The saying is sled, but therefore no less true: if you are not sitting at the table, then you are probably on the menu. After this week, this applies in the first place to Ukraine. But European countries have also been sidelined in a humiliating way since the start of the second presidency of Donald Trump. The US President and his Minister of Defense Pete Hegseeth announced on Wednesday that negotiations with Russia about the war in Ukraine can start. As an American-Russian gathering, without Europe and without Ukraine itself. The starting point should be that Russia can keep its conquered area, Ukraine cannot become a member of NATO and American military support is quickly phased out. Europe will have to deliver material and possibly even troops to help guarantee the ‘armed peace’ that probably follows.
The bewilderment in Brussels is great: what could have been a commitment to negotiations seems to have been given away by Trump to his Russian counterpart Putin in advance. It is at least as shocking that Europe, where the war takes place and for whom security guarantees are of existential importance to Moscow, should not even be involved. With one phone call, Trump has dismantled the transatlantic unity of the last few years around Ukraine and and passing Putin pulled out of his isolation. In this light, it is understandable that Russian media respond lyrically to the return to the world stage of their President, which was sought by the International Criminal Court.
Now the experience learns that nothing is what it seems in Trumps White House. The president can easily come back from the apparent concessions as he would have done them. That seemed to be the case when his vice president JD Vance, on the way to the large safety conference in Munich, seemed to nuance the words of Hegseeth again on Friday. To enforce a peace deal at Putin, sanctions can be used and Putin does not agree, then the Americans can still send troops, he claims.
No matter how painful, with decades of neglect of their armed forces, many European countries have maneuvered themselves in the serious position in which they are now. The world has changed considerably since the end of the Cold War: from a unipolar system with only one hyper -power, the United States, to a multipolar system in which China, India and other countries in the ‘Global South’ play a greater role and in which Russia also claims a place for itself. The late awakening of Europe in this new world is now taking its toll.
The obvious conclusion of all recent events is that the US no longer gives a security guarantee for their European allies – or what goes for it. Article 5 of the NATO Convention, which states that an armed attack on one or more NATO countries is considered an attack on all, was always susceptible to interpretation. But the certainty with which Hegseeth rejected the applicability of the article for any European troops in Ukraine, suggests a new phase.
Equally valid is the conclusion that the US think they need a lot of their energy for the coming confrontation with China. The war in Ukraine is an unwelcome distraction, which can best be outsourced to Europeans. Of course there were already signs that the alliance had become less close in recent years. But never before since the Second World War, Europe has been thrown back on its own so much. By placing the ax on the root of the international legal order, the alliance -based alliance is under greater pressure than ever.
Without Schadenfreude, French President Emmanuel Macron repeated the old French plea for more European strategic and economic autonomy on Friday. Europe has to increase the pace, he said rightly. In the past to frustrate the French the idea of a European fighter plane at the first raised eyebrow in Washington was exchanged for American true, now the US seems to encourage Europe to learn to cycle without side wheels. In order not to be written away from world history, European countries will therefore have to invest in European defense on a greater scale and in a European defense industry. They must not only be able to guarantee the survival of Ukraine as an independent state, but also make Europe itself less vulnerable in an unleashed world order.