Squeezed between Putin and Trump, Europe sees a moment of truth

The meeting in Paris convened by French President Emmanuel Macron comes as the continent faces its biggest security challenge in generations.

France's President Emmanuel Macron will host a summit of European leaders in Paris. Picture: AFP.

As the US and Russia begin negotiations this coming week about the fate of Ukraine and European security, the shared view in Washington and in Moscow these days is open contempt for the leaders of Europe.

What happens next will determine whether the alliance of European democracies, inside and outside the European Union, will remain a significant player on the increasingly brutal international stage, where the niceties of the post-World War II international order no longer apply.

“Denial is no longer possible. The message is clear: It’s time to take our responsibilities, to safeguard our own security,” said France’s European affairs minister, Benjamin Haddad. “The first test would be to refuse a capitulation in Ukraine.”

The problem is whether Europe is able to rise up to what European leaders now call its biggest security challenge in generations. Doing so would require an immediate increase in military spending, renewed political cohesion, and a willingness to accept that the trans-Atlantic bond that defined the European consensus since 1945 may be irretrievably shattered.

“The question that is important to everybody is: Can we trust the United States of America?” said Nico Lange, a former senior German defence official and a senior fellow of the Munich Security Conference. “There is seriousness now. After 10 years of wake-up calls, the next wake-up call for the Europeans may be an air raid siren.”

This test comes at a fraught time. Europe’s biggest power, Germany, is in election mode and won’t have a stable government for months. A fragile minority government runs France. Countries such as Hungary and Slovakia had sought appeasement with Moscow even before Donald Trump’s election.

French President Emmanuel Macron is assembling key European leaders – including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer – for an emergency summit in Paris on Monday.

“Everybody understands that now is the European hour. The only question is whether the jolt will be enough for the patient to wake up,” said Gabrielius Landsbergis, who served until recently as Lithuania’s foreign minister. “I’m worrying that the jolt might just kill the patient.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has long dismissed Europe – which, counting the U.K., has an economy 12 times the size of Russia’s, and nearly four times Russia’s population – as a geopolitical light weight. In remarks in early February, Putin said with a smirk that President Trump will “restore order” in Europe and that European nations “will all stand at the feet of the master and will tenderly wag their tails.” Trump quickly reposted Putin’s statement on social media.

Vice President JD Vance turned up the heat at the Munich Security Conference on Friday. He told assembled European leaders that their democracies are flawed and that the biggest threat Europe faces today isn’t from Russia or China but from mass immigration and a refusal of political elites to bring far-right parties into power.

Vance’s remarks, which prompted many European officials to walk out, dovetailed with Elon Musk’s open campaigning on behalf of European far-right parties, especially Alternative for Germany.

The humiliation continued on Saturday, as Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, shared a lectern with European heads of state and government at a luncheon. He bluntly told them that Europe won’t be allowed to participate in negotiations over Ukraine’s future – even though Washington expects European forces to oversee an eventual cease-fire, and wants Europe to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction.

The legacy of the Minsk 2 accords in 2015, which were negotiated by Germany and France, justifies Europe’s exclusion, Kellogg argued. “I’m telling you something that’s really quite honest,” he said. “When you looked at Minsk 2, there was a lot of people at the table that really had no ability to execute some type of peace process, and it failed miserably. So we are not gonna go down that path.” In a moment that highlighted Europe’s diminished role, the Swedish foreign minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, appealed to Kellogg to reconsider: “We really need to be at the table if we are supposed to be on the ground – so, please, please, let us join.” He brushed her off with a remark that no statue in America has been dedicated to a committee.

To many European officials in Munich, the bluntness of Vance’s lecture contrasted with the soothing rhetoric of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who spoke immediately afterward. Wang repeated comforting statements about the need to respect international law and the charter of the United Nations – concepts dear to the Europeans at a time when the US sanctions the International Criminal Court and threatens to annex Canada and Greenland.

While Trump’s foreign policy is still inchoate and unclear to many US allies, the president appears to be determined to quickly end the war in Ukraine – even if it means major concessions by Kyiv and a strategic gain for Russia. Part of that urgency is a desire – dismissed by European officials as utopian and misguided – to weaken the growing bond between Russia and China. “It’s not in Putin’s interest to be the little brother in a coalition with China,” Vance said in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal.

The flip side of that is that Europe – and even Ukraine – can reciprocate by hewing closer to China, removing economic restrictions that were imposed, in part, in the name of trans-Atlantic security co-operation. Ukraine’s and China’s foreign ministers already met in Munich on Saturday. “China views Ukraine as a friend and partner, and always approaches and advances China-Ukraine relations from a long-term perspective,” Wang said afterward.

More such strategic hedging could be in the pipeline because many – if not most – European leaders are convinced that Putin’s aims go far beyond Ukraine. They fear that Russia – once given a pause to consolidate and rearm, especially if international sanctions are lifted as part of a deal – will inevitably strike again, including against members of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

“If we don’t believe that Russia is going to stop, then it changes totally the discussion that we need to have, and I don’t think they’re going to stop,” said Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. “We cannot claim that we are at peacetime anymore. A hybrid car is still a car, right? Hybrid war is war. There is a big risk that something that will look nice on paper will give Russia the possibility to mobilise, to rearm, and to continue – maybe in Ukraine, or somewhere else.” German military planners estimate that Russia – which is already producing enough ammunition to start stockpiling reserves for a future war – would be ready for a broader war against Europe by 2029.

The success of Ukrainian resistance in depleting Russian manpower and military equipment has given the Europeans that breathing room to prepare. But, without a sharp increase in spending, recruitment and industrial production, Europe will be hard-pressed to meet even the 2029 deadline, many officials warn.

Ukraine’s army today is larger and more capable than the German, French, Italian and British armies combined. Alongside Russia’s, it is also the only military in the world with a wealth of experience in large-scale modern warfare against a near-peer enemy.

If it is defeated, or neutered as part of a US-negotiated agreement with Russia, the rest of Europe would be extremely vulnerable – especially if the American commitments to its security wither away.

In this environment, Europeans cannot afford to be politically naive, said Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic. “If Russia spends 10 per cent of the GDP on military spending, and 40 per cent of the budget, this isn’t a short-term exercise. This is a war economy which has long-term goals,” he said. “And it is up to us to take this into account in the context of peace negotiations.”

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