March 28, 2025 - 10:00am
When it comes to Europe’s security, each step toward independence is usually followed by at least two steps back. This unfortunate trend continued in Paris yesterday following hours of debate between dozens of European leaders about their role in Ukraine’s future.
The group’s tentative acknowledgement that Ukraine’s own military force would be the cornerstone of the country’s defence over the long term was an important departure from previous assertions that binding security guarantees are Kyiv’s only path to lasting peace. But European leaders negated this rhetorical progress by continuing to haggle over their illusory “reassurance force”, which they seem to think would deploy to Ukraine after the war’s end. Rather than wasting more time on this costly distraction, Europe should spend its energy figuring out how to get Ukraine what it will need to build a military capable of defending its borders without assistance.
It’s been about six weeks since US President Donald Trump and his national security team bluntly informed European allies that the responsibility for Ukraine’s future security would be theirs. Despite several emergency meetings, the continent has yet to come up with a plan.
French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s preferred solution — some sort of European peacekeeping force — is unlikely to materialise despite yet another day of negotiation. For starters, few countries in Europe are willing to participate. Macron has promised a “coalition of the willing” but, for now, that coalition has just two public members: France and the United Kingdom. Even Starmer’s support is conditional, and he’s holding out for a US backstop that is not forthcoming.
What’s more, it remains unclear what European soldiers would do in Ukraine. Europe lacks the military capacity to credibly act as a deterrent force without US backing, and it cannot claim to be a neutral ceasefire monitor as it has already taken sides. Regardless of its purpose, Moscow has said it will not accept a settlement that leaves foreign forces inside Ukraine.
Europe must jettison its misguided pursuit of a reassurance force and instead concentrate on what is a much more likely and feasible outcome for Ukraine: armed neutrality. Armed neutrality would not give Ukraine external security guarantees or station foreign forces inside its territory. But it also would not leave it defenceless. On the contrary, it would ensure that Ukraine is well-armed and capable of deterring future Russian aggression on its own.
After their meetings in Paris, some European leaders seemed to lean toward this option, admitting that Ukraine’s enduring security would rest largely in the hands of its own armed forces. Volodymyr Zelensky himself even seemed amenable, noting that “it’s obvious that the strength and size of the Ukrainian army will always be a key guarantee of our security.”
Left unspecified, however, is how a future Ukrainian military will be equipped and sustained to serve, in effect, as its own security guarantee. Much of this responsibility will fall to Europe.
Ukraine’s military requirements will be extensive. The country will need thousands of air-defence missiles, land and anti-tank mines, artillery systems and munitions, anti-ship missiles to protect its coast, armoured vehicles, and tens of thousands of small drones. Construction equipment and concrete can help build barriers, dragon’s teeth, and trenches to make Ukraine’s borders impenentrable. Soldiers will require basic gear and protective equipment. Over the medium term, Ukraine may need up to $20 billion in military assistance annually.
Europe’s defence industrial base is currently unable to meet these demands on a reasonable timeline, especially while also trying to reduce its dependence on Washington. Addressing this insufficiency — rather than devising a plan for boots on the ground in Ukraine — should be Europe’s number-one priority. The continent has many advantages here, including extensive economic capacity and advanced technological capabilities, if it chooses to activate them.
European leaders will need to quickly find strategies and funding vehicles, at the national and supranational level, that can expand production, as well as alternative suppliers such as South Korea to fill their own and Ukraine’s needs.
A continued fixation on a “reassurance force” will not win respect from the US. Instead, Europe’s ticket to relevance will be its success in mobilising its considerable economic and technological strengths into real hard power.
jekavanagh
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SubscribeThe UK government may want the UK to be part of the “coalition of the willing” but it’s doubtful that the people do. They’re rather busy trying to pay the ever increasing costs of just living, let alone for a futile “re-armament”.
But, of course, the people won’t be asked…except for the money to pay for it
I’m going to agree with you again ! On the first point.
I think the public are still open to providing arms for Ukraine to defend itself – which is the sensible proposal made in this article.
It baffles me why politicians thought that “coalition of the willing” was a phrase worth recycling after the first iteration in Iraq 2.
But we won’t be directly asked, so we’ll never know for sure how strong or deep such support is. Which would be good to know.
And we’ll be borrowing the money to pay for it.
Nothing futile about re-armament. Our wealth was built on being very heavily armed (especially at sea)…from the middle of the C18th…right through to the end of WW2. No shortage of towns and cities across the UK built on the sinews of war, nor people keen to win new contracts if Twotier-Freegear and Rachel from Accounts are serious…lots of us would sooner see our taxes spent there than in abandoned hotels full of who-knows-who…
“Our wealth” was built on cheap resources from our empire and capitalism, rule of law and protestant work ethic.
Spending a single pound more on defence than is strictly necesary is a pound wasted… never mind billions of them.
Historically inaccurate and thoroughly naive!
Europe can only protect Ukraine through armed neutrality
I originally read the headline as armed futility and thought, “Yeah, that’s about right.”
The whole argument over how Ukraine will defend itself once a peace deal is signed is just begging the question.
If Russia intends to take all of Ukraine it won’t sign a peace deal to begin with; it’s winning and the Ukrainian military are very much on the back foot. If Putin signs a peace deal, it will be because he deems his country’s security interests will have been met, and consequently Ukraine won’t need $20b a year of European taxpayer’s money for military resources to keep it safe, because Russia won’t be intending to attack it… unless they believe Ukraine’s neutrality is once again in question.
Going forward, after Ukraine’s business “leaders” have called for an influx of 8m 3rd-worlders to replace the dead/maimed/emigrated, it’s hard to know who would man the front lines if Russia did intend to attack again. Can’t imagine the average Somalian immigrant is going to risk life and limb just so Kiev can become an outcrop of the Anglo-American empire.
Ukraine is on the back foot, but it is also bleeding Russia dry even if the frontlines are inching forward which.
Russia would win if the war went on indefinitely, but it would sacrifice so much blood and treasure doing so that it would be a rather pyrrhic victory
Perhaps in your imagination Billy. But that’s not the reality. Was the North’s victory over the South in the US civil war pyrrhic. I don’t think so, and that war is the almost exact analogy of the current Russia-Ukraine war.
Only if you subscribe to Putin’s viewpoint.
Remember how before the war all mainstream media carried stories about how Ukraine was the “most corrupt” country (I can’t remember now within which group context, but even “globally” wouldn’t surprise me)? War hasn’t changed that: if anything, it’s even worse. Foreign help (whether financially or in military hardware) has been steadily siphoned off to enrich the you-know-who’s. Zelensky has admitted that many billions of dollars of assistance is kind of “missing”. This explains Ukraine’s struggles on the battlefield.
This level of corruption will seriously hinder any attempts to build up Ukraine’s military to the standards alluded to in this piece, unless there is a wholesale and complete cleaning-out of the corridors of power. I for one am not holding my breath..
The typical source is Transparency International:
And the score of Russia is worse, and have been for many years.
The “West” isn’t being asked to support Russia so it’s irrelevant
About the author:
Prior to joining Carnegie, Kavanagh was a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where she led projects focused on deterrence, military interventions, and U.S. military posture for defense and national security clients. She was most recently director of the Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program in RAND’s Arroyo Center, which supports the U.S. Army. Kavanagh also co-authored Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life, and co-founded and led RAND’s Countering Truth Decay Initiative, a portfolio of projects focused on polarization, disinformation, and civic development in the United States.
TLDR: globalist goblin and warmonger.
Our struggle is against corrupt elites betraying our countries right here at home. I’ll fight for Europe once we have leaders who aren’t determined to destroy our nation states.
Enough of your babble.
Whenever I see “RAND Corporation” I feel like holding up a cross in front of me and hissing… Now where’s the garlic and the wooden stake and hammer?
That is not an unreasonable reaction, but RAND has been quite perceptive in its assessments – unlike e.g. the Institute for the Support of War or other such groups.
Maybe not part of the main thrust of the argument in the article but I think it would have been worth mentioning the possible minerals deal with the US, which would be an informal, de facto security guarantee.
It would fall short of the formal security guarantees or “backstop” that the Europeans really want from the US, but it’s still an important factor and a deterrent. “America First” would surely mean protecting their new mineral bounty.
A shrewd observation. The only way to deter Putin is through the one thing he would go to some length to avoid, that is a direct conflict with the US. He likely isn’t intimidated by anything the EU is threatening, but he knows a direct conflict would go badly for him. MAD still applies here.
Trump knows Americans in general and his voters in particular will balk at any formal commitments, so of course he’s going for connections that are informal, non military in nature. Putin, unlike most European leaders, understands history and knows it didn’t start in 1945 or end in 1991. He probably knows that its fairly difficult to get the American people to support any foreign conflict for any sustained length of time. He also knows that nearly every war the US has been involved in has required some direct provocation. The few that didn’t have a trigger event tended to lose support quite quickly.
What does this have to do with a mineral deal? A mineral deal means American companies and American civilians on the ground in Ukraine working with Ukrainian companies and Ukrainian workers. In the event of an attack, some of these people might become casualties, and this will make Americans very angry. Putin knows this from history. He remembers the Lusitania and how the number of Americans on that doomed ship brought the public support Wilson needed to enter the conflict formally. It’s a deterrent that doesn’t involve the US government spending anything or putting any boots on the ground. In this way, American civilians would serve the same purpose as a peacekeeping force, making a Russian attack on Ukraine into a direct attack on the US. Putin knows that. Thus he has a strong incentive to avoid direct conflict and confine his activities to political interference. Ukraine then becomes a theater for soft power conflict between the US and Russia, and Trump is confident in his ability to win such a contest, because they were already winning and that state of affairs was a huge part of Russia’s motivation to start the current conflict.
All things considered, this is a victory for the US. The Europeans stopped buying Russian gas. Nordstream got blown up by somebody. Europe is sufficiently spooked that they might actually increase their defense spending. The US gets a new mineral deal. Ukraine remains independent and under the economic sway of the US rather than the EU or Russia. Trump gets to play peacemaker and reconcile with Russia to draw them away from China, the real enemy. All that was lost on the American side was some money and weapons. It’s a mixed bag for Ukraine itself. They become dependent on the US, which had to happen given their enemy wouldn’t fear anyone else. They probably lose the chance to join the EU or NATO. They give up a significant amount of territory and lost many lives. However, given that the alternative was abject submission to Russian influence and possible annexation, this can’t be counted as a loss for Ukraine either.
One way to ‘deter’ Putin is not insisting on planting NATO forces on his border. But that’s too far over the heads of the geniuses masquerading as national leaders.
I would say the opposite: planting NATO troops at his border are a very good way of deterring him There has been no Russian invasion into any of the NATO countries that border Russia.
Putin is the NATO Salesman of the Year. Why do you think countries want to join NATO? It’s because history shows that Russia cannot be trusted. May I refer you to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014? In a multipolar world, countries need security, and NATO offers that. But yes, let’s side with an anti-American country – Russia – over a pro-American country – Ukraine – just because it aligns with the Orange Overlord’s unexamined preferences. MAGA!
Your comment about Crimea is not the whole story. Crimea was part of Russia until 1955 when it was gifted by Kruschev to Ukraine. Kruschev was Ukrainian and gifting part of one republic/state to another was a complete nothing at the time since they were all part of one country, the USSR, and Ukraine and Russia had been part of one country for centuries in any case.
Nice, but why does that give Russia the right to annex territory from a sovereign nation?
Still promoting Kremlin talking point?
USA and Ireland and Canada and Australia and India and New Zealand and many African countries were part of British Empire.
They are independent now.
But you still promote Russian genocidal imperialism.
There was independence referendum in 1991 in Ukraine.
Crimea voted 54% to be part of Ukraine.
Donbas and Luhansk voted over 83% to be part of Ukraine.
But Russian stooges or Lenin useful idiots like you still claim that this lands were somehow Russian.
Crimea was Tatars till Stalin killed and deported most of them in 1940s.
Russia has a track record of genocide in Ukraine.
Remember Holodomor of 1930s?
Parts of Ukraine have been part of Russia for centuries, Crimea since 1783. For comparison all of Ireland was under English control since 1603, and parts of it since 1169. All Ukrainian oblasts voted for independence in 1991, Crimea perhaps due to many retired Russian military by 53% only. Ironically that validated the whole process imo (Would `Putin ‘win’ an election by 53%).
In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in exchange.for giving up its large stock of nuclear weapons, inherited from the USSR, Ukraine’s borders were guaranteed by the U.S., U.K., and Russia. That, like other Russian promises, hasn’t aged well.
Problem with your logic is that after Russia invaded Ukraine, Finland snd Sweden joined NATO.
So Russia is facing much longer NATO border than before and Baltic Sea in now NATO lake.
the ‘minerals deal’ seems like a red herring to me – Ukraine is fighting a war with Russia today and it seems like they don’t have much time left to avoid being over-run.
I would disagree. Putin is not interested in Western Ukraine. He is interested in the Eastern Oblasts whose population was subject to shelling from 2014 onwards by the Kiev government. Further, the population of the Eastern Oblasts is Russian and they want to be part of Russia. Not surprising given how corrupt both Ukraine and Russia are. It would be another ting if Ukraine was a paragon of western liberal democracy but it isn’t and never has been.
It’s hard for Ukraine to establish itself as a paragon of western liberal democracy when its president is a Russia-aligned figure who abandons what is in the best interest of his country to appease the Kremlin. I’m talking about you, Yanukovych.
Your pro Moscow lies are just that.
Population of Eastern Oblasts is NOT Russian.
The same way Irish or Americans or Canadians are not English because they speak English.
Your arguments are ignoring Ukrainian independence referendum of 1991 when both Donbass and Luhansk voted over 83% to be part of Ukraine.
Even Crimea voted 54% for the same.
As someone said:
You can have your own opinion but you can not have your own facts.
Of course he’s interested in Western Ukraine, why has he 1,000 soldiers in Transnistria, between Ukraine and Moldavia. The eastern oblasts populations speak Russian, just as many peoples speak English. That doesn’t make them Russian, but you knew that, I expect. They voted for Ukrainian independence by >80% in 1991, which I expect that you also know. Putin has caused this war (His 3rd), he has caused all these deaths & life changing injuries. Everything else is noise.
Exactly correct. The whole point about the mineral deal is it would ensure that the US had a major economic stake in western Ukraine. The deal waas a win-=win on everybody’s part, including the Russians.
Everyone except Ukraine
You mean the non-stop chatter of shoving Ukraine into NATO was not protection? Who could have possibly guessed that.
Nobody gets ‘shoved’ into NATO. States apply to entrer, and as we saw recently with Sweden’s application, they have to be accepted by all existing members.
Absolutely. A posture that precludes the projection of force supported by a credible diplomacy would reassure all of Ukraine’s neighbours that Ukraine will be neither a threat to any or them, nor will Ukraine allow itself to be instrumentalised for that purpose.
Jennifer, if you think the US is going to continue to supply Ukraine $20 billion a year in military assistance I’ve got a bridge to nowhere to sell you. And if you think the Europeans could step in I’ve got a second. bridge to nowhere to sell you.
The one that comes back from the other side?
The word “not” is missing from the first line of the last paragraph.
Who cares about respect of US. What matters is that Europe, UK included can formulate its own interests, including sovereign Ukraine, and defend these if needed. Whatever US or Russia or whom ever may desire. Better late then never.
What we can and should do is seamlessly integrate the fortification of the Ukrainian border with that of Sweden, Finland, the Baltic Republics and Poland… Forward-deploy NATO forces at least as capable as those that confronted the old Iron Curtain there…
…with a strike force sufficient to threaten Konigsberg (which is what we should call it) or Saint Petersburg…and in the case of the UK greatly strengthen the Royal Navy, especially in respect of sub-surface assets.
That would do more than anything else to re-assure Ukraine that when the Czar comes again, he will do so looking over his shoulder very warily.
I can’t believe just how stupid people can be. Do they not realize that the Casus Belli was precisely eastward encroachment of NATO. It doesn’t matter who fired the 1st shot.
Utter nonsense.
People who were slaves of Russia wanted to join NATO.
Why did Finland and Sweden join NATO?
Because that is protection against genocidal Russian imperialism.
What happens to you if you are not in NATO is the case of Ukraine.
100%
Au contraire, what matters most is who fired the first shot. NATO going eastward was one excuse (ironic that Putin’s ‘Special Military Operation’ caused two long standing neutral states to join NATO, greatly extending the NATO/Russian border). This is Putin’s 3rd war (Chechnya & Georgia). NATO doesn’t ‘encroach’. States apply to join, & have to be accepted by all existing members (Now including Sweden & Finland). Putin, like English & French governments of their day, has difficulty recognising that Russian Peak Empire has passed, and peoples that have escaped from their respective Empire will resist attempted reabsorption. Putin is a warmonger, everything else is noise.