What will Britain do? Nothing we can do, much as MI6 has done its upmost to bring about and continue the war. We are in the position vis-à-vis the US that Bulgaria (not Romania) was vis-à-vis the USSR.
The same goes for the Western and much of Eastern Europe.
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said, “I don’t like the term rearm. I think the EU is a political project of soft power … This is my principled objection to the term of rearm.”
Niall Ferguson in a recent tweet, “If you want to take back territory and try Putin, you have to win the war … realistically, Ukraine has never been in a position to defeat Russia.”
I don't much trust him as a historian but I presume he got these astonishing figures right.
But he thought very differently two years ago when he wrote this.
Glenn Diesen on October 6: Arestovych, former top advisor to Zelensky, outlines what he would do as president: 'Go to Moscow, promise that Ukraine will never again become a threat to Russia, restore language and religious rights, and accept territorial concessions.'
Two days ago:
Glenn Diesen: But how do you make sense of the Europeans though? Because they always perplex me a bit even though I'm one of them. How can they oppose this so fiercely when there is no no plan B?
Chas Freeman: Well, it's an absence of imagination, an absence of statecraft, an absence of leadership. Virtually every European country of of great consequence in this war has fractious politics, very weak government and no consensus. and in this context, I think we we have seen several forces at play. First of all, the conditioning of the cold war to regard the Russians as monsters to be kept at bay is very much alive and well in European psychology. It's being exploited for the usual reasons which are if you have no program, you try to inflame nationalists support by identifying an enemy and pointing yourself at that enemy.
And there's also the issue of European anxiety about the relationship with the United States and whether the American protection that Europe has enjoyed for 80 years is not now coming to an end, which means - 'Good God we have to confront the Russians on our own!' Well, you would think in that context that people would start thinking and a few have started thinking about um how to live with Russia and perhaps live with it in a Eurasian rather than purely European context. I note that some thinkers in France in particular seem to be moving in that direction, but at the moment the Europeans have no idea. It has nothing to offer.
Glenn Diesen: But how do you make sense of the Europeans though? Because they always perplex me a bit even though I'm one of them. How can they oppose this so fiercely when there is no no plan B?
Chas Freeman: Well, it's an absence of imagination, an absence of statecraft, an absence of leadership. Virtually every European country of of great consequence in this war has fractious politics, very weak government and no consensus. and in this context, I think we we have seen several forces at play. First of all, the conditioning of the cold war to regard the Russians as monsters to be kept at bay is very much alive and well in European psychology. It's being exploited for the usual reasons which are if you have no program, you try to inflame nationalists support by identifying an enemy and pointing yourself at that enemy.
And there's also the issue of European anxiety about the relationship with the United States and whether the American protection that Europe has enjoyed for 80 years is not now coming to an end, which means - 'Good God we have to confront the Russians on our own!' Well, you would think in that context that people would start thinking and a few have started thinking about um how to live with Russia and perhaps live with it in a Eurasian rather than purely European context. I note that some thinkers in France in particular seem to be moving in that direction, but at the moment the Europeans have no idea. It has nothing to offer.
ReplyDeleteOwen Matthews "By some estimates the EU paid Russia €311bn for its energy products since Feb 2022, while giving €187bn in support for Ukraine."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/22/delusional-europe-cannot-keep-ukraine-in-fight/
ReplyDeleteSo why has Europe’s generosity not translated into more diplomatic heft in the Ukraine peace process, and why has the continent’s enormous armaments industry not been able to keep Ukraine supplied with air defences, armour, artillery and rockets that it needs? One answer is capacity, complicated by national differences. Europe’s militaries are vastly smaller than the US’s, and keep correspondingly smaller stockpiles.
The capacity of European factories is therefore limited too. And fatefully, though Nato equipment like the standard 155mm artillery shell is meant to be seamlessly interchangeable, “Ukraine’s experience has made clear that Nato … howitzers and munitions are not truly interoperable,” according to a recent report by West Point Military Academy’s Modern War Institute.
Europeans tend to spend their defence procurement money domestically, leading to a bewildering array of British, French, German, Czech, Swedish and Polish infantry fighting vehicles, all with different spare parts, operating on Ukrainian front lines. Overall, that’s made Europe’s military contribution bitty, complex and expensive.
More importantly in practical terms is that the most effective big-ticket weapons, from Patriot air defence missile batteries and ATACMs short range cruise missiles to F-16 fighters, are made in the US. Though Trump has cut funding, he’s still allowing Europeans to buy American equipment for donation to Kyiv, but that arrangement adds another layer of complication.
The most crucial problem of all for Europe is, bluntly, money. Spending is always a political choice and every major EU economy, as well as the UK, is facing a similar crisis of ballooning spending, deficits and debt.
Germany has been most generous to Kyiv, with Boris Pistorius, the defence minister, pledging €11.5bn in military aid in 2026. The lion’s share of that will remain in Germany and be spent on German-made equipment; effectively a form of military Keynesianism. But that doesn’t do much to help pay Kyiv’s bills, which EU officials propose to meet by raising more debt in the absence of member states’ actual cash.
With Russia advancing in Donbas and Zaporizhia, Ukraine’s military facing a severe manpower shortage and its corruption scandal-mired government running out of money, Volodymyr Zelensky’s options are limited.
Europe urges him to fight on, but cannot provide the funds for him to do so. That leaves Ukraine little choice but engage with Trump’s heavily Russian-accented peace proposal.