It should always have been obvious that by making an enemy of post-Soviet Russia, the European Union and Britain were ensuring their dependence on the United States, and making themselves unable to resist even its most illegal and immoral actions – as demonstrated by their approach to Israel’s war on Gaza and the US attacks on Iran and Venezuela.

 

By half-promising to send troops to Ukraine – but only with guaranteed US support – European governments are making their dependence on the US total. The price of that may now be coming, in a US seizure of Greenland that the Europeans cannot significantly oppose; for to do so would require threatening to inflict real pain on the US, in the form of the closure of US bases in Europe and an economic embargo against Israel that would force the US massively to support the Israeli economy. But of course the Europeans cannot do that, if they are determined to commit themselves to Ukraine. So to defend a country that is not a member of NATO or the EU, the EU and NATO would have to accept the seizure of the territory of an actual NATO member, Denmark. If this happens, it will be a humiliation that will make us the laughing stock of the world. The blow to European pride, prestige and self-confidence will be unfathomable. The image of the EU as a defender of the “rules-based order” has long been shredded in the eyes of the world. The loss of Greenland would shred it in the eyes of Europeans themselves.

 

Here is a longer version of my article on the Paris talks and their implications for Greenland

https://unherd.com/newsroom/europes-security-guarantees-for-ukraine-ring-hollow/

 

Text Below:

Europe and Ukraine: Coalition of the Ambiguous or Lunatic Asylum?

 

Anatol Lieven

 

The joint statement by the European “Coalition of the Willing” for Ukraine after Tuesday’s meeting in Paris on peace terms for Ukraine contains some critical ambiguities. These are presumably intended to make the future Western military commitments to Ukraine strong enough to reassure Kyiv and allow Zelensky to claim victory, but weak enough to avoid both a commitment by the US to go to war with Russia in defence of Ukraine (which Trump is very unlikely to give), and an unambiguous commitment by the Europeans actually to place significant armed forces in Ukraine.

 

Even without such a commitment however, present British and European strategy towards Ukraine is running some enormous risks – in the longer run, of war with Russia, but most immediately when it comes to any ability to deter a US seizure of Greenland.

 

Most significantly, this statement was only by the leaders of the Coalition. US envoy Steve Witkoff spoke of “great progress” in Paris, but also of the need for “certain compromises” on security guarantees.

 

The key passage in the statement reads as follows:

 

“A Multinational Force for Ukraine made up from contributions from willing nations within the framework of the Coalition, to support the rebuilding of Ukraine’s armed forces and support deterrence. Coordinated military planning has been conducted to prepare for reassurance measures in the air, at sea and on land and for the regeneration of the armed forces of Ukraine…These elements will be European-led, with the involvement also of non-European members of the Coalition, and the proposed support [my emphasis] of the US.”

 

Note that this only talks of “proposed” US support, and of “reassurance measures” without saying exactly what – and even more importantly where – they will be. This is significantly vaguer than the European draft statement leaked to AFP before the meeting. It allowed German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for example to make the following deeply comical “commitment”: “Germany will keep contributing politically, financially and militarily. This could for example include deploying forces to Ukraine on neighboring NATO territory after a ceasefire.” If you think that “deploying forces to Ukraine on neighboring NATO territory” is transparent doublespeak, I would have to agree with you.

 

Keir Starmer appeared to go much further, stating that the joint declaration

 

“paves the way for the legal framework under which British, French and partner forces could operate on Ukrainian soil…following a ceasefire, the UK and France will establish “military hubs” across Ukraine and build protected facilities for weapons and military equipment.”

 

This could however mean only NATO weapons dumps guarded by small numbers of NATO troops, rather than substantial ground forces that Britain and France cannot in fact provide without dedicating their entire armies to the effort. If so, it is just conceivable that Moscow could agree; but Russia would demand precisely the sort of concrete, formal and detailed limits on these forces that the “Coalition of the Willing” so far appears determined not to provide.

 

The Europeans clearly think that even the limited US endorsement they received in Paris represents a significant success for them. It may however turn out to be a very Pyrrhic victory, and not only because Russia is likely to reject any such peace framework, and to continue the war. It is also because US support for the “Coalition of the Willing” will come at a price, and the name of that price could be Greenland.

 

In a joint statement on the sidelines of the Paris talks in response to US threats, six European leaders declared that “Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.” Within hours however the White House stated that,

 

“[A]cquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal.”

 

Danish premier Mette Frederiksen said on Monday that if the US took Greenland by force, NATO itself would collapse. In these circumstances, it seems truly weird for European countries to be asking for US guarantees for European troops in Ukraine, that would be totally dependent on US support.

 

For if dependence on the US over Ukraine forces the Europeans to acquiesce in a US seizure of the territory of a European NATO member, the humiliation would be so deep that the very idea of Europe as a significant factor in world affairs would vanish. If they resist, NATO will indeed collapse, and Ukraine would be doomed. We who have lived through the past generation can understand how European governments have ended in this grotesque position. Future generations may see it as evidence of collective insanity.

 

 

The following passages from the British Parliamentary debates on Ukraine on 7th and 11 January can be read as a kind of appendix to the debate between Critic and myself posted on 10th January. They reveal very clearly the lens through which official Britain sees the world.

As the European leaders push for the Ukraine war to continue, they increasingly warn of an all-out war with Russia by the end of the decade, if not sooner.

 

In 2018, historians Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano wrote a book titled The Russians Are Coming, Again. The title was a play on the popular 1966 anti-Cold War movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. If one listens to Europe’s leaders today, it quickly becomes clear the Russians are definitely coming again. Nearly four years into the Ukraine war and a year into the Trump Presidency, the conflict continues to take thousands of lives and decimate Ukraine. But unlike during the Biden era, it is the European leaders now that drive the push not only for this war to persist, but for a direct war with Russia by the end of the decade, if not sooner.

As it has become increasingly evident that Ukraine’s battlefield position is steadily if incrementally worsening at the same time that its corruption scandal is dragging down President Zelensky and those around him, including the once-powerful Andrey Yermak, European political, military, and intelligence leaders have been discussing openly the imminence of war with Russia in an increasingly desperate, voluble, and shrill manner. The more Zelensky’s position weakens and the worse Ukraine’s battlefield prospects become, the more Zelensky and his European backers seem to dig in their heels, resisting concessions that would end the war, including territorial changes that Putin demands after nearly four years of fighting, limits to the size of Ukraine’s army, and a formula for security guarantees that does not include NATO membership for Ukraine nor troops from NATO countries. 

The Trump Administration’s newly released National Security Strategy (NSS) chastised the Europeans for being delusional regarding their “unrealistic expectations” when it comes to settling the nearly four-year-old war. But that hasn’t deterred them from seeking a peace plan that, unlike the original 28-point plan, promulgated by Stephen Witkoff and Jared Kushner after speaking with both Russians and Ukrainians, ignores Russia’s red lines in its Ukraine-friendly 20-point alternative. The NSS was so contemptuous of Europe, warning it faced “civilizational erasure” and political irrelevance, that European leaders attempted to prove their importance and resolve by rallying even more strongly around the Ukrainian cause. Recognizing that they could no longer count on the same level of U.S. military support that they had since the Cold War ended, the Europeans endeavored to find a way to rebuild their own defenses while assisting Ukraine. That promise amounts to keeping Ukraine in the fight at any financial or human cost, while frightening the European publics into ponying up whatever money is needed for rearmament. To justify cuts to the social programs that had enriched European life in recent decades, the leaders took a page from the old Cold War playbook, using the threat of Russian military aggression ⎯ a threat made credible by the Russian invasion of Ukraine ⎯ to convince peace-loving Europeans that the danger was palpable and the situation urgent.  

The persistent justification for continued war is the logic-defying claim that a Russian “victory” in Ukraine will bring bloodthirsty Russian hordes to Europe’s capitals. As Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General said on December 11, Europe is Russia’s next target and the war could begin by 2029. “Conflict is at our door,” he warned and Europeans need to prepare for a war reminiscent of World Wars I and II, “for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured… a conflict reaching every home, every workplace, destruction, mass mobilization, millions displaced, widespread suffering and extreme losses.” 

From Blaise Metreweli, the new head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency who highlighted the “expansionist and revisionist Russia,” to France’s highest military official General Fabien Mandon who warned “of a major high-intensity war outside national territory in Europe, which would involve France and its allies, particularly European allies, by 2030,” to Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius’s demands that Germany become “war-ready” instead of “defense-ready” as early as 2028, the echoes of Rutte’s warnings have been loud, clear, and far too dangerous. Mandon went so far as to warn French governors that they had to be ready “to accept losing [our] children” in the coming war. Italian Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, NATO’s top military official as chair of NATO’s Military Committee, has even stated that “preemptive strikes could be considered defensive actions.” 

These pervasive threats have led the Wall Street Journal to report on December 15, “European security officials now regularly broadcast a message nearly unimaginable a decade ago: Get ready for conflict with Russia. Rarely a week goes by now without a European government, military or security chief making a grim speech warning the public that they are headed toward a potential war with Russia. It is a profound psychological shift for a continent that has rebuilt itself after two world wars by trumpeting a message of harmony and joint economic prosperity.” 

Europe’s elected officials have not been left far behind in fueling the war fever sweeping the continent. German Chancellor Fredrich Merz has compared Putin’s war in Ukraine to Adolf Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia’s German-speaking Sudetenland in 1938, and the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has warned that “Putin’s aggression does not stop in Ukraine.” France’s Macron has also maintained that Russia has no intention of stopping in Ukraine. Russian aggression “knows no borders,” he warned in March in a nationally televised speech. He asked, “Who can believe today that Russia would stop at Ukraine?” 

It is striking that the three hawkish heads of state who form the backbone of the “coalition of the willing” and who are leading their citizens down the primrose path are deeply unpopular at home. While the numbers fluctuate, upon last reading, Macron’s approval rating was between 11 and 15 percent; Starmer’s at 19 percent; and Merz’s at 25 percent. Still, recent polling suggests that the scaremongering is having the intended effect. A poll released on December 4 showed that a slight majority of citizens in nine European countries believe that there is a “high” or “very high” risk of war with Russia, including 77 percent of Poles, 59 percent of Belgians and Dutch, and half of Germans, French, and Spanish. Only 34 percent of Italians agreed. Still, only a third of EU citizens told a Gallup poll in March 2024 that they would be willing to fight to defend their country, a number that bottomed out at 14 percent in Italy and stood at 23 percent in Germany.

European leaders’ resolve was never more apparent than at the recent meetings in Berlin where the “coalition of the willing” came up with a menu of ways the Europeans could provide security guarantees for Ukraine, ranging from boots on the ground to financial aid to intelligence support. There, the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared, “Now we have a simple choice — either money today or blood tomorrow. And I am not talking about Ukraine only, I am talking about Europe.” “All European leaders have to finally rise to this occasion.”

Well Donald Tusk need not worry. All European leaders, with a couple of glaring exceptions, have risen to the occasion and are broadcasting the idea that Putin’s Russia is a mortal threat to Europe. They, along with their allies in the military, intelligence community, “defense” sector, and media have convinced more than half of Europe that Russia was knocking at the door, ready to invade. While the thought that a Russia that had taken four years and hundreds of thousands of casualties to conquer 20 percent of Ukraine would want to take on NATO—with or without U.S. nuclear backing—is a dangerous form of scaremongering and preposterous to many, intelligent people keep repeating this idea. 

Among those who think it absurd and has repeatedly said so is Vladimir Putin himself. President Putin dismissed such charges as “hysteria” by Europeans who had been “indoctrinated with fears about an inevitable clash with Russia.” “I have repeatedly stated: this is a lie, nonsense, pure nonsense about some imaginary Russian threat to European countries. But this is being done quite deliberately,” he said. Russian leaders have even offered to put this in writing.

And yet, the mainstream media keep sticking to the script. A December 19 Reuters article stated that, “U.S. intelligence reports continue to warn that Russian President Vladimir Putin has not abandoned his aims of capturing all of Ukraine and reclaiming parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire, six sources familiar with U.S. intelligence said, even as negotiators seek an end to the war that would leave Russia with far less territory.” 

US Director of Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, responded angrily to a post by one of the Reuters authors, reaffirming this conclusion. She wrote, “No, this is a lie and propaganda @Reuters is willingly pushing on behalf of warmongers who want to undermine President Trump’s tireless efforts to end this bloody war that has resulted in more than a million casualties on both sides. Dangerously, you are… fomenting hysteria and fear among the people to get them to support the escalation of war, which is what NATO and the EU really want in order to pull the United States military directly into war with Russia. The truth is the US intelligence community has briefed policymakers, including the Democrat HPSCI member quoted by Reuters, that US Intelligence assesses that Russia seeks to avoid a larger war with NATO. It also assesses that, as the last few years have shown, Russia’s battlefield performance indicates it does not currently have the capability to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine, let alone Europe.”

It seems that according to the US intelligence chief, the Russians are NOT coming. Whether or not this assessment will reach the European halls of power remains to be seen. 

 

Peter Kuznick is Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University.

Ivana Nikolić Hughes is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Chemistry at Columbia University.

 

Goethe once noted: “There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”

Spheres of influence stem from the very nature of states and international relations. States will always seek to secure their interests by exerting influence over their neighbors, and the more powerful the state, the greater the influence that it will seek.

“War is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading,” Pope Leo XIV said in a forceful address on Jan. 9 to ambassadors from the 184 countries that have full diplomatic relations with the Holy See. “The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined.”

Ukraine has lost an entire generation in the four-year war with Russia and, if the conflict continues for another two years, it will lose another one.

Cora, my friend and frequent collaborator, died in December at age 91. She was a champion of the United Nations and its mission to advance peace and women’s rights—and along with her husband, Peter, a brilliant international lawyer, she never stopped organizing to save the world from nuclear destruction. Unfortunately, in the last months of her life, that organizing became more necessary than ever.

The United States did not deny Cuban statehood during the Cuban Missile Crisis; it insisted that Cuba could not host Soviet nuclear missiles. Nor does Washington’s current pressure on Venezuela imply a desire to abolish Venezuelan sovereignty. These are examples of coercive security politics.

The National Security Archive at George Washington University published newly declassified verbatim transcripts of three conversations between Presidents George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin and their top national security advisers in 2001, 2005, and 2008. The transcripts contain a number of surprises and have significant historical implications…

The Ukraine war has, since its outset, been fertile ground for a particular kind of intellectual axe grinding, with establishment actors rushing to launder their abysmal policy record by projecting its many failures and conceits onto others.

The go-to method for this sleight of hand, as exhibited by its most adept practitioners, is to flail away at a set of ideas clumsily bundled together under the banner of “realism.”

When the Trump administration ordered special‑operations forces to seize Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife on January 3, 2026, electricity failed across Caracas and airfields filled with U.S. aircraft. The Venezuelan leader was spirited to New York to face an indictment on drug charges while President Trump pledged that the United States would “run” Venezuela until a safe transition could be arranged. He offered “boots on the ground” if necessary and invoked the Monroe Doctrine to justify an operation condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Within hours, social media feeds filled with profile pictures draped in the Stars and Stripes and statements like “FAFO.” The mission’s execution and talk of “restoring democracy” tapped a familiar chord in the American psyche. The reactions to this raid highlight an ugly truth about the United States: Americans love war. They do not like higher taxes, a debased currency, or flag‑draped coffins, but they love war. And our short memory ensures we will learn nothing from the disasters we have created.

At Yalta in 1945, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt had no doubts about the role their great powers would play in pacifying and stabilizing the postwar international order: the victorious allies that had won the war would collaborate to preserve peace, if necessary, by the combined deployment of their enormous military power.

As negotiations accelerate toward a compromise settlement to end the Ukraine war, the voices of the Ukrainians living through the daily horrors have in many ways been suppressed by unending maximalist rhetoric from those far from the frontlines.

Nicolai N. Petro is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island, and formerly the US State Department’s special assistant for policy on the Soviet Union. Prof. Petro discusses the pending end of the Ukraine War and why Europe will likely fragment as a consequence of its proxy war against Russia.

In 2014 and 2022, the EU initiated sanctions regimes against Russia. The lists of entities and individuals were originally supposed to target Russia’s econmic and political elites only. But since 2024, the list has been expanded to include “disinformation” and is being used to target journalists and academics even in EU and Schengen-state areas, like the German nationals Alina Lipp and Hüseyin Dogru, , Jacques Baud, and Nathalie Yamb. To discuss the historical precedents is Professor David Gibbs, a professor of history at the University of Arizona.

Known as the “Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum,” this group, founded in Poland in 2022, calls for nothing less than the complete dissolution of the Russian Federation and its replacement with dozens of smaller ethnostates. According to the group’s defenders, such a breakup would better represent the interests of Russia’s many regions and minority populations. After all, the logic goes, Russia is fundamentally an imperialist state.

A drone attack carried out against one of Putin’s residences was also an attack against a Russian nuclear command and control center located at the residence, according to the ex-adviser to the office of the President of Ukraine, Alexey Arestovich, and a military expert interviewed by Sputnik news and Tass.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope we are coming closer to an agreement about settling the conflict in Ukraine. I hope we can grit our teeth and accept the transactional and sometimes mercurial way the Trump Administration has gone about knocking heads together in pursuit of the end of the war. [Read more…] about ACURA Exclusive: The East Ukraine Gambit by Benjamin S. Dunham