President-elect Donald Trump with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy at Mar-a-Lago, Florida on Saturday Jan. 4, 2024
ESTRAGON: Don’t touch me! Don’t question me! Don’t speak to me! Stay with me!
VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you?
ESTRAGON: You let me go.
— Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett
One great transformation of the Ukraine war in the past year since the current Russian offensive began is its transition to an absurdist fiction devolving upon the existential insecurity of Europeans, their fear of being abandoned by Donald Trump and yet their desire to be left alone.
Overall, the above quote highlights the fluid and complex nature of European memory — forgetful and inconsistent memory — and how it can shape its perception of the war and its experiences within it.
The Biden Administration has not given up on Ukraine war. A meeting of the Ramstein Format Meeting is scheduled to take place in Germany on Thursday, chaired by the outgoing US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, to address Ukraine’s defence needs, which the Ukrainian President Zelensky will address.
Meanwhile, Kiev typically launched an attack in the Kursk region on the eve of the Ramstein Format event. The operation, although played up in the British press, is spearheaded by just 2 tanks and fifteen armoured carriers and will no doubt be crushed by the Russian drones and its highly lethal Ka high-performance combat helicopters with day and night capability, high survivability and fire power.
Typically, Zelensky won’t neglect any occasion for grandstanding before Western audience. He hopes to display on Thursday that there is still some spunk left in Ukraine’s armed forces. Tragically, he is sacrificing a few dozen Ukrainian soldiers in this melodrama which may distract some attention from the frontline, as Russian forces have entered Chasiv Yar and reached the suburbs of Pokrovsk in an operation to surround that city.
With the fall of Chasiv Yar and Pokorovsk, the Battle of Donbass is nearing home stretch and sets the stage for a massive Russian push westward to the Dnieper if the Kremlin is left with no other option but to end the war on its terms. (See a recent article on the future map of Ukraine by the top Moscow strategic analyst Dmitry Trenin titled What Ukraine should look like after Russia’s victory.)
Indeed, the hopes of Donald Trump bringing the war to an end on the first day of his presidency on January 20 have withered away. The Ramstein meeting is a defiant act by Zelensky, Biden and their European associates, as Trump is set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin soon.
On December 18, Zelensky met with NATO chief Mark Rutte and huddled with several European leaders in Brussels to discuss war strategy. His European interlocutors are seeking to develop their own plans if Trump, who has pledged to bring a swift end to the war, pulls the plug on the Kiev regime or forces it to make concessions.
The key topic of the Brussels meeting was security guarantees, Zelensky’s office said. Zelensky highlighted his “detailed one-on-one discussion” with French President Emmanuel Macron that focused on priorities to further strengthen Ukraine’s position “regarding the presence of forces in Ukraine that could contribute to stabilising the path to peace.”
But prior to the Brussels meeting, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters that while the priority was to secure the “sovereignty of Ukraine and that it will not be forced to submit to a dictated peace,” any discussion of boots on the ground would be premature.
Rutte himself counselled that Kiev’s allies should focus on ramping up arms supplies to ensure Ukraine is in a position of strength. Rutte estimated that Ukraine needs 19 additional air-defence systems.
Interestingly, Rutte announced that the proposed new NATO command in the German city of Wiesbaden is now “up and running”, which will henceforth coordinate Western military aid for Ukraine as well as provide training for Ukraine’s military. Trump is unlikely to preserve the Ramstein Format.
Simply put, Europe, including the U.K., lack the capacity to replace the US military assistance to Ukraine. For the EU to replace the US, it would need to double its military aid to Ukraine. But the current political situation in Europe, along with the real military capabilities of individual European countries, makes this an impossible objective. (See an analysis, here, by Samantha de Bendern at the Chatham House.)
Germany, Europe’s largest military donor to Ukraine, has plunged into political chaos with the collapse of the Scholz-led coalition. Macron, a staunch defender of Ukraine, has lost control over France’s domestic politics. Elsewhere in Europe, political parties on the far right and far left, with pro-Russian sympathies, are rising.
Europeans are running around like headless chicken. The surprise visit of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to Florida to meet Trump and watch a movie with him at this critical juncture of the Ukraine war shows that the smart lady has no confidence in the likes of Macron.
Meloni has a warm equation with Trump’s close aide Elon Musk, the enfant terrible for European liberals. “This is very exciting. I’m here with a fantastic woman, the prime minister of Italy,” Trump told the Mar-a-Lago crowd, and added expansively, “She’s really taken Europe by storm.”
Italy, an important NATO power that overlooks the Mediterranean is a vociferous supporter of trans-atlanticism, and pursues a nuanced policy on the Ukraine war that may be of use to Trump to build bridges with Europe. Meloni is positioning herself.
Italy resolutely condemned the Russian annexation of Crimea and Moscow’s subsequent involvement in Eastern Ukraine and joined the EU sanctions against Russia. It demonstrated its military support for Ukraine with significant military aid packages within the framework of an agreement on security cooperation (under previous government headed by Prime Minister Mario Draghi). That said, Rome has often sought to balance EU responses with its national interests towards Russia.
Thus, Meloni’s foreign minister reaffirmed recently, even as Biden authorised Ukraine to deploy long-range American missiles against military targets inside Russia, “Our position on Ukraine’s use of (Italian) weapons has not changed. They can only be used within Ukrainian territory.”
In the final analysis, it is the course of the war that will decide the terms of peace in Ukraine. However, the crux of the matter is that the main peace deal that everyone is counting on Trump to deliver may not even be the hard part, ie., assuming that an architecture of European security can be built on the pillars that President Vladimir Putin presented in his policy speech at the Russian foreign ministry last June, which is of course a big assumption in itself. Consider the following.
Clearly, Trump does not subscribe to Rumsfeld’s Pottery Barn Rule — “You break it, you own it.” He has no intentions of paying for the reconstruction of Ukraine. And his red line is the deployment of American troops. Which means an enormous responsibility will be falling on the European shoulders. Now, is Europe ready to bear this huge burden financially, militarily and politically?
Through debt, taxes, or cuts in social services? The trade-off between spending for Ukraine or social spending at home is a highly sensitive issue in European politics. Europe’s swing toward right-wing governments — Austria is the latest example — may only aggravate the issue.
On the other hand, would Putin agree to Europeans plundering the $300 billion honeypot of Russian reserve assets for military help and reconstruction of Ukraine? Not a chance! Then, there is the sanctions issue. Certainly, Putin will demand the lifting of western sanctions. Indeed, how could there be a peace deal that Russia can agree to without the full lifting of all sanctions and the unfreezing of the assets? Finally, who ensures peacekeeping on the redrawn borders of Ukraine with Russia? Moscow will of course insist on having a say in the matter.
A deal to freeze the conflict around current battle lines would be the best outcome for Ukraine as well as Europeans. But Moscow is digging in with a firm “Nyet”, given the long history of Western betrayals.
The paradox is, the wheel has come full circle for Europeans. Trump, who sends shivers down the spine of Europe’s politicians also happens to be up their only saviour. Like in the Samuel Beckett play, they are desperately waiting for Trump to arrive.