imposed borders that did not reflect the military situation, they reflected the reality that Germany and Austria had been totally defeated. Most wars do not end with a clear winner; most wars end when both sides judge the cost of continued fighting to exceed the benefit of what they can realistically achieve. That is what is happening here.
Peacemaking is intrinsically unpopular, especially among those who want victory, not peace. It is the fate, then, of the peacemaker that they will either fail or be seen as a traitor. To succeed, you cannot take sides. If the Norwegians, who know a thing or two about peace deals, had been given the job to mediate, they would have come up with something similar. So would any of the non-aligned states in the world. And by becoming a peacemaker, Trump has automatically taken himself out of the alliance that supports Ukraine.
“Peacemaking is intrinsically unpopular, especially among those who want victory, not peace.”
The first thing all peace makers do is to start from the existing military situation. Without an acceptance of the current state of play, there would be no point in peace talks. The purpose of the peace talks is to fill in the blanks. The two sides may trade off one piece of land against another. Money will buy stuff. But peace deals are never about who is right, and who is wrong. They are not about historic claims. Nor are they about recognition. Of course, no peace treaty can force Ukraine to formally recognise Crimea as Russian. Other countries decide that for themselves. West Germany never recognised East Germany. Other Western countries did.
I am reasonably hopeful that Ukraine and Europe will accept a version of Trump’s deal because the alternative is just so bleak. But this is not something we can take for granted. Misjudgements abound. Putin misjudged the extent of the Ukrainian resistance; the West misjudged the impact of sanctions, and the resilience of the Russian economy.
But what if one of the two parties made another big misjudgement and rejected the peace process? If Trump were to conclude that Putin is not serious about a deal, as he suggested in a tweet over the weekend, the diplomacy would end, and the war would continue, albeit with reduced US involvement.
Meanwhile, if Ukraine and Europe were to reject the deal, the US would no longer provide critical services to Ukraine like satellite communication and the sharing of military intelligence. Europe would have to step up its financial and military support for Ukraine dramatically, which could involve troops on the ground — not on the frontline, but in the background. The US may at this point start to question the Nato security guarantee. If European countries are supporting a war the US administration has judged to be unwinnable, why would the US want to ride to Europe’s rescue? Once the US retreats, the Europeans would be on their own.
I know EU officials who want this to happen. But not everybody does. Is post-Brexit Britain ready to break with the US over Ukraine? What about Germany? It is hard to say what kind of chancellor Friedrich Merz will be if elected by the Bundestag next week but for Europe to go it alone without the US, this would at the very least require the UK, Germany and France to be willing to lead, and ideally to co-opt Poland, Spain and Italy into their alliance. Spain and Italy are definitely out. The Poles trust the US more than Germany. Emmanuel Macron speaks the language of European integration, but puts French interests first. Europe is fractured and is weakened as a result.
Just look at what happened in the diplomacy behind the UK participation in the EU’s €150bn defence fund. Despite the impressive headline number, this is a relatively small fund, stretched over many years. Its main purpose is to establish an important principle: that Europeans are much more efficient when they pool their defence spending and avoid duplication. France thought these negotiations would prove a good moment to settle some old Brexit-era scores about fishing rights in the English Channel. What this is telling us that narrow national interests, unimportant in the grand scheme of things, often supersede the common European interest. Putin has many problems of his own. But at least he does not have to deal with fish.
Perhaps one day Europe will be in a position where it could fight a war against Russia. But that is abundantly not the case with the dysfunctional Europe we see today. Apart from anything else, it took bullying from Trump to provoke European countries to only now start to raise defence spending to undo the damage they did to their militaries over the past few decades. The idea that this Europe, in its current divided, petty state, can fight and win a war against Russia is delusional.
We should accept the deal and move on.
