This week was a wake-up call for the Europeans, particularly the hawks among them who for the last four years have followed wholeheartedly and without second thoughts the policies of the former US Biden administration on Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Assembling in Munich to participate in the 61st edition of the Munich Security Conference (14-16 February), Europe’s leaders were dismayed and surprised to hear of a telephone call that lasted for an hour and a half between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The call, a game changer in US-Russian relations as well as in transatlantic relations, took place on 12 February two days before the conference began.
The US was represented at the conference itself, an important annual international security gathering, by US Vice-President J D Vance, Secretary of State Mark Rubio, General Keith Kellogg, Special US Envoy to Ukraine, and Steve Witkoff, the US Envoy to the Middle East who has also been charged with coordinating with the Russians on the Ukrainian track.
This was a high-powered US delegation, whose message to the Europeans and the world at large was summed up by Vance before the conference when he said “there is a new sheriff in town” – an apt description for the second term in office of President Donald Trump. The latter is a completely new kind of “sheriff” and one who is not afraid of going it alone and breaking almost every tradition of US foreign policy under the catch-all slogan of “Making America Great Again.”
The new sheriff’s policies will see an end to the close coordination and cooperation between the US and both the Old Continent and NATO. Ukraine will be the first and most prominent example of this strategic decoupling that is taking place at the expense of Europe’s standing in the world, along with Ukraine, whose President led the Europeans on a destructive path during the four years of the Biden administration.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last weekend, Vance said that the Trump administration would aim to persuade Putin that Russia would achieve “more at the negotiating table than on the battlefield”. This is a sensible message that no European leader has had the moral or political courage to utter over the past three years.
“There are any number of formulations, of configurations, but we do care about Ukraine having sovereign independence,” Vance said. He assured the Ukrainians and the Europeans that “the president is not going to go in there with blinders on. Everything is on the table. Let’s make a deal” on Ukraine.
To the surprise of the Europeans, preliminary “peace” talks were announced between the US and Russia to take place in Saudi Arabia after the conclusion of the Munich Conference. The US will be represented by Rubio, Witkoff, Kellogg, and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. At the time of writing, Moscow has not announced officially who will represent Russia at the talks.
Trump said after his call with Putin that he could meet the Russian President in Saudi Arabia. As far as Europe and NATO are concerned, they will be conspicuous by their absence. It is not known why most European leaders, among them the former secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, and the President of the European Commission Ursula Von der Leyen, apparently did not factor in the probability of a change in the US strategy towards Ukraine, Russia, European defence, and transatlantic relations into the thinking.
The writing was on the wall last year even before Trump won the US presidential elections in November.
Kellogg said on 15 February at the Munich Conference that he did not think the Europeans would be at the table during the peace negotiations, but he added that he was talking to the European capitals to ensure their views were taken into account. This was probably meant as a diplomatic nicety and a kind of thank you note to Europe to say that from now on Washington would be in the driver’s seat in negotiating the terms of a peace deal that will end the war in Ukraine.
Referring to the possible terms of the peace that the Trump administration could be considering, US Secretary of Defence Tim Hegseth told a meeting of NATO defence ministers on 12 February that Ukrainian territorial integrity was an “illusory goal” and that there would be no NATO membership and no US support for Ukraine’s future defence against Russia.
The message of the “new sheriff” could not be clearer.
What is surprising is that the European voices who have been crying wolf for the last three years still have not grasped the message. For example, the Danish Defence Intelligence Service has recently estimated that Russia will be able to move against another of the country’s neighbours in as little as six months.
The only sensible position from the European side probably came from Sir Tony Radakin, Britain’s Chief of the Defence Staff, who was quoted in the UK Financial Times last week. Talking to a conference in London in January attended by UK MPs and government officials, he said that Russia would not attack NATO as it would not be able to stand up to the massive retaliation by NATO forces that would result.
The last two weeks have demonstrated how strategically marginalised Europe has now become on the world stage.
Maybe the Paris European summit (called an informal meeting) on 17 February (attended by France, Britain, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, the secretary-general of NATO, the president of the European Council, and the president of the European Commission), would revitalise the role that Europe could shoulder in bringing peace and security in Europe in light of the significant changes that the second term of President Trump has heralded since 12 February, capped by a crucial meeting between Sergei Lavrov of Russia and Secretary Rubio, a first since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine three years ago, and the important question marks concerning the future of Ukrainian-Russian relations in the long term, and its probable impact on European security as well as European-Russian relations.
The writer is former assistant foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 February, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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