February 18 2025 - 7:00am
The British and Europeans should be very grateful for the Russian refusal to accept the idea of a European “peacekeeping” force for Ukraine. It will save them from a choice between a new humiliation and actually having to live up to their reckless promises. And indeed, at the summit of European leaders assembled by President Macron on Tuesday, actual underlying European caution was much in evidence, as were the habitual deep divisions among the different parties.
Keir Starmer, having offered British troops for Ukraine, quickly rowed back on this by saying that the US would be necessary as a “backstop”. Since US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had already explicitly excluded such a guarantee, Starmer’s remark was as good as an admission that a British military role is very unlikely to happen.
Leaving the Paris meeting, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany said that a discussion of European troops for Ukraine is “completely premature” and “highly inappropriate” while the war is ongoing. Even Donald Tusk of Poland — one of Ukraine’s strongest backers — ruled out Polish troops on the ground. In fact, amid all the talk of the “urgent” need for Europeans to unite behind a strategy, the Paris meeting does not appear to have produced anything concrete at all. Nor indeed if they had agreed on a new commitment, could they have guaranteed that it would be honored even in the medium term; for the tectonic shift now underway in European politics is likely to produce governments — notably in France after the presidential elections of 2027 — that would have no intention of abiding by such a commitment.
The Russian government has already categorically rejected the idea of a European peacekeeping force as part of a peace agreement, for the obvious reason, that seen from Russia, it would be a Nato force in all but name. The only possible peacekeeping force will have to be a genuinely neutral UN one, drawn from the “Global South”.
There is an optimistic, a pessimistic, and a cynical way of looking at the proposals for a European security role in Ukraine. The optimistic way is to see this as a means of strengthening the Ukrainian position in peace talks, by setting out a position which can then be bargained away in return for Russian concessions. The pessimistic way is to see it as an attempt to wreck the peace talks altogether by setting a condition that Moscow will never accept.
Both of these motives could be present, with some Western European governments representing the former and the Poles and Baltic nations the latter. Perhaps even more important however is the belief that the EU, Nato and Britain must do, or rather say, something — anything — to show that they have an important role to play in the peace process.
This is the product of the incessant British and French desire to posture as great powers on the world stage, and of the desire of the European Commission — especially under its present leadership — to try to behave like the government of a European super-state. It also however reflects a profound concern that the US commitment to Europe is disappearing, and Europe must do something urgently to replace it.
This fear is exaggerated. The Trump administration is not proposing to leave Nato. At its most basic, Nato guarantees US control of Ramstein air base in Germany and Naples naval base in Italy, both of them critical to US power in the Middle East and support for Israel — which Trump has no intention of giving up. To quote Orwell’s 1984, Nato will still be “Airstrip One”. So the US will continue to guarantee the defense of Nato within its present borders. What Trump has killed is the idea of further Nato expansion, involving huge new security commitments and dangers.
Anatol Lieven is a former war correspondent and Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington DC.
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