Opinion | Europeans with Cold War nostalgia are no help to Ukraine or themselves
The old Europe sought confidence in US leadership. But a new president will be elected in November, and what if his name is Donald Trump?
There is no other way to describe the events of the past 14 days. Worse yet, what happened – or, more accurately, what didn’t happen – in Germany exemplifies the desolate state of European foreign and security policy at a critical moment.
Why did the Ramstein conference have to be cancelled? Was it only because the American president couldn’t be there? Were the Europeans not strong enough to host a conference without the participation of the American president, or, if necessary, with the US secretary of state or secretary of defence present?
The just-completed German-UK defence pact suggests that, where there is a will, action can be taken. But Europe needs more than such narrowly tailored bilateral agreements, no matter how positive they can be.
The reason is abundantly clear: Ukraine is desperately waiting for more help. The third winter of the war Russian President Vladimir Putin launched in February 2022 is just around the corner, and the country’s situation is getting worse by the week.
That Ukraine will get “all the help it needs, and it will get it for as long as it needs it”, has been the routine refrain heard in most European capitals, especially from the German government, for 2½ years. But this claim is simply wrong, no matter how many times it is repeated.
