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In the Four Quartets TS Eliot wrote “humankind cannot bear very much reality”.
At moments in history like these, when there is simply too much head-spinning change and too many postwar assumptions being ripped from their moorings, it sometimes appears too much for any human to absorb, let alone offer a response.
In particular in the weeks between JD Vance’s speech to the Munich security conference to the moment when Donald Trump cut off all US military aid to Ukraine, a concept is being tested – and possibly to destruction: that the US president remains open to European persuasion.
For many, the consequences of viewing Trump as more allied with Russia than Europe has simply been too momentous to contemplate. The belief in a close relationship between western Europe and the US that has dominated government policy in, for instance, Berlin, Helsinki, London and Rome is being put under intolerable strain.
The pressure is especially acute for Keir Starmer, much lauded for the calmness with which he has tried to retain focus on the essential objective of keeping the US in alliance with Europe over the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.
The task is so difficult because the British military, political, intelligence and foreign policy establishment has made practical support for Ukraine a centrepiece of its Russian policy for over a decade. Now Britain’s greatest ally seems set on the destruction of that decade’s work. For the Foreign Office this is not just disorientating, but akin to suddenly living in a world without maps.
When Starmer was asked on Monday afternoon by the Scottish National party MP Stephen Flynn about reports that Trump was about to withdraw aid from Ukraine, the British prime minister replied he had not seen those reports, assuring “that is not their position”.
Not many hours later, Trump’s supposed confidant in Europe was on the phone to the US president – and Downing Street will not say whether he informed Starmer of his plan even then. Moreover, reports started appearing that the US was about to lift some sanctions on Russia, a step that would lift the siege on the Russian economy so painfully constructed over the past three years.
Trump’s steps are an undeniable reverse for Starmer, for the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and for all those cast in the role of “Trump whisperer” or bridge between Europe and Washington. But even now they insist there is no alternative but to remain engaged, and to urge Trump to understand his hectic timetable to a ceasefire benefits only Russia.
Yet late last week it appeared as if advocates of engagement were winning, since the Starmer trip to Washington had gone as well as possible. The theatrical production of an envelope containing an invitation from King Charles to a state visit and the promise to raise defence spending by 2027 was met with the suggestion of a free trade deal that would probably put the UK in a better position than the EU. The holy grail – known as the benefit of Brexit – had finally been found.
But like Emmanuel Macron, who had travelled to Washington two days before, the unhappy truth was that Trump had evaded Starmer’s central request to provide a US military backstop to a European force operating inside Ukraine after a ceasefire. The only security guarantee that was needed, Trump insisted, was the guarantee that the US would have an economic stake in the future of Ukraine’s rare earth and energy resources.
No amount of summit optics could avoid Trump’s refusal to commit US military assets. Nor was it possible to overlook that US diplomats on the day of Macron’s visit twice voted with Russia at the UN, both at the general assembly and the security council.
As Bronwen Maddox, the Chatham House director, pointed out: this was the first time the US had voted against Europe on a matter of European security since 1945.
The abuse administered to Volodymyr Zelenskyy two days after Starmer’s visit – although a diplomatic disaster best avoided – was merely a confirmation that Trump will let nothing and no one stand in the way of his strategic aim of restoring relations with Vladimir Putin.
The abandonment of Ukraine, fuelled by Trump’s personal animosity to Zelenskyy and the cost of the war to the US, has become a means to the greater end, a new relationship with Russia.
It is here – according to the interpretation of Russia – that tensions with Europe are at breaking point. Where Trump draws on his personal relations with Putin to insist Russia will abide by a ceasefire, Europe instead looks at Russia’s practice of breaking agreements, the point Zelenskyy sought to make in the Oval Office with disastrous effect.
Where Trump sees a convivial leader an ocean away, Europe sees a tyrant on its borders. Where Trump sees peace, Europe sees subjugation. These are not perceptions that Starmer can square.
Take Finland, a new member of the Nato alliance that is sharing a border with Russia. Speaking at Chatham House on Tuesday, its foreign minister, Elina Valtonen, laid out with calm precision that for all Finland’s Atlanticist instincts, it could not accept a peace that meant submission.
“There can be no sustainable peace in Ukraine without a strong and sovereign Ukraine,” she said.
“This is not just the political reality, it is a moral imperative. Rushing to a deal at the cost of its content, and without due consideration of the consequences, would endanger not only Ukraine, but also Europe – and, by extension, the United States for generations to come.
“We Finns know Russia. Russia shares a land border with 14 countries. Only one of them has constantly remained an independent democracy through the second world war and the cold war, and that’s Finland.
“History has taught us that Russia respects only strength and resolve. Russia’s current war is based on imperialistic ambitions that go beyond Ukraine. The Kremlin’s appetite does not diminish when fed, it only grows.
“Take it from us. Whatever happens in this war, Russia will remain a long-term strategic threat to Euro Atlantic security, rather than encouraged.”
Valtonen said there was a need to be open for re-engagement in the future, if Russia starts to adhere to international law again. “But going forward, it would be a mistake to let go about deterrence or rebuild strategic dependency on Russia, and this goes for all of Europe.”
She warned: “One of our foremost diplomats and later president, [Juho Kusti] Paasikivi, was on several occasions on the other side of the table from Stalin and Molotov when our existence as an independent country was on the line in the 1930s and 1940s.
“He summed it up well: ‘The constant policy of the Russians is to get what they can with as little as possible and then come back asking for more … they never sacrifice their immediate interests for future objectives … they are immune to any ethical, human or abstract legal factors.’
“This is the Finnish experience. The Ukrainians know from their own experience that Russia has broken every single commitment they have ever made on Ukraine’s sovereignty. No agreement with Moscow can stand without the will and the means to enforce it.”
But despite this clear-eyed assessment of Russia, shared by the Baltic nations, Valtonen, like Starmer and indeed many European politicians, is still reluctant to criticise Trump in public.
Valtonen admits this is because Europe may not yet have the strength to act alone. “We need the Americans. We need the Americans militarily, but especially also to keep up the sanctions pressure, because the worst thing that could happen now is that the US says ‘let’s get off the sanctions’ and starts engaging with Russia economically, because that would be exactly the wrong cause of action now,” she said.
Diplomats admit that the speed with which Trump is moving in comparison with deliberative Europe is a problem.
Quite how a coalition of the willing – led by one leader long committed to Europe’s autonomy and another committed to the primacy of the Atlantic alliance - can develop is unclear.
The addition to the coalition leadership of an incoming German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, means the trajectory is moving slowly towards a European preparedness to try to help Ukraine survive without the US. Germany has a leading role in providing air defence systems to Ukraine and Merz’s remarks so far suggest he wants to take a more robust stance than his SDP predecessor, Olaf Scholz.
If so it is possible the advocates of engagement with Trump are losing the internal arguments as the decisions and insults pile up. Some of this is human emotion and the hand of history.
The New Zealand high commissioner, Phil Goff, recalls Winston Churchill famously denouncing Neville Chamberlain, saying: “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.” Goff then added: “Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office, but do you think he really understands history?”
Or take the anger of the Lithuanian politician Vytautas Landsbergis at the treatment of Zelenskyy: “They called the guest in, beat him up, spat on him, and threw him out the door.” What would he have done? “I would have listened silently to everything they said and said one word at the end: liars.”
But it is also the accumulation of decisions being taken by Trump towards Russia, including the end of cyber operations against Russia, and other steps to make the lives of Russian oligarchs easier. It has led both London and Paris to conclude it is now very unlikely the US will provide a military backstop.
Starmer and Europe then have to decide if they have the resources to help save Ukraine without US help. Much of what the EU will discuss at its summit on Thursday will help with Europe’s defence in four year’s time, but what matters is what help can be provided to Ukraine in four months when US supplies and spares run out.
The threat to seize Russian state bank assets either now or if Russia breaches the terms of a ceasefire remains one of the few cards Europe can play without Trump, and by offering a ceasefire himself, Zelenskyy has also tried to kill the Trump claim that he wants endless war. But Starmer’s hope that Trump if not reliable was biddable seems to be dying.
