Europe is in deep trouble today, mainly because of the Ukraine war, which has played a key role in undermining what had been a largely peaceful region. Unfortunately, the situation is not likely to improve in the years ahead. In fact, Europe is likely to be less stable moving forward than it is today.
The present situation in Europe stands in marked contrast to the unprecedented stability that Europe enjoyed during the unipolar moment, which ran from roughly 1992, after the Soviet Union collapsed, until 2017, when China and Russia emerged as great powers, transforming unipolarity into multipolarity. We all remember Francis Fukuyama’s famous 1989 article—“The End of History?”—which argued that liberal democracy was destined to spread across the world, bringing peace and prosperity in its wake. That argument was obviously dead wrong, but many in the West believed it for more than 20 years. Few Europeans imagined in the heyday of unipolarity that Europe would be in so much trouble today.
So, what went wrong?
The Ukraine war, which I will argue was provoked by the West, and especially the U.S., is the principal cause of Europe’s insecurity today. Nevertheless, there is a second factor at play: the shift in the global balance of power in 2017 from unipolarity to multipolarity, which was sure to threaten the security architecture in Europe. Still, there is good reason to think this shift in the distribution of power was a manageable problem. But the Ukraine war, coupled with the coming of multipolarity, guaranteed big trouble, which is not likely to go away in the foreseeable future.
Let me start by explaining how the end of unipolarity threatens the foundations of European stability. And then I will discuss the effects of the Ukraine war on Europe and how they interacted with the shift to multipolarity to alter the European landscape in profound ways.
The Shift From Unipolarity to Multipolarity
The key to preserving stability in Western Europe during the Cold War and all of Europe during the unipolar moment was the U.S. military presence in Europe, which was embedded in NATO. The U.S., of course, has dominated that alliance from the beginning, which has made it almost impossible for the member states underneath the American security umbrella to fight with each other. In effect, the U.S. has been a powerful pacifying force in Europe. Today’s European elites recognize that simple fact, which explains why they are deeply committed to keeping American troops in Europe and maintaining a U.S.-dominated NATO.
It is worth noting that when the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union was moving to pull its troops out of Eastern Europe and put an end to the Warsaw Pact, Moscow did not object to a U.S.-dominated NATO remaining intact. Like the Western Europeans at the time, Soviet leaders understood and appreciated pacifier logic. However, they were adamantly opposed to NATO expansion, but more about that later.
Some might argue that the EU, not NATO, was the main cause of European stability during the unipolar moment, which is why the EU, not NATO, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. But this is wrong. While the EU has been a remarkably successful institution, its success is dependent on NATO keeping the peace in Europe. Turning Marx on his head, the political military institution is the base or foundation, and the economic institution is the superstructure. All of this is to say that, absent the American pacifier, not only does NATO as we know it disappear, but the EU will also be undermined in serious ways.
During unipolarity, which again ran from 1992 to 2017, the U.S. was by far the most powerful state in the international system, and it could easily maintain a substantial military presence in Europe. Its foreign policy elites, in fact, not only wanted to maintain NATO but grow it by expanding the alliance into Eastern Europe.
This unipolar world went away, however, with the coming of multipolarity. The US was no longer the only great power in the world. China and Russia were now great powers, which meant that American policymakers had to think differently about the world around them.
To understand what multipolarity means for Europe, it is essential to consider the distribution of power among the world’s three great powers. The U.S. is still the most powerful country in the world, but China has been catching up and is now widely recognized as a peer competitor. Its huge population coupled with its truly remarkable economic growth since the early 1990s has turned it into a potential hegemon in East Asia. For the U.S., which is already a regional hegemon in the Western Hemisphere, another great power achieving hegemony in either East Asia or Europe is a deeply worrisome prospect. Remember that the U.S. entered both World Wars to prevent Germany and Japan from becoming regional hegemons in Europe and East Asia respectively. The same logic applies today.
Russia is the weakest of the three great powers and contrary to what many Europeans think, it is not a threat to overrun all of Ukraine, much less eastern Europe. After all, it has spent the past three and a half years just trying to conquer the eastern one-fifth of Ukraine. The Russian army is not the Wehrmacht and Russia—unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War and China in East Asia today—is not a potential regional hegemon.
Given this distribution of global power, there is a strategic imperative for the U.S. to focus on containing China and preventing it from dominating East Asia. There is no compelling strategic reason, however, for the U.S. to maintain a significant military presence in Europe, given that Russia is not a threat to become a European hegemon. Indeed, devoting precious defense resources to Europe reduces the resources available for East Asia. This basic logic explains the U.S. pivot to Asia. But if a country pivots to one region, by definition, it pivots away from another region and that region is Europe.
There is another important dimension, which has little to do with the global balance of power, that further reduces the likelihood the U.S. will remain committed to maintaining a significant military presence in Europe. Specifically, the U.S. has a special relationship with Israel that has no parallel in recorded history. That connection, which is the result of the tremendous power of the Israel lobby in the U.S., not only means that American policymakers will support Israel unconditionally, but it also means that the U.S. will involve itself in Israel’s wars, either directly or indirectly. In short, the US will continue to allocate substantial military resources to Israel as well as commit substantial military forces of its own to the Middle East. This obligation to Israel creates an additional incentive to draw down U.S. forces in Europe and push European countries to provide for their own security.
The bottom line is that the powerful structural forces associated with the shift from unipolarity to multipolarity, coupled with America’s peculiar relationship with Israel, have the potential to eliminate the U.S. pacifier from Europe and cripple NATO, which would obviously have serious negative consequences for European security. It is possible, however, to avoid an American exit, which is surely what almost every European leader desires. Simply put, achieving that outcome requires wise strategies and skillful diplomacy on both sides of the Atlantic. But that is not what we have gotten so far. Instead, Europe and the U.S. foolishly sought to bring Ukraine into NATO, which provoked a losing war with Russia that markedly increases the odds that the U.S. will depart Europe and NATO will be eviscerated. Let me explain.
Who Caused the Ukraine War: The Conventional Wisdom
To fully understand the consequences of the Ukraine war, it is essential to consider its causes, because the reason Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 says a great deal about Russia’s war aims and the long-term effects of the war.
The conventional wisdom in the West is that Vladimir Putin is responsible for causing the Ukraine war. His aim, so the argument goes, is to conquer all of Ukraine and make it part of a greater Russia. Once that goal is achieved, Russia will move to create an empire in eastern Europe, much like the Soviet Union did after the Second World War. In this story, Putin is a mortal threat to the West and must be dealt with forcefully. In short, Putin is an imperialist with a master plan that fits neatly into a rich Russian tradition. There are numerous problems with this story. Let me spell out five of them.
First, there is no evidence from before February 24, 2022 that Putin wanted to conquer all of Ukraine and incorporate it into Russia. Proponents of the conventional wisdom cannot point to anything Putin wrote or said that indicates he thought conquering Ukraine was a desirable goal, that he thought it was a feasible goal, and that he intended to pursue that goal.
When challenged on this point, purveyors of the conventional wisdom point to Putin’s claim that Ukraine was an “artificial” state and especially to his view that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people,” which is a core theme in his well-known July 12, 2021 article. These comments, however, say nothing about his reason for going to war. In fact, that article provides significant evidence that Putin recognized Ukraine as an independent country. For example, he tells the Ukrainian people, “You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome!” Regarding how Russia should treat Ukraine, he writes, “There is only one answer: with respect.” He concludes that lengthy article with the following words: “And what Ukraine will be—it is up to its citizens to decide.”
In that same article and again in an important speech he gave on February 21, 2022, Putin emphasized that Russia accepts “the new geopolitical reality that took shape after the dissolution of the USSR.” He reiterated that same point for a third time on February 24, 2022, when he announced that Russia would invade Ukraine. All of these statements are directly at odds with the claim that Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and incorporate it into a greater Russia.
Second, Putin did not have anywhere near enough troops to conquer Ukraine. I estimate that Russia invaded Ukraine with at most 190,000 troops. General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the present commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, maintains that Russia’s invasion force was only 100,000 strong. There is no way that a force numbering either 100,000 or 190,000 soldiers could conquer, occupy, and absorb all of Ukraine into a greater Russia. Consider that when Germany invaded the western half of Poland on September 1, 1939, the Wehrmacht numbered about 1.5 million men. Ukraine is geographically more than 3 times larger than the western half of Poland was in 1939, and Ukraine in 2022 had almost twice as many people as Poland did when the Germans invaded. If we accept General Syrskyi’s estimate that 100,000 Russian troops invaded Ukraine in 2022, that means Russia had an invasion force that was one-15th the size of the German force that went into Poland. And that small Russian army was invading a country that was much larger than the western half of Poland in terms of both territorial size and population.
One might argue that Russian leaders thought that the Ukrainian military was so small and so outgunned that their army could easily conquer the entire country. But this is not the case. In fact, Putin and his lieutenants were well aware that the United States and its European allies had been arming and training the Ukrainian military since the crisis first broke out on February 22, 2014. Indeed, Moscow’s great fear was that Ukraine was becoming a de facto member of NATO. Moreover, Russian leaders recognized that the Ukrainian army, which was larger than their invasion force, had been fighting effectively in the Donbass since 2014. They surely understood that the Ukrainian military was not a paper tiger that could be defeated quickly and decisively, especially since it had powerful backing from the West. Putin’s aim was to quickly achieve limited territorial gains and force Ukraine to the bargaining table, which is what happened. This discussion brings me to my third point.
Immediately after the war began, Russia reached out to Ukraine to start negotiations to end the war and work out a modus vivendi between the two countries. This move is directly at odds with the claim that Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and make it part of Greater Russia. Negotiations between Kiev and Moscow began in Belarus just four days after Russian troops entered Ukraine. That Belarus track was eventually replaced by an Israeli as well as an Istanbul track. The available evidence indicates that the Russians were negotiating seriously and were not interested in absorbing Ukrainian territory, save for Crimea, which they had annexed in 2014, and possibly the Donbass region. The negotiations ended when the Ukrainians, with prodding from Britain and the United States, walked away from the negotiations, which were making good progress when they ended.
Furthermore, Putin reports that when the negotiations were taking place and making progress, he was asked to remove Russian troops from the area around Kiev as a goodwill gesture, which he did on March 29, 2022. No government in the West or former policymaker has seriously challenged Putin’s account, which is directly at odds with the claim that he was bent on conquering all of Ukraine.
Fourth, in the months before the war started, Putin tried to find a diplomatic solution to the brewing crisis. On December 17, 2021, Putin sent a letter to both President Joe Biden and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg proposing a solution to the crisis based on a written guarantee that: 1) Ukraine would not join NATO, 2) no offensive weapons would be stationed near Russia’s borders, and 3) NATO troops and equipment moved into Eastern Europe since 1997 would be moved back to Western Europe. Whatever one thinks of the feasibility of reaching a bargain based on Putin’s opening demands, it shows that he was trying to avoid war. The United States, on the other hand, refused to negotiate with Putin. It appears it was not interested in avoiding war.
Fifth, putting Ukraine aside, there is not a scintilla of evidence that Putin was contemplating conquering any other countries in eastern Europe. That is hardly surprising, given that the Russian army is not even large enough to overrun all of Ukraine, much less try to conquer the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania. Plus, those countries are all NATO members, which would almost certainly mean war with the United States and its allies.
In sum, while it is widely believed in Europe—and I am sure here in the European Parliament—that Putin is an imperialist who has long been determined to conquer all of Ukraine, and then conquer additional countries west of Ukraine, virtually all the available evidence is at odds with this perspective.
The Real Cause of the Ukraine War
In fact, the United States and its European allies provoked the war. This is not to deny, of course, that Russia started the war by invading Ukraine. But the underlying cause of the conflict was the NATO decision to bring Ukraine into the alliance, which virtually all Russian leaders saw as an existential threat that must be eliminated. But NATO expansion is not the whole problem, as it is part of a broader strategy that aims to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Bringing Kiev into the European Union (EU) and promoting a color revolution in Ukraine—in other words, turning it into pro-Western liberal democracy—are the other two prongs of the policy. Russian leaders fear all three prongs, but they fear NATO expansion the most. As Putin put it, “Russia cannot feel safe, develop, and exist while facing a permanent threat from the territory of today’s Ukraine.” In essence, he was not interested in making Ukraine a part of Russia; he was interested in making sure it did not become what he labelled a “springboard” for Western aggression against Russia. To deal with this threat, Putin launched a preventive war on February 24, 2022.
What is the basis of the claim that NATO expansion was the principal cause of the Ukraine war?
First, Russian leaders across the board said repeatedly before the war started that they considered NATO expansion into Ukraine to be an existential threat that had to be eliminated. Putin made numerous public statements laying out this line of argument before 24 February 2022. Other Russian leaders—including the defense minister, the foreign minister, the deputy foreign minister, and Moscow’s ambassador to Washington—also emphasized the centrality of NATO expansion for causing the crisis over Ukraine. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made this point succinctly at a press conference on January 14, 2022: “The key to everything is the guarantee that NATO will not expand eastward.”
Second, the centrality of Russia’s profound fear of Ukraine joining NATO is illustrated by events since the war started. For example, during the Istanbul negotiations that took place immediately after the invasion began, Russian leaders made it manifestly clear that Ukraine had to accept “permanent neutrality” and could not join NATO. The Ukrainians accepted Russia’s demand without serious resistance, surely because they knew that otherwise it would be impossible to end the war. More recently, on June 14, 2024, Putin laid out Russia’s demands for ending the war. One of his core demands was that Kiev “officially” state that it abandons its “plans to join NATO.” None of this is surprising, as Russia has always seen Ukraine in NATO as an existential threat that must be prevented at all costs.
Third, a substantial number of influential and highly regarded individuals in the West recognized before the war that NATO expansion—especially into Ukraine—would be seen by Russian leaders as a mortal threat and would eventually lead to disaster.
William Burns, who was recently the head of the CIA, but was the U.S. ambassador to Moscow at the time of the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, wrote a memo to then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that succinctly describes Russian thinking about bringing Ukraine into the alliance. “Ukrainian entry into NATO,” he wrote, “is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” NATO, he said, “would be seen … as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. Today’s Russia will respond. Russian-Ukrainian relations will go into a deep freeze…. It will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.”
Burns was not the only Western policymaker in 2008 who understood that bringing Ukraine into NATO was fraught with danger. At the Bucharest summit, for example, both Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy opposed moving forward on NATO membership for Ukraine because they understood it would alarm and infuriate Russia. Merkel recently explained her opposition: “I was very sure … that Putin is not going to just let that happen. From his perspective, that would be a declaration of war."
It is also worth noting that the former secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said twice before leaving office that “President Putin started this war because he wanted to close NATO’s door and deny Ukraine the right to choose its own path.” Hardly anyone in the West challenged this remarkable admission, and he did not retract it.
To take this a step further, numerous American policymakers and strategists opposed President Bill Clinton’s decision to expand NATO during the 1990s, when the decision was being debated. Those opponents understood from the start that Russian leaders would see enlargement as a threat to their vital interests, and that the policy would eventually lead to disaster. The list of opponents includes prominent establishment figures like George Kennan, both Clinton’s secretary of defense, William Perry, and his chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General John Shalikashvili, Paul Nitze, Robert Gates, Robert McNamara, Richard Pipes, and Jack Matlock, just to name a few.
The logic of Putin’s position should make perfect sense to Americans, who have long been committed to the Monroe Doctrine, which stipulates that no distant great power is allowed to form an alliance with a country in the Western Hemisphere and locate its military forces there. The United States would interpret such a move as an existential threat and go to great lengths to eliminate the danger. Of course, this is what happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when President John Kennedy made it clear to the Soviet leaders that their nuclear-tipped missiles would have to be removed from Cuba. Putin is deeply influenced by the same logic. After all, great powers do not want distant great powers moving military forces into areas near their own territory.
Supporters of bringing Ukraine into NATO sometimes argue that Moscow should not have been concerned about enlargement, because “NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no threat to Russia.” But that is not how Russian leaders think about Ukraine in NATO, and it is what they think that matters. In sum, there is no question that Putin saw Ukraine joining NATO as an existential threat that could not be allowed and was willing to go to war to prevent it from happening, which he did on February 24, 2022.
The Course of The War So Far
Let me now talk about the course of the war. After the Istanbul negotiations failed in April 2022, the Ukraine conflict turned into a war of attrition bearing marked similarities to the First World War on the western front. The war, which has been a brutal slugfest, has been going on for more than three and a half years. During that time, Russia has formally annexed four Ukrainian oblasts in addition to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. In effect, Russia has so far annexed about 22 percent of Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory, all of which is in the eastern part of that country.
The West has provided enormous support to Ukraine since the war broke out in 2022, doing everything but directly engaging in the fighting. It is no accident that Russian leaders think their country is at war with the West. Nevertheless, Trump is determined to sharply limit America’s role in the war and shift the burden of supporting Ukraine onto Europe’s shoulders.
Russia is clearly winning the war and is likely to prevail. The reason is simple: In a war of attrition, each side tries to bleed the other white, which means that the side that has more soldiers and more firepower is likely to emerge victorious. Russia has a significant advantage on both dimensions. For example, Syrskyi says that Russia now has three times more troops engaged in the war than Ukraine, and, at some points along the front lines, the Russians outnumber the Ukrainians by 6:1. In fact, according to numerous reports, Ukraine does not have enough soldiers to thickly populate all its front line positions, which sometimes makes it easy for Russian forces to penetrate its front lines.
In terms of firepower, throughout most of the war, Russia’s advantage in artillery—a critically important weapon in attrition warfare—has been reported to be either 3:1, 7:1, or 10:1. Russia also has a huge inventory of highly accurate glide bombs, which they have used with deadly effectiveness against Ukrainian defenses, while Kyiv has hardly any glide bombs. While there is no question that Ukraine has a highly effective drone fleet, which was initially more effective than Russia’s drone fleet, Russia has turned the tables over the past year and now has the upper hand with drones as well as artillery and glide bombs.
It is important to emphasize that Kiev has no viable solution to its manpower problem as it has a much smaller population than Russia and it is plagued by draft-dodging and desertion. Nor can Ukraine address the imbalance in weaponry, mainly because Russia has a robust industrial base which produces vast quantities of weaponry, while Ukraine’s industrial base is paltry. To compensate, Ukraine depends heavily on the West for weaponry, but Western countries lack the manufacturing capability necessary to keep up with Russian output. To make matters worse, Trump is slowing down the flow of American weaponry to Ukraine.
The bottom line is that Ukraine is badly outgunned and badly outmanned, which is fatal in a war of attrition. On top of that dire situation on the battlefield, Russia has a huge inventory of missiles and drones that it uses to strike deep into Ukraine and destroy critical infrastructure and weapons depots. For sure, Kiev has the capability to hit targets deep inside Russia, but it has nowhere near the striking power Moscow possesses. Moreover, striking targets deep inside Russia is going to have little effect on what happens on the battlefield, where this war is being settled.
The Prospects for a Peaceful Settlement
What about the prospects for a peaceful settlement? There has been much discussion over the course of 2025 about finding a diplomatic settlement to end the war. This conversation is due in good part to Trump’s promise that he would settle the war either before he moved into the White House or shortly thereafter. He obviously failed—indeed, he has not even come close to succeeding. The sad truth is that there is no hope of negotiating a meaningful peace agreement. This war will be settled on the battlefield, where the Russians are likely to win an ugly victory that results in a frozen conflict with Russia on one side and Ukraine, Europe, and the U.S. on the other side. Let me explain.
Settling the war diplomatically is not possible because the opposing sides have irreconcilable demands. Moscow insists that Ukraine must be a neutral country, which means it cannot be in NATO or have meaningful security guarantees from the West. The Russians also demand that Ukraine and the West recognize their annexation of Crimea and the four oblasts in eastern Ukraine. Their third key demand is that Kiev limit the size of its military to the point where it presents no military threat to Russia. Unsurprisingly, Europe and especially Ukraine categorically reject these demands. Ukraine refuses to concede any territory to Russia, while European and Ukrainian leaders continue to push to bring Ukraine into NATO or at least allow the West to provide Kiev with a serious security guarantee. Disarming Ukraine to a point that satisfies Moscow is also a non-starter. There is no way these opposing positions can be reconciled to produce a peace agreement.
Thus, the war will be settled on the battlefield. Although I believe Russia will win, it will not win a decisive victory where it ends up conquering all of Ukraine. Instead, it is likely to gain an ugly victory, where it ends up occupying somewhere between 20 to 40 percent of pre-2014 Ukraine, while Ukraine ends up as a dysfunctional rump state covering the territory that Russia does not conquer. Moscow is unlikely to try to conquer all of Ukraine, because the Western 60 percent of the country is filled with ethnic Ukrainians who would mightily resist a Russian occupation and turn it into a nightmare for the occupying forces. All of this is to say that the likely outcome of the Ukraine war is a frozen conflict between a greater Russia and a rump Ukraine backed by Europe.
Consequences
Let me now explore the likely consequences of the Ukraine war, focusing first on the consequences for Ukraine itself, and then on the consequences for relations between Europe and Russia. Finally, I will discuss the likely consequences inside of Europe as well as for the trans-Atlantic relationship.
For starters, Ukraine has effectively been wrecked. It has already lost a substantial portion of its territory and is likely to lose more land before the fighting stops. Its economy is in tatters with no prospect of recovery in the foreseeable future, and according to my calculations, it has suffered roughly 1 million casualties, a staggering number for any country, but certainly for one that is said to be in a “demographic death spiral.” Russia has paid a significant price as well, but it has suffered nowhere near as much as Ukraine.
Europe will almost certainly remain allied with rump Ukraine for the foreseeable future, given sunk costs and the profound Russophobia that pervades the West. But that continuing relationship will not work to Kiev’s advantage for two reasons. First, it will incentivize Moscow to interfere in Ukraine’s domestic affairs to cause it economic and political trouble, so that it is not a threat to Russia and is in no position to join either NATO or the EU. Second, Europe’s commitment to supporting Kiev no matter what motivates the Russians to conquer as much Ukrainian territory as possible while the war is raging, so as to maximize the weakness of the Ukrainian rump state that remains once the conflict is frozen.
What about relations between Europe and Russia moving forward? They are likely to be poisonous for as far as the eye can see. Both the Europeans and surely the Ukrainians will work to undermine Moscow’s efforts to integrate the Ukrainian territories it has annexed into greater Russia as well as look for opportunities to cause the Russians economic and political trouble. Russia, for its part, will look for opportunities to cause economic and political trouble inside of Europe and between Europe and the U.S. Russian leaders will have a powerful incentive to fracture the West as much as possible, since the West will almost certainly have its gunsights on Russia. And one does not want to forget that Russia will be working to keep Ukraine dysfunctional while Europe will be working to make it functional.
Relations between Europe and Russia will not only be poisonous, but they will also be dangerous. The possibility of war will be ever-present. In addition to the risk that war between Ukraine and Russia could restart—after all, Ukraine will want its lost territory back—there are six other flashpoints where a war pitting Russia against one or more European countries could break out. First, consider the Arctic, where the melting ice has opened the door to competition over passageways and resources. Remember that seven of the eight countries located in the Arctic are NATO members. Russia is the eighth, which means it is outnumbered 7:1 by NATO countries in that strategically important area.
The second flashpoint is the Baltic Sea, which is sometimes referred to as a “NATO lake” because it is largely surrounded by countries from that alliance. That waterway, however, is of vital strategic interest to Russia, as is Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave in eastern Europe that is also surrounded by NATO countries. The fourth flashpoint is Belarus, which because of its size and location, is as strategically important to Russia as Ukraine. The Europeans and the Americans will surely try to install a pro-Western government in Minsk after President Aleksandr Lukashenko leaves office and eventually turn it into a pro-Western bulwark on Russia’s border.
The West is already deeply involved in the politics of Moldova, which not only borders Ukraine, but contains a breakaway region known as Transnistria, which is occupied by Russian troops. The final flashpoint is the Black Sea, which is of great strategic importance to both Russia and Ukraine, as well as a handful of NATO countries: Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Turkey. As with the Baltic Sea, there is much potential for trouble in the Black Sea.
All of this is to say that even after Ukraine becomes a frozen conflict, Europe and Russia will continue to have hostile relations in a geopolitical setting filled with trouble-spots. In other words, the threat of a major European war will not go away when the fighting stops in Ukraine.
Let me now turn to the consequences of the Ukraine war inside of Europe and then turn to its likely effects on trans-Atlantic relations. For starters, it cannot be emphasized enough that a Russian victory in Ukraine—even if it is an ugly victory as I anticipate—would be a stunning defeat for Europe. Or to put it in slightly different words, it would be a stunning defeat for NATO, which has been deeply involved in the Ukraine conflict since it started in February 2014. Indeed, the alliance has been committed to defeating Russia since the conflict turned into a major war in February 2022.
NATO’s defeat will lead to recriminations between member states and inside many of them as well. Who is to blame for this catastrophe will matter greatly to the governing elites in Europe and surely there will be a powerful tendency to blame others and not accept responsibility themselves. The debate over “who lost Ukraine” will take place in a Europe that is already wracked by fractious politics both between countries and inside them. In addition to these political fights, some will question the future of NATO, given that it failed to check Russia, the country that most European leaders describe as a mortal threat. It seems almost certain that NATO will be much weaker after the Ukraine war is shut down than it was before that war started.
Any weakening of NATO will have negative repercussions for the EU, because a stable security environment is essential for the EU to flourish, and NATO is the key to stability in Europe. Threats to the EU aside, the great reduction in the flow of gas and oil to Europe since the war started has seriously hurt the major economies of Europe and slowed down growth in the overall Eurozone. There is good reason to think that economic growth across Europe is a long way from fully recovering from the Ukraine debacle.
A NATO defeat in Ukraine is also likely to lead to a trans-Atlantic blame game, especially since the Trump administration has refused to support Kiev as vigorously as the Biden administration and instead pushed the Europeans to assume more of the burden of keeping Ukraine in the fight. Thus, when the war finally ends with a Russian victory, Trump can accuse the Europeans of not stepping up to the plate, while European leaders can accuse Trump of bailing on Ukraine in its greatest moment of need. Of course, Trump’s relations with Europe have long been contentious, so these recriminations will only make a bad situation worse.
Then there is the all-important question of whether the U.S. will significantly reduce its military footprint in Europe or maybe even pull all its combat troops out of Europe. As I emphasized at the start of my talk, independent of the Ukraine war, the historic shift from unipolarity to multipolarity has created a powerful incentive for the U.S. to pivot to East Asia, which effectively means pivoting away from Europe. That move alone has the potential to put an end to NATO, which is another way of saying an end to the American pacifier in Europe.
What has happened in Ukraine since 2022 makes that outcome more likely. To repeat: Trump has a deep-seated hostility to Europe, especially its leaders, and he will blame them for losing Ukraine. He has no great affection for NATO and has described the EU as an enemy created “to screw the United States.” Furthermore, the fact that Ukraine lost the war despite enormous support from NATO is likely to lead him to trash the alliance as ineffective and useless. That line of argument will allow him to push Europe to provide for its own security and not free-ride on the U.S. In short, it seems likely that the results of the Ukraine war, coupled with the spectacular rise of China, will eat away at the fabric of trans-Atlantic relations in the years ahead, much to the detriment of Europe.
Conclusion
I would like to close now with a few general observations. For starters, the Ukraine war has been a disaster. Indeed, it is a disaster that is almost certain to keep giving in the years ahead. It has had catastrophic consequences for Ukraine. It has poisoned relations between Europe and Russia for the foreseeable future, and it has made Europe a more dangerous place. It has also caused serious economic and political harm inside Europe and badly damaged trans-Atlantic relations.
This calamity raises the inevitable question: Who is responsible for this war? This question will not go away anytime soon, and if anything is likely to become more prominent over time as the extent of the damage becomes more apparent to more people.
The answer, of course, is that the U.S. and its European allies are principally responsible. The April 2008 decision to bring Ukraine into NATO, which the West has relentlessly pursued since then, doubling down on that commitment time after time, is the main driving force behind the Ukraine war.
Most European leaders, however, will blame Putin for causing the war, and thus for its terrible consequences. But they are wrong. The war could have been avoided if the West had not decided to bring Ukraine into NATO or even if it had backed off from that commitment once the Russians made their opposition clear. Had that happened, Ukraine would almost certainly be intact today within its pre-2014 borders, and Europe would be more stable and more prosperous. But that ship has sailed, and Europe must now deal with the disastrous results of a series of avoidable blunders.
