Thread by @ThreshedThought

Europe and Ukraine: What now?

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The US has effectively said that it is scaling back its appetite to be the security guarantor in Europe - a role it has played for the almost exactly 80 years since the end of World War 2.

They also have said that they will be bringing and end to the Ukraine war through direct US-Russian negotiations, and that the US will be uninvolved with any of the security guarantees afterwards - Europe is on its own.

Now, we can argue the nuance of what they have said (and you will be able to watch European politicians clinging to straws of hope over the coming days and weeks) …

… but the basic message (which is often the main thing in geopolitics), is that America is disengaging from European Security.

There are a few things that immediately fall out of the American announcement.

This week I am in Finland, Estonia and Munich for the Security Conference - so I will weave in some of the insights I am hearing here from Ministers and senior politicians.

Let’s try and unpack the American announcement.

Firstly, my assumption is that the ‘deal’ on Ukraine will be one that Ukraine (and therefore Europe) will not be able to accept.

This is partly based on watching Trump negotiate ‘deals’ previously. He is much more interested in grandstanding his ego, than he is in driving a hard bargain.

Exhibit A is the deal that Trump negotiated over Afghanistan during his first term.

He is taking exactly the same approach here

Part 1: Deal directly with the enemy cutting out your allies (Trump dealt directly with the Taliban excluding the Afghan government and NATO allies).

Part 2: Be so keen to get the hell out of dodge that you will accept almost any terms (like withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan with nothing in return, in fact going even further and forcing the Afghan government to release 5000 Taliban prisoners from its prisons).

Part 3: Claim ‘peace in our time’, but set the date for any major changes to be after the end of Trump’s term.

The MAGA base (who is his main target audience) doesn’t have a clue about what the deal actually is and lauds Trump for being a peacemaker/bring US troops home etc.

So I would imagine in Ukraine, the US is going to freeze the conflict where it is, and probably force Ukraine to give up the Russian territory that it holds in Kursk.

He will then suggest some sort of peacekeeping force made up of European troops (but not backed by any NATO security guarantee).

This is a very bad peace for two main reasons.

First reason: tying up, say, 150k European troops in Ukraine, means that Russia can release several hundred thousand troops BATTLE-TESTED troops from Ukraine to threaten other frontline states (Finland, Estonia, Latvia).

And putting them there without NATO (i.e. US) security guarantees creates a two tier NATO.

What if Russia attacks (for example) Estonia troops in Ukraine versus Estonian troops in Estonia? One triggers NATO article 5 and the other doesn’t?

I can rapidly see scenarios that Russian would engineer that would encourage the US not to respond to either provocation…

…and this effectively means that NATO is dead.

I mean the 1949 NATO Treaty might still be in existence, but de facto NATO is effectively dead.

All ministers and senior politicians in Finland and Estonia are well alive to the trap that deploying European troops to Ukraine represents.

It wouldn’t make sense for Finland, say, to deploy troops to Ukraine, when they are better used at home.

And as alliance unity is our greatest strength, alliance disunity becomes our greatest weakness.

Over the next few days, and through the Munich Security Conference I will be updating here as the situation unfolds and as we get more details of what the strategic landscape looks like.

But make no mistake. We are in a new world now.

European countries need to work together and build a mutual security alliance that is NATO, but without the US.

This will require a lead nation - which can only be Britain or France (and is more likely to be the former).

And for Britain to take that role, we will - defacto, whatever the government says now:

- Become a solely Euro-Atlantic power and drop almost all of our other global commitments (anyone got any idea why our carrier group is shortly to leave to go over to the Pacific?)
- Be massively increasing defence spending probably up to and beyond 3% of GDP.

That’s all for now, and I’ll update when I get to Munich.