Russia and America are going to have a peace summit about the Ukraine war without Ukraine or any European country. This is slightly less ridiculous than the previous peace summit which didn’t include Russia since Russia can fight on without anyone but China’s support, while if the US decides to stop supporting Ukraine, it’s cooked.
Well, sort of. Ukraine is cooked any way you look at it. It was always going to lose the war, and that hasn’t changed.
What’s amusing about the what’s being floated is that Europe is supposed to send the peacekeepers and pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine and the US is supposed to… well, maybe get some of Ukraine’s wealth, though Zelensky has quite rightly refused to sign that deal.
Interestingly Zelensky had, at first, expressed willingness, but when he got to the White House, it turned out that he was being offered nothing in return. It seems the Trumpian right feels that Ukraine has been taking advantage of America and owes it.
So, the US, which was the primary actor behind the Maidan coup and Ukraine’s actions since then which contributed to the war, who was almost certainly responsible for cutting Europe/Germany off from Nord Stream gas through sabotage, wants the Euros to foot the entire bill for ending the war.
Any European leader willing to chew down on this has less than zero self-respectt.
And the sheer chutzpah of saying that Ukraine has taken advantage of America reminds me of the guy V.P Cheney shot apologizing to him. None of this would have happened if the US hadn’t pushed for it every step of the way, and the US and UK were responsible for Ukraine not taking an early, far better peace deal.
The issue, of course, is that neither Europe nor Ukraine can sustain the war without American support. It’s lost, but the Euros could veto the deal if they could keep the war going alone and drag it out enough that it was worth Putin dealing with them.
There is another way, of course. Europe could offer Putin an end to sanctions and repair of NordStream. They could ask China to be the peace guarantor, which makes sense because China is, actually, the only country Russia has no choice but to listen to. They could cut a deal with China at the same time.
Then they could leave NATO and build their own militaries up. Kick out 90% of all American diplomats and all remaining post-USAID NGOs at the same time, to help avoid the inevitable coup attempts.
All this requires is either a modicum of self-respect or a scintilla of self-interest. When Europe’s power has disintegrated to the point where they don’t even have a seat at the table on how a war being fought on their soil should be ended, it’s either a wake-up call, or the end of Europe’s significance.
More realistically the best hope is that multiple European governments fall and are replaced by those who have enough pride or self-interest to strop grovelling.
Europe has no prospect of being what it once was. But it could be a regional great power. It’s that, or returning to what it was for much of history, a meaningless Eurasian peninsula full of barbarians.