Europe’s Ukraine Strategy Is Failing, And So Is Its Honesty – OpEd |
For more than a decade, Europe pursued a geopolitical project around Ukraine built on three fragile assumptions: that Russia would not escalate, that the U.S. security guarantee was politically durable, and that European societies would tolerate openended wartime costs without deep structural change. Those assumptions have now been dragged into the open, and Europe’s leaders are already searching for a way to escape responsibility for a strategy that asked Ukraine to bear risks they were never prepared to shoulder themselves.
There were always at least two types of Europe. States on NATO’s eastern flank warned that Russia remained a revisionist power and kept defense spending relatively higher, while much of Western and Southern Europe treated security as a background condition, tightening economic interdependence with Moscow even as they talked about values and partnership. What bound these strands together was a shared bet: Europe could pull Ukraine into its orbit, contain Russia, and avoid paying the price of serious confrontation at home.
From 2014 onward, this bet took institutional form. Association agreements, military training missions, and billions in financial and security assistance drew Ukraine closer to Brussels, and the rhetoric framed these steps as moral commitments to a European future. Yet the strategic reality was more cynical. Most European governments remained far from NATO’s 2 percent defense spending target, Germany sat closer to 1.3 percent of GDP, and the EU still relied on Russia for a large share of its natural gas. Europe wanted geopolitical leverage without the geopolitical costs that genuine deterrence and resilience require.
When Russia invaded in February 2022, the gap between Europe’s ambitions and its actual preparation was exposed in days. Energy prices exploded, natural gas costs soared severalfold, and industrial heartlands—especially in Germany—were hammered by the sudden spike in input prices. Existing........