Secretary of Marco Rubio said on Friday that “If it’s not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on.” Rubio told reporters that Trump could decide this “in a matter of days…” (NYTimes, 4/18/2025)
The context: Russia has made its conditions very clear. (1) Ukraine must not join NATO. (2) Ukraine must give up the four Russian territories and Crimea. 3) Ukraine must be demilitarized and not pose a military threat to Russia.
Although to this point, Trump has been unwilling or unable to do so, he must accept these nonnegotiable conditions and do it against the opposition of European leaders. Or conceivably, he could simply walk away.
British political analyst Alexander Mercouris reports that European leaders are meeting in Paris to, in their words, achieve a “fair and lasting peace in Ukraine,” and for them, this means a “Ukrainian victory.” Even as they voice this objective, reliable reports indicate that Russian recruitment is running at 1,000 per day, which is more than enough to replace lost soldiers. Ukrainian forces are steadily shrinking, and for the first time, external military analysts can foresee the fall of Kyiv as a real possibility. Russian forces are making significant gains and Ukrainians are retreating in several areas. Finally, there is no question that Europe lacks the resources to achieve anything in Ukraine.
Presumably, Steve Witkoff, who has proven to be a highly skilled negotiator, has explained to the Europeans that they are engaged in a dangerous fantasy and that peace will only occur by accepting the Russian demands (see above). However, the British, French, and Danish are considering sending troops to Ukraine via Romania. This will be absolutely unacceptable to Russia, but it will come as no surprise to them. The few thousand (probably French) soldiers entering Odessa will be annihilated, but the hope is that it will serve as a human trip wire to force the US to intervene. Here, one wonders how long French citizens would tolerate the war if coffins began returning home. (Note: Some of you may recall my earlier post about European and US intervention in 1921 in the Russian Civil War and how they were expelled. Russian citizens will be reminded once again of Western intentions.) Alternatively, Zelensky and the Europeans may try to drag the war along until 2028, when they hope another neocon Democrat will enter the White House.
Given the above, one is forced to wonder why European leaders are doing everything possible to undermine and sabotage any meaningful peace talks. Why are they pursuing a doomed policy that’s bankrupting their economies? Why alienate the US and Trump? I don’t have a definitive answer, but some possibilities include the following.
First, I suspect that European leaders have invested so much political capital in this venture that the truth would threaten their legitimacy. That is, as Fabian Schneider suggests, “Opposing peace becomes a helpful way of creating historical amnesia.” Second, if the EU maintains the fiction of a winnable war, Trump can be blamed for its failure when he withdraws US support. Third, if the Kremlin proves amenable to peace, this will undermine the narrative that Russia intends to invade all of Europe. This, in turn, makes it more difficult for EU leaders to win public support for “dismantling the welfare state in order to build a warfare state.” Finally, as Mercouris concludes, European leaders hate Russia and have come to loathe Donald Trump. They cannot accept that they’ve lost the war, and Trump was actually correct.
I’ll leave for another day to speculate about what this means for the Democrats and putative progressives (think AOC and Bernie Sanders) who gave left cover to US imperialism in its proxy war in Ukraine. In my opinion, they have much to answer for, beginning with hundreds of thousands of casualties, soldiers who were fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands.