The Social World

Category: Europe

  • J.D. Vance: proconsul to Britain?

    Vice President J.D. Vance’s family vacation in Britain was disrupted by protesters who insisted that he was not welcome in the country. In the Cotswolds, an area northwest of Oxford and the British equivalent of Martha’s Vineyard, ultraliberal white protesters huddled together on August 12 to make their meager numbers look large for the cameras, wielding signs bearing such slogans as “End Genocide!” and “Stop Fascists!” One participant quoted by the Guardian explained: “I’m most worried about his environmental policies. They risk eliminating the whole of humanity, all the creatures on the Earth.” 

    Coming the same week that President Donald Trump asserted greater control over Washington, DC, by taking over the city’s law enforcement, the Vance visit highlighted the tensions between local democratic rule and its frequent deviation from the public good. In both instances, the American leaders are saving localities from too much self-rule run amok.

    Of course, the British government – despite being a Labour ministry – encouraged the Vance visit, including his sojourn in the Cotswolds. As with the “Nixon to China” playbook, it is Labour politicians who have traditionally played the role of transatlantic mediators because they are trusted to protect the national interest, as opposed to the often-slavish Tories. Nor did the gentle farmers of the Cotswolds as a whole necessarily disagree with the visit. The village where Vance stayed belongs to a legislative district held by Labour, but the region’s two other districts are held by a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat. It is fair to say that the median voter in the Cotswolds probably took the visit to be an acceptable exercise of diplomatic bridge-building by the central government.

    Rather, the real debate over Vance’s visit, and the reaction to it, was to do with who speaks for the Cotswolds in a longer-term, intergenerational sense. Like Trump’s check on DC’s home rule, Vance’s return to the ancestral mother country less as a visitor than as an envoy of Anglo civilization is a check on the home rule of a wobbling British nation. That, more than anything else, is why the leftist luminaries of British cultural destruction took to the grassy commons with their signboards and saucepans.

    The Cotswolds region contains much of what is important in British history. I have walked over its excavated Roman settlements and through the remains of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, which resisted Viking control. The region also played a central role in the development of the English ecclesiastical and constitutional traditions, which were the basis of American colonial success. It played host to the first battle of the civil war between Charles I and Parliament (Powick Bridge, in 1642), as well as the last (Stow-on-the-Wold, in 1646). 

    In microcosm, the Cotswolds is the British civilization that the Americans have been called upon to rescue time and again. The American rebellion against George III was heralded by many English Whigs as a welcome tonic for their decaying democracy, where the voting franchise had shrunk to a mere 15 percent of adult males. The “special relationship” between the two countries based on their common culture and history emerged in the Victorian era when the US offered critical support to the liberal imperialism of the British empire. Britain, for its part, chose not to interfere with America’s Civil War. Winston Churchill’s famous Dunkirk speech of 1940 – looking forward to the moment when “the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old” – was merely reprising an old theme.

    Vance’s rescue mission began with some fishing alongside the British foreign secretary and then moved through several pubs before decamping to Scotland. When a country, like a city, has lost its way, its external guarantor may be called upon to impose home rule. Like the long-suffering residents of DC, the British people will welcome their liberation and rescue.

  • Will Germany actually send troops to Ukraine?

    Will Germany actually send troops to Ukraine?

    As Donald Trump presses on with his breathless efforts to secure an end to the war in Ukraine, the leaders of Europe face a task of their own. In the event of a peace deal with Russia, how will they – in place of an America that can’t be trusted as a reliable ally – provide Kyiv with the security guarantees against Russian aggression that it craves? And even if they are willing, are they capable of delivering them?

    The idea of sending a peacekeeping force to Ukraine at some point in the future has split Germany down the middle

    Stepping out of the White House following Monday’s hastily arranged summit with Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders, German chancellor Friedrich Merz signaled that yes, his country was willing and able to provide Ukraine with security guarantees.

    “It is clear to me that we, as the Federal Republic of Germany, also have a strong interest and a strong responsibility to participate in this,” he said. He caveated his declaration of intent by saying he would be discussing everything with European allies and that any final decision regarding German boots on the ground in Ukraine would be put to a vote in the Bundestag as per German law.

    In what is increasingly becoming a pattern of this fairly new Chancellor’s governance, Merz’s comments stirred the political hornets’ nest in Berlin within hours. By the time he had landed back in Germany, a full-throated debate on the Bundeswehr’s potential support for Ukraine was under way.

    The idea of sending a peacekeeping force to Ukraine at some point in the future has split Germany down the middle. According to a poll conducted by the research institute Civey, 51 percent of Germans think including the Bundeswehr in a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine is a bad idea. Just 36 percent of respondents think it is a good one.

    Russia’s invasion feels much closer to home for the average German – with just one country, Poland, separating them from the conflict. As such, right from the start of the war in February 2022, there has been a lingering sense of unease about politicians in Berlin dragging Germany into a war it did not start. The country’s Nazi past – still very much at the forefront of the national consciousness – makes the idea of proactively sending German troops into territory its predecessors did their best to annihilate barely 80-odd years ago sit uncomfortably with many, even if the circumstances are now vastly different. A survey from May showed that 64 percent of Germans were at least “very worried” about the return of war to Europe.

    Both the German far right and the far left have jumped on Merz’s comments as an example of what they want to portray as his warmongering credentials. Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party branded his words “dangerous and irresponsible.”

    By Tuesday, the AfD had mocked up an unnerving new post for their social media. Sending soldiers to Ukraine “would not be peacekeeping, but a permanent escalation against Russia,” it reads. Accompanying this was a sepia-toned image showing five frowning youths being loomed over by Merz, his smile fixed in a maniacal grin and the tips of his fingers touching in a steeple. Underneath, the slogan: “Merz wants to send YOU to Ukraine? We don’t!”

    While superficially the image makes Merz look like a cartoon villain, it has prompted disgust for how evocative it is of the anti-Semitic propaganda distributed during the Nazi era portraying Jewish people as power-hungry villains. Many have seen this as yet further confirmation of how the AfD is growing increasingly comfortable flirting with the symbolism and rhetoric of Germany’s National Socialist past.

    Sahra Wagenknecht, the far-left leader of the eponymous Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) also hopped on the bandwagon. In a video posted to social media on Wednesday, she warned: “Your father, your brother, your son could soon be fighting Russia in Ukraine.” Merz’s willingness to consider sending troops to Ukraine is “dangerous” and “completely oblivious to history.” “Should the conflict break out again, Germany would immediately become a party to the war,” she added. She has called for a “peace rally” in Berlin on 13 September 13 to “stop the federal government’s war course.”

    If such warnings of escalation in the conflict sound familiar, that’s because they are. Following the Ukraine summit in Washington on Monday, the spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry Maria Zakharova addressed Ukraine’s allies in a statement. Reinforcing the Kremlin’s rejection of any NATO troops being sent into Ukraine to keep the peace, Zakharova said “this risks uncontrollable escalation with unpredictable consequences.” The AfD and BSW have made little effort to distance their messaging from that of Moscow’s.

    Despite sitting on opposite sides of the political spectrum, both the AfD and BSW have, over the years, acquired reputations for being pro-Russia. They are both in favor of dropping sanctions against Moscow and restoring diplomatic relations. Both oppose sending weapons to Ukraine. But their calls for peace are also tinged with cynicism: the largest voter bases for both parties are predominantly located in the former East Germany, where cultural memory of the GDR means distrust of NATO and likewise a fear of Russian aggression are higher. Both the AfD and BSW are quite comfortable using the debate around a peacekeeping force in Ukraine to stoke fear with their voters.

    Merz has had little help from his own cabinet in backing up his commitment to Ukraine. As the Chancellor was flying to Washington, his foreign minister Johann Wadephul unhelpfully declared that sending German troops to Ukraine would “probably overwhelm” the Bundeswehr alongside its commitment to creating a new brigade of 5,000 in Lithuania – expected to be operational by 2027. The German army has been chronically under-resourced for years: it is currently approximately 20,000 soldiers short and is struggling to replace much of the vital equipment donated to Ukraine over the past 3.5 years. While Merz eased the country’s state debt rules on coming into power, which will allow a huge boost for military spending in the coming years, it will nevertheless take a while for the full benefits to be felt.

    There is, of course, also the question of what Germany’s role in any peacekeeping force would look like in Ukraine. The defense minister Boris Pistorius has kept his cards close to his chest, saying “what a German contribution to the security guarantees will look like has not yet been determined.” There is every chance that, should opposition to boots on the ground prove too fierce for Merz to push through the Bundestag, this could be watered down to see the German army simply provide Ukraine with, for example, reconnaissance data and intelligence, further arms deliveries or training for its soldiers.

    With little prospect of a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine any time soon, Merz has time to rally his government, prepare the army and fight off his opponents on the political fringes. But if the first seven months of Trump’s second term have taught the Chancellor and his fellow European leaders anything, it is that predictability and caution don’t come naturally to the American president. A peace deal with Moscow could be foisted on Kyiv by Trump at a moment’s notice. Merz has his work cut out ensuring Germany is prepared for that moment when it arrives.

  • Does Trump’s handshake deal with the EU put America first?

    Does Trump’s handshake deal with the EU put America first?

    What’s really at stake in these trade deals? That is what we are slowly discovering as Donald Trump’s handshakes with America’s trading partners are turned into specific and detailed agreements. Today we are getting the details of one of the biggest deals struck so far: a trade agreement with the famously protectionist European Union, which agreed in principle to a deal back in July, with the caveat on both the US and EU side that taxes on key sectors were still up for discussion.

    Those discussions, it seems, have produced some details. Despite early threats that America would impose tariffs of 250 percent and 100 percent on EU imports of pharmaceuticals and semiconductors respectively, the headline duties for both have been reduced to 15 percent. Indeed, most goods flowing from the EU’s 27 countries into the US will be subject to a 15 percent tariff. Still, there are some disputes. Trump is keeping the tax on EU-made vehicles at 27.5 percent until the EU drops many of the tariffs it has placed on American goods. Unlike trade deals secured with Indonesia and the Philippines, where both countries slashed their tariffs on US products, the EU has been reluctant to go as far.

    While it’s admittedly refreshing to watch the European Union grapple with the harms of protectionism – similarly to what it’s forced other countries to endure in past decades – who is really emerging as the winner? While the huge drop in proposed taxes on pharmaceutical imports is being chalked up as a good deal for the bloc, it’s perhaps better described as a less bad deal for American importers, who will be paying the new and higher taxes on these medicines and materials as they make their way from the EU to the US.

    It’s a curious tax hike from President Trump, who has been insisting that drug prices need to come down for American consumers. As my colleague Michael Simmons points out in the UK magazine this week, prices of weight-loss jabs in Britain are starting to soar as drug companies work to rebalance where their profits come from in an attempt to lower prices for these drugs in America (a little, anyway). But if Trump’s goal is to bring down the cost of drugs in the US, slapping higher taxes on imported medicine is an odd move. 

    Of course, in Trumpworld, trade-offs don’t exist. There’s no downside, no losing. There’s only “winning.” And you can bet his administration is delighted this week with a New York Times report revealing a mass exodus of registered Democrats from the party. The Democrats are “hemorrhaging” voters, according to the Times, in every one of the 30 states that tracks voters by political party. An estimated 2.1 million people abandoned their “Democrat” registration between 2020 and 2024, while an estimated 2.4 million voters signed up as Republicans.

    We didn’t necessarily need hard numbers to confirm that the Democratic party is in the midst of a crisis (the 2024 election result was evidence enough), but these figures from suggest an even bigger problem for the left: one that appears to have been brewing long before Joe Biden was switched out for Kamala Harris. Even when the Democrats were winning elections and mid-terms, they were losing parts of their base, including people who were so on message that they were happy to register their affiliation with the cause.

    One wonders if snide remarks about working Americans, or a full-fat socialist agenda, will bring left-leaning voters back home. It seems unlikely.

    This article first appeared in Freddy Gray’s Americano newsletter. Subscribe here.

  • Can Friedrich Merz save Germany from irrelevancy?

    Can Friedrich Merz save Germany from irrelevancy?

    Friedrich Merz arrived in Washington this week alongside Europe’s most senior leaders, ostensibly to coordinate the continent’s response to Trump’s Ukraine designs. Here was Germany’s moment to demonstrate the leadership it perpetually claims to seek – a chance to shape the conversation that will determine Europe’s security architecture for years to come. Instead, before the Chancellor could even present his case to Americans, his own foreign minister Johann Wadephul delivered a masterclass in diplomatic self-sabotage from Berlin.

    Germany must play “an important role” in any future peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, declared the CDU politician, before categorically ruling out German soldiers on Ukrainian soil. “That would presumably overwhelm us,” he explained with the sort of defeatist precision that has become his government’s signature. In a single sentence, Wadephul had kneecapped his own Chancellor’s negotiating position, advertising Germany’s limitations rather than its capabilities to anyone listening.

    Nothing feeds populists like politics’ inability to address change

    This wasn’t merely unfortunate timing – it was the latest installment in a pattern of cabinet colleagues undermining Merz’s already tentative efforts at international leadership. Whether on defense spending, migration policy or economic reform, the Chancellor finds himself repeatedly ambushed by ministers who seem determined to advertise Germany’s unwillingness to shoulder serious responsibilities. One might call it capitulation before the first battle was fought, but this represents something more systematic: the crystallization of a political culture that has made strategic irrelevance into an art form.

    Here lies the exquisite tragedy of modern Germany: a nation trapped between its aspirations and its neuroses, too large to be irrelevant yet too terrified to actually lead. While Merz and other European leaders huddle in the White House, desperately hoping to dissuade Trump from striking a deal at Kyiv’s expense, political Berlin sends its familiar signal: Yes, we speak of responsibility. No, we won’t actually take it.

    The coalition has made itself thoroughly comfortable in this culture of irresponsibility. Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil offered a textbook example of political evasion in his recent television interview, declaring that “naturally we must also assume responsibility as Europeans when it comes to security guarantees.” Whether this involves troops, training, money or something else entirely “must all be clarified in the coming days.” What sounds like commitment is actually an escape hatch – the political equivalent of agreeing to meet for lunch “sometime soon.”

    Few politicians dare acknowledge the challenges that Russian imperial ambition actually poses to Germany. CDU foreign policy expert Roderich Kiesewetter represents a rare voice of clarity, reminding his colleague Wadephul that European peace cannot be guaranteed without military backing – including ground troops if necessary. Germany, Kiesewetter argues, cannot lead from Central Europe whilst simultaneously refusing engagement where it matters. The mathematics are brutal but simple: you cannot exercise leadership whilst advertising your unwillingness to pay its price. Yet this is precisely Germany’s chosen strategy, demanding a seat at the top table whilst openly declaring vast swathes of policy off-limits.

    Chancellor Merz understands that Germany cannot define its role through economic power alone. Since taking office, he has tentatively begun moving Germany back towards leadership responsibility. But the resistance is formidable – within his own party, throughout the coalition, and amongst a public that has grown comfortable with foreign policy free-riding. The result is that Germany is stuck in an interstitial position: too significant to be ignored, too anxious to genuinely lead. Whilst Washington discusses Ukraine’s and Europe’s future, Berlin resembles a spectator at its own continent’s strategic deliberations. It wanted to be an actor yet seems content remaining in the audience.

    This dysfunction extends far beyond foreign policy. The coalition’s domestic paralysis mirrors its international timidity. When asked about the government’s future direction, Klingbeil couldn’t even feign enthusiasm for his own coalition. Rather than articulating any compelling vision, he made clear that he views this partnership as little more than a marriage of convenience – one held together primarily by fear of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD). Defining oneself solely in opposition to populists represents political dwarfism of the highest order. Those serious about defeating populism cannot practice politics purely ex negativo. They must offer positive alternatives, compelling visions, genuine leadership. Instead, Klingbeil offered warmed-over social democratic orthodoxy: higher taxes for high earners.

    But lack of revenue isn’t Germany’s problem. Rather, astronomical debt and a bloated welfare state burden the republic with obligations that will eventually crush future generations. Precisely when populists will find their richest hunting grounds. If Klingbeil genuinely wants to defeat populism, he must confront Germans with uncomfortable truths: they will need to work more and longer to save the pension system. Social spending must be cut – the state cannot continue housing every applicant in city centers. Real change requires discomfort for those who have arranged their lives at public expense.

    Klingbeil should also cease attacking coalition partners who dare speak inconvenient truths. When Trade Minister Katherina Reiche recently demanded Germans work harder, this wasn’t pandering to the right – it was acknowledging a bitter reality. The coalition catastrophically underestimates German citizens by assuming they cannot handle genuine reforms. The necessary cuts would be entirely explicable. Everyone understands that deterring Russia carries costs. Everyone can calculate that fewer young workers cannot indefinitely finance more retirees’ pensions. This requires basic arithmetic, not advanced mathematics.

    The irony is exquisite: by merely managing stagnation, the coalition achieves precisely what Klingbeil claims to oppose. Nothing feeds populists like politics’ inability to address change. If the Union and SPD continue this path, they can watch the AfD overtake them in the next election. Germany’s predicament extends beyond coalition politics to a fundamental crisis of strategic imagination. The country that once produced visionaries like Adenauer and Erhard, the architects of post-war European integration, now struggles to articulate any coherent vision of its role in a rapidly changing world.

    This matters far beyond Germany’s borders. Europe desperately needs German leadership as it confronts Russian aggression, Chinese economic warfare, and American strategic uncertainty. Instead, it receives hesitation, half-measures and the perpetual promise that someone else will handle the difficult decisions. The tragedy is that Germany possesses the resources, influence and historical experience necessary for genuine leadership. What it lacks is the political courage to embrace the responsibilities that leadership entails. Until Berlin overcomes its preference for strategic irrelevance over strategic engagement, Europe will remain dangerously dependent on powers whose interests may not align with European security.

    Germany’s choice is stark: lead or become irrelevant. The current strategy of wanting influence without responsibility represents the worst of both worlds and is a recipe for strategic marginalization disguised as pragmatic restraint. The question is whether German politicians will recognize this reality before their nation’s window for meaningful leadership closes entirely. Current evidence suggests they may prefer the comfort of managed decline to the challenges of actual leadership. If so, Germany’s partners should plan accordingly.

  • Will Pope Leo stand up to Islam?

    Will Pope Leo stand up to Islam?

    As Muslim migration roils Europe, some Catholic bishops are starting to notice.

    “For decades, the Islamization of Europe has been progressing through mass immigration,” Polish Bishop Antoni Długosz said July 13, adding that illegal immigrants “create serious problems in the countries they arrive in.”

    Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan spoke more bluntly in March: “We’re witnessing an invasion. They are not refugees. This is an invasion, a mass Islamization of Europe.”

    Yet Pope Leo XIV lives in a different dimension. “In a world darkened by war and injustice . . . migrants and refugees stand as messengers of hope,” Leo said July 25. “Their courage and tenacity bear heroic testimony to a faith that sees beyond what our eyes can see and gives them the strength to defy death on the various contemporary migration routes.”

    Leo’s comments express more than blissful sentimentality. They reveal the Vatican’s role in encouraging open borders and exempting migrants from accountability. In Europe’s case, that involves deliberate blindness to the violent, totalitarian nature of Islam and many of its followers. 

    This Catholic approach toward Islam reflects the ideas ofLouis Massignon, a French scholar from the early 20th century. Massignon described Islam as “the faith of Abraham revived with Muhammad,” and asserted that Muslims “have the right to equality among the monotheisms descended from Abraham.”

    French Catholic scholar Alain Besançon described the results.

    “An entire literature favorable to Islam has grown up in Europe, much of it the work of Catholic priests under the sway of Massignon’s ideas,” he wrote. Besançon attributed that posture to “an underlying dissatisfaction with modernity, and with our liberal, capitalist, individualistic arrangements,” a dissatisfaction that the Vatican embodies.

    “Alarmed by the ebbing of religious faith in the Christian West, and particularly in Europe,” Massignon’s advocates “cannot but admire Muslim devoutness,” Besançon wrote. “Surely, they reason, it is better to believe in something than to believe in nothing, and since these Muslims believe in something, they must believe in the same thing we do.”

    The Catholic Church officially embraced Massignon’s ideas at the Second Vatican Council in two documents. One, Nostra Aetate, focused on the church’s relationship with Judaism but additionally addressed Islam:

    “The Church regards with esteem the Muslims. They adore the one God . . . they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet.”

    The other, Lumen Gentium, declared that “the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place among these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God.”

    That passage made the Catholic catechism.

    But what Besançon called “indulgent ecumenicism” toward Islam goes beyond words. During John Paul II’s papacy, the church embraced outright appeasement.

    Catholic bishops sold underutilized churches and schools to Muslim groups; many of the churches became mosques. In October 2006, the Capuchin Franciscan friars agreed to help the Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy (UCOII) build a mosque in Genoa next to a monastery. The friars even helped build the mosque’s foundation.

    But the UCOII – affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood – advocates “an extremist version of the Quran, where Christians, Jews and Westerners are criminalized, as well as women and other Muslims who don’t submit to their rule,” Magdi Allam, a convert to Catholicism from Islam, reported for Milan’s Corriere della Sera.

    In 2006, the group also demanded Islamic schools, banks and clerical review of textbooks. Its president, Mohamed Nour Dachan, refused to sign a document pledging Muslims to accept Italy’s constitution, denounce terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

    Seven months earlier, a Vatican cardinal even suggested that Muslim students receive Islamic religious instruction in the hour reserved for Catholic instruction in Italian schools.

    “If there are 100 Muslim children in a school, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be taught their religion,” said the late Cardinal Renato Martino, then the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. “If we said ‘no’ until we saw equivalent treatment for the Christian minorities in Muslim countries, I would say that we were placing ourselves on their level.”

    In 2008, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales asked Catholic schools to reserve prayer rooms for Muslim students and to adapt bathroom facilities for ritual cleansing before prayer. But the worst example of appeasement took place in Belgium.

    As part of a campaign to force the government to grant amnesty, Belgium’s Catholic bishops turned their churches into homes for Muslim migrants, making them squatters. In May 2006, more than 30 Belgian churches served such a purpose. About 300 Africans occupied Antwerp’s Magdalena Chapel. Other churches held as many as 700 squatters.

    At Our Lady of Succor Church in Brussels, squatters lived in small tents donated by Catholic relief agencies, conducted Muslim services, erected computer tables near the pulpit and even set fires on the floor.

    Friar Herwig Arts described a scene at Antwerp’s Jesuit chapel: migrants “removed the tabernacle [and] installed a television set and radios, depriving us of the opportunity to pray in our own chapel and say Mass.” He went on, “For me, the place has been desecrated. I feel I cannot enter it anymore.” 

    Belgium’s bishops were not amused. Arts was chided by Belgium’s leading clergy. “Solidarity cannot be limited to one’s own nation, said the late Cardinal Godfried Danneels, then the country’s leading prelate. Monsingor Luc van Looy, then the bishop of Ghent, even said “illegal fugitives” were “entitled to a good place in our society. Arts has been silent on the topic ever since.

    But two decades later, Kazakhstan’s Bishop Schneider refuses to stay silent: “This is a global political agenda by the powerful of the world to destroy Europe.”

    Leo thus faces an existential challenge, one that blissful sentimentality cannot answer: Will he allow a church that played a pivotal role in creating European civilization to perform a more decisive part in destroying it?

  • The Trump-Zelensky meetings offered a show of Western unity

    The Trump-Zelensky meetings offered a show of Western unity

    Did President Trump make any progress toward ending the war in Ukraine after successive meetings with Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky and key NATO partners? 

    The short answer is “yes – but it’s very slight, and there are still formidable obstacles, which could block a final deal.” The biggest obstacles are Ukraine agreeing to cede sovereign territory and Russia agreeing to the presence of a combined European-American military force within Ukraine, meant to prevent another Russian attack. 

    The joint military force is the most important proposal to emerge from Monday’s meeting. We already knew Ukraine would have to cede territory – or “swap it” as Trump delicately puts it. 

    The fact that we know anything from Monday’s meeting is a stark contrast to Trump’s earlier meeting with Putin. The Alaska meeting yielded no significant public comments. Yes, Putin spoke, but he said nothing. Trump didn’t take questions and, of course, Putin didn’t. Neither the principals nor their aides leaked to the press.  

    The absence of any real information didn’t stop the talking heads on cable news from pontificating. After all, they have 24 hours to fill, even if they have nothing to say. 

    Their vacuous blather was like the tale of a man who finally consented to see a psychiatrist for his serious psychosexual troubles. The best way to diagnose the issue, the psychiatrist said, would be to get the patient’s response to some inkblots. After looking at one after another, the patient refused to speak. Finally, the exasperated doctor said he needed some kind of response. “Look,” the patient said, “I didn’t come here to look at dirty pictures.” 

    That reflexive response is exactly how the cable-news channels and major national papers covered the Alaska summit. They had only an inkblot to look at, no hard news to report, so they said the meeting illustrated whatever they already thought about Trump, good or bad. Senators and Congressmen did the same thing. Low-information commentary. 

    Monday’s meeting with Zelensky was different. It yielded some hard news for two reasons. One was familiar. Trump posted some informative “readouts” on Truth Social, something he didn’t do after Alaska. The second reason was very public and very important: we have never seen so many pillars of the NATO alliance come to the White House at one time.  

    Equally important, we have rarely seen them express such unity in the post-Cold War era. Europe’s leaders avoided any hint of disappointment or cleavages within the alliance. That’s good news for the Western Alliance and bad news for Putin. Why? Because he has consistently tried to drive a wedge between Washington and Europe and because a joint US-European military force is likely to be a central feature of any final deal.  

    That prospect of Western troops in Ukraine is not a happy one for Putin, who denies Ukraine is even a country or deserves to be one. It’s still rightly part of Russia, he says – openly and repeatedly. That’s why Russia immediately rejected any “NATO-like” security guarantees for Ukraine, which are implicit in stationing US and European forces near Ukraine’s borders with Russia. The only wiggle room is that the rejection came from a Kremlin spokesman, not from Putin himself. So far. 

    Western unity also implies how NATO members will react if they believe Russia, not Ukraine, is blocking a settlement. Much as Trump wants to avoid a deeper commitment to the war, he may conclude that Putin will bargain only if he faces more punishment. That would mean more Western arms for Ukraine and stiff sanctions on Russia oil exports. Trump would still expect Europe to foot the bill for American armaments. 

    Why is Putin so opposed to Western troops in Ukraine, even if that country is not admitted to NATO or given a formal “Article 5” security guarantee, which states that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all? 

    Putin has good reasons, both symbolic and tangible. The symbolic reason is that Western troops would be a visible symbol that Ukraine is now part of Western Europe, joining states that were once part of the Warsaw Pact and dominated by Moscow.  

    The tangible reason is that Western troops would prevent Putin from reneging on any territorial deal and launching another war to take Ukrainian territory. This deterrence is not based on the ability of Western troops in Ukraine to defeat a Russian invasion. There might not be enough initially to defeat a major invasion. Rather, Western troops would serve as a tripwire, ensuring any full-scale Russian invasion would kill Western troops and guarantee a brutal military response. The key word here is “guarantee.” No Western government could tolerate the unprovoked slaughter of its soldiers.  

    The same kind of tripwire was the implicit rationale for stationing US troops in West Germany during the Cold War. There weren’t enough troops there to stop the much larger Red Army, but there were plenty to serve the tripwire function. Their death at Soviet hands would guarantee Washington would enter the war, just as it did when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.  

    Putin understands both the symbolic and tangible effects of stationing Western troops in Ukraine. That’s why he won’t easily agree to it. 

    On Tuesday, President Trump significantly weakened the tripwire element of any deal by stating, unambiguously, that the United States would not place any troops on the ground in Ukraine. That means only European NATO members would have troops stationed there. But, since Ukraine wouldn’t be a NATO member and since no US troops would be vulnerable to a Russian attack, the tripwire element on any deal is significantly weaker. The US might well ramp up support for Ukraine if Russia breached the agreement, but only lethal attacks on US troops could guarantee a powerful, lethal response from Washington, making American troops a far better deterrent than those from its European partners.

    So, what’s the next step to try and end the war? Another meeting, this one with Putin, Zelensky and Trump. Trump hopes it can be held quickly, within two weeks, but Putin has never sat down with Zelensky and considers meeting him as an equally major concession. We simply don’t know if he will agree to meet now or what pressure Trump will exert on him if he balks. 

    Nor do we know if Ukraine’s Parliament (the unicameral Verkhovna Rada) will approve giving Russia almost one fifth of its territory, including all of Crimea and most of the eastern Donbas area, all of which was taken by force.  

    The US and NATO have significant leverage here if Ukraine refuses. If they consider Ukraine the main roadblock to peace, the Western partners can pause or even stop arms shipments and stop sharing signals intelligence. Zelensky’s army cannot continue its fight without them. 

    For now, Ukraine’s assent is not the pressing issue. The question won’t come before its Parliament until the bilateral deal is set. Until then, expect to hear strenuous voices of opposition to ceding any territory. 

    The more pressing question is whether Putin will agree to meet with Zelensky, or even come to the same location, perhaps with Trump shuttling between rooms to meet with each one. The follow-up question is what Trump will do if Putin refuses. The likely answer is to provide more arms to Ukraine, paid for by the Europeans, and begin imposing sanctions on buyers of Russian oil.  

    Those sanctions would infuriate Putin, but they might also get him to the table. After all, Russia may have imperial dreams, but it’s really just a gas station with borders. 

  • Trump on best behavior in meetings with Zelensky and European leaders

    Trump on best behavior in meetings with Zelensky and European leaders

    It was back to black for Volodymyr Zelensky. After the Trump White House asked whether he was going to wear a suit for his Oval Office meeting, the Ukrainian President showed up in a dark military-style jacket, pleasing his hosts to no end. Even Brian Glenn, boyfriend of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and reporter for Real America’s Voice, who had dissed Zelensky in February, commended him on his habiliments, declaring “you look fabulous in that suit.” Zelensky was pleased. So was Trump. 

    In fact, Trump was on his best behavior. After ranting earlier in the morning that he didn’t need all the experts to tell him what to think and that Ukraine should essentially prostrate itself before Russia, he avoided any verbal fisticuffs with Zelensky or talk about exiting NATO. Instead, Trump breathed optimism about where the negotiations, which he hopes will secure him a coveted Nobel Peace Prize, were headed. “I think it’s going to be when, not if,” Trump said about a trilateral meeting between him, Putin and Zelensky.  

    He may not have rolled out a red carpet for Zelensky when he arrived in Washington, as he did for Putin in Alaska, but he treated him with unwonted respect. According to Trump, “I have a feeling you and President Putin are going to work something out. Ultimately, this is a decision that can only be made by President Zelensky and by the people of Ukraine working also together in agreement with President Putin. And I just think that very good things are going to come of it.” 

    If the meeting with European leaders that took place later in the afternoon was anything to go by, Trump’s eupeptic push for a peace deal is not meeting with overt resistance. Quite the contrary. Zelensky indicated that territorial concessions would be discussed should he meet Putin. It was clever of Zelensky to put the onus back on Putin rather than rejecting out-of-hand the prospect of land swaps. “If we played this well, we could end this, and we have to end it,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said. Indeed, he called Trump’s offer of security guarantees for Ukraine a “breakthrough.” 

    What those guarantees would look like remains unclear. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who appears to have established a good working relationship with Trump, indicated that it was imperative to provide “Article 5-like guarantees” to Ukraine. What this will amount to is an open question – Germany announced today that it was already overstretched with its stationing of a Bundeswehr brigade in Lithuania and that it is unlikely to put any boots on the ground in Ukraine. 

    But the biggest obstacle to a peace deal, of course, is whether Putin even wants one. “President Putin wants to find an answer, too” Trump said. Does he? So far, as he launches fresh fusillades of missiles and drones at Ukraine, the Russian tyrant appears to believe that he has more to benefit from continuing rather than halting the war that he, and he alone, launched in February 2022. For all the bonhomie that existed between him and Trump in Alaska, it may be replaced by a more adversarial relationship in coming weeks should Putin maintain his obduracy about reaching an actual deal. 

  • Zelensky dresses up and avoids dressing-down

    Zelensky dresses up and avoids dressing-down

    Not since Barack Obama held a press conference dressed as the Man from Del Monte has a suit played such a critical role in US politics. But there it was, after the spring press conference incident, President Zelensky arrived in Washington, DC wearing a suit. The “YMCA”-loving Trump administration is hardly batting off the accusations of campness given its fixation with menswear. Still, Zelensky came, as did all of Europe. 

    All the handshakes went off without a hitch, although the size difference meant that the visuals were slightly more redolent of vaudeville than high diplomatic drama. Zelensky handed a letter from his wife to the First Lady, thanking her for her intervention on behalf of Ukraine’s missing children. During Trump’s monologues on foreign policy he has often let slip that his wife has been a driving influence in favor of a more compassionate attitude towards Ukraine. Whether the Secret Service can deliver it to the right Melania remains to be seen.

    Trump specializes in the diplomatic theater of the absurd: Samuel Beckett meets Metternich meets the cast of Jersey Shore. He duly boasted of solving “six wars in six months,” including in a place he called the Republic of the Condo – which sounds like a pseudonym for Florida. This was a press conference through the looking glass. 

    Meanwhile the President kept his audience guessing: “We have great people up here,” he said, gesturing at the assembled press pack. “We also have terrible people.” Nobody does scattered insults quite like Trump – he makes the Gatling Gun look like a close-range precision missile. 

    He treated Zelensky to a long and very involved monologue about the virtues of paper ballots – by far the lengthiest answer of the day. It was a bit like one of those sections you have to skip in a Victorian novel, as when Anthony Trollope does one of his three-chapter sequences about a fox hunt or spends 100 pages waxing lyrical about checks. 

    In the midst of this, the President insisted that only America uses paper ballots. For all his comedy it is worth remembering that Trump includes provable untruths in most of his monologues. Of course it isn’t only America which uses mail-in ballots. As ever, Trump’s press conference was like watching a mime show. It was wild, confusing and seemingly irrelevant at times, and yet when it was over you had a sense that you’d seen something impressive.

    All in all, as good as it could be expected for Ukraine. J.D. Vance – unusually silent today – had apparently been neutered and, for all the Trumpian weirdness, the exchanges yielded a more concrete level of support than last time. On security, said Trump, “there’s going to be a lot of help, we will be involved.” 

    For now, at least, it seemed President Zelensky had figured out the winning formula; nod, smile and say as little as possible.

  • Why Vladimir Putin wants Donetsk

    Will Ukraine’s fate depend on Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka? These may not be household names, but they are the four key “fortress cities” in the remaining portions of Donetsk region that Vladimir Putin is reportedly demanding as the price for peace.

    Although the details are still unclear, it seems that the framework for a peace deal agreed in outline between Putin and Trump would see the Russians agreeing to freeze the current front line. They could maybe even hand back some small sections of the Sumy and Kharkiv regions they have conquered in return for Kyiv surrendering the much larger portion of Donetsk region it still holds.

    This would be a bitter pill to swallow on so many levels. It is not just that the area in question – around 30 percent of the region, over 6,000 square miles – is so much larger than the territory which would be liberated in Trump’s vaunted “swap.” It is also because of its strategic value. Within that region lies the so-called “fortress belt,” made up of the aforementioned well-defended cities and several other towns and settlements running north to south along the N-20 Kostyantynivka-Slovyansk highway.

    Given that Kyiv would inevitably and understandably fear some renewed Russian aggression, whatever the terms of any deal, it becomes all the more important for them to have those defensive lines on their side of the front line. Besides, this is territory now soaked in the blood of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and also of symbolic importance: Slovyansk is the city seized by Russian nationalist Igor “Strelkov” Girkin when, in his own words, he “pulled the trigger” on the risings that generated the undeclared war in the Donbas that in due course led to the 2022 invasion. In those circumstances there may even be some question as to whether the military would even accept orders to withdraw.

    Territorial conquest was never Putin’s real objective, so much as the subjugation of Ukraine

    Nonetheless, Putin does seem to have reshaped the debate. By making it about whether or not this surrender is acceptable, he has in effect made the West acknowledge that the existing occupied territories are lost. Perhaps some day, whether through military or political means, they may be regained, but there is no credible theory of victory that sees Kyiv regaining them in the foreseeable future that does not rest on some unlikely deus ex machina like a Russian economic collapse or Putin’s imminent demise. Besides, Putin’s line is presumably that ultimately this territory is lost to Kyiv anyway – whether it takes a month, a year, or longer, someday his forces will grind their bloody way through the fortress belt. A refusal to deal now just means more death and misery all round before the inevitable.

    Putin may be wrong and may prove willing to abandon this demand, but he will not do so easily or cheaply. Territorial conquest was never Putin’s real objective, so much as the subjugation of Ukraine. Given that he never anticipated that he was getting himself into a major, expensive and open-ended war though, Putin may be willing to take a deal that he can still trumpet as a triumph at home. However, Ukraine may also feel it wins a victory of sorts if it is able to gain the kind of meaningful security guarantees and reconstruction assistance to become a truly sovereign, democratic and stable nation, outside Moscow’s sphere of influence.

    This, after all, is where the really difficult negotiations are likely to remain. That chunk of Donetsk matters, but it is the environment in which Ukrainians will rebuild their country that will be crucial. Putin will want to leave them undefended and divided (indeed, a small part of the reason for his demand for Donetsk is precisely to force Zelensky either to doom his people to more war or take a monstrously unpopular decision in the name of peace). 

    The question is how far Ukraine’s allies are willing to offer those serious and credible guarantees and to force Putin to swallow them. They may be tempted to stick to their hollow mantras that “Putin cannot be allowed to win.” Ukrainians, fighting at the front and hiding from Russian drones in air-raid shelters, have every right to choose to hold out and resist any such ugly deal. Given that Ukraine’s European allies are clearly (and rightly) unwilling to put their own soldiers directly into harm’s way, though, you could question the morality of their seeking to encourage Zelensky to stand firm simply to avoid confronting the grubby moral compromises peace would demand.

  • The folly of labeling air conditioning ‘far right’

    The folly of labeling air conditioning ‘far right’

    If you want to understand what lies behind the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform party and its consistent – indeed, deepening – lead in the UK polls, I have a suggestion: French air conditioning.  

    To be more specific, if you want to understand the difficulty Reform’s opponents have in tackling it and why the party’s rise seems inexorable, the row going on at the moment in France over air conditioning offers a guide.

    When you insist that wanting cool air is ‘far right’, you are in the same sphere as those who say that protecting borders is pandering to the far right

    The New York Times reports how Marine Le Pen has said, with her typically incisive populist touch in the middle of a heat wave, that if she became president she would introduce a “major air-conditioning equipment plan” around France. She was backed by an opinion piece in Le Figaro, arguing that “making our fellow citizens sweat limits learning, reduces working hours and clogs up hospitals.”

    With its equally typical tone-deaf response, the French left is using the heat wave to campaign against air conditioning. Libération, the left’s house newspaper, called air con “an environmental aberration that must be overcome” because it uses up too much energy. 

    We’ve all heard the arguments many times. But more than that, Brits live in a country where air con is viewed by the authorities as something close to evil. In Florida, aircon is standard in 95 percent of new homes, as in Australia where 75 percent of homes have it. In Europe, long considered an aircon backwater by Americans, it is present in 30 percent of Italian homes and 40 percent of Spanish houses. And it is entirely normal in hospitals and care homes almost everywhere. Except, of course, in the UK – despite the appalling consequences of this. Last year 496 people died in care homes from heat, with a further 473 dying in hospitals. 

    But there is one argument against aircon I confess to not having come across before, until I read the New York Times report. A French talk show host introduced its debate on Le Pen’s proposals by asking, “Is air-conditioning a far-right thing?”

    If you want to take advantage of technology to be cool in your own home, you may, it seems, be far right.  Forget the fact that modern air-to-air pumps remove much of the green issues around cooling, for some supposed progressives, the very concept of cool air is seen by some as “far right.”

    Which brings us to Reform, and also to the protests currently taking place in Britain outside asylum hostels and hotels. Because if you insist that wanting cool air is “far right,” you are in the same sphere as those who say that protecting borders is pandering to the far right, and that worrying that your neighborhood is housing sex offenders and dangerous young men also shows you are far right. You are removing any real meaning from the term by using it to describe mainstream ideas held by tens of millions.

    And so the more you insist that such ideas are far right, the more you turn your defeat into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Screaming “far right” at people who want air conditioning won’t lead to anyone deciding they would rather sweat in the heat, just as labeling as far right anyone concerned over the influx of asylum seekers in their neighborhood won’t cause them to suddenly take stock and welcome them into the village. 

    Quite the opposite, in fact. Because the more you label politicians who support ideas which are widely popular as “far right,” and the more you attack those who agree with those politicians, the more likely you make it that those you attack will draw the logical conclusion: that those politicians are the ones on their side. And the more their support will grow.

    But more than that, the more likely you also make it that those who really are far right are able to present themselves as being smeared, because the term has become devoid of real meaning.

    How is it that such a basic lesson still needs to be learned?