When the US president – publicly – accuses Ukraine of starting the war against Russia and chooses to side with Russia, there is nothing Europe can do to save its relationship with the US.
Russia is a country that has invaded Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022 to take – by force – something that does not belong to Russia. Russia is killing thousands of innocent people in Ukraine in a war that Russia started. Russian state actors are attacking European digital infrastructure and are suspected of being behind attacks on physical infrastructure such as cables in the Baltic Sea. Russia is using migrants at the border between Belarus and Poland as a weapon in a hybrid warfare against European countries, for example.
And the American response to Russia’s aggression in Europe is that the Trump administration will now resume diplomatic relations with Russia, open up to removing sanctions against Russia, and initiate economic cooperation with Russia.
At the same time, the US is demanding that Ukraine hand over minerals and rare earths to the US for a three-digit billion dollar amount. And then also inform the Europeans and Ukrainians that they cannot participate in negotiations on Ukraine’s future. Add to that the US expects Europe to foot the bill and the practical implementation of a possible peace agreement.
The US is not behaving like a country that is a partner with Europe. The US is behaving like a dominant player who believes that the US is in a position of power from which the US can dictate what Europe should and should not do. But the US no longer has that power.
At the same time, it is difficult to understand that the United States – with its enormous and capable foreign service – could end up in a situation that in practice means that the United States is flushing 80 years of transatlantic security cooperation out with the bathwater. Because there are – for anyone willing to see and listen – two very central reasons why Europe will no longer follow the United States:
- •The premise of a partnership is that it is a mutual relationship. It is not a partnership when one party refuses to listen and instead simply dictates the terms. It is not Europe that is turning its back on the United States. It is the United States that has turned its back on Europe.
- •Europeans cannot – as before – wait for the transatlantic relationship to improve. There is war on the European continent. A brutal war. And several EU countries are in a direct hybrid conflict with Russia.
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when the United States then sits down at a negotiating table with the country that is the enemy of the Europeans and talks with Russia about resuming diplomatic relations, removing sanctions that will make it easier for Russia to arm itself and thus threaten Europe, and generally establishing economic cooperation between Russia and the United States, then the United States is no longer a guarantor of Europe’s security.
On the contrary, through actions that strengthen Russia, the United States could become an actor that weakens European security. And thus Washington is no longer the most important security capital in Europe.
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The Europeans are already figuring out how to move forward. Meanwhile, the United States does not seem to have realized that Washington is no longer the most important security capital in Europe. They will probably only realize this when their negotiations with Russia are concluded and they discover that neither Ukraine nor Europe intends to implement whatever the United States and Russia might agree on.
