Zachary Paikin is a research fellow in the Grand Strategy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
It’s been more than six years since the EU’s former High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell declared the bloc must learn to speak the “language of power.” And yet, Europe’s response to today’s tectonic geopolitical shifts suggests little in the way of learning.
The bloc’s reaction to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was to pursue a normative approach, which eschewed any possibility of identifying a mutually acceptable off-ramp or compromise with Moscow. The inevitable result was an increase in Europe’s security dependence on the U.S., deepening its vulnerability to great-power predations in a fast-changing world. And since U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Europe has only compounded this initial strategic misstep.
The bloc has shredded what remains of its normative power before building up its instruments of hard power, leaving it even more strategically isolated. Today, few are convinced Ukraine’s right to pursue NATO membership is a sacred part of the “rules-based international order” — especially when Europe is ready to play fast and loose with international law in its response to strikes on Venezuela or Iran. It’s hard to argue that Greenland’s future should be for Greenlanders and Danes to decide when the same standard isn’t applied to the people of Gaza.
But in failing to grasp what lies behind Trump’s push for peace in Ukraine, Europe risks missing an opportunity to develop the diplomatic nimbleness and hard-power capabilities necessary to navigate a post-unipolar world.
After three decades of the liberal West wrongly assuming its preferred norms and principles could unilaterally shape the contours of the world order, Trump is moving to reset the terms of great-power relations. In the cases of Venezuela and Greenland, for example, he wants to rewrite the rules of what is acceptable in America’s backyard.
However, it would be wrong to conclude this vision presages a world of spheres of influence. Rather, the U.S. is compelled to maximize room for maneuver in its relations with other great powers, given that Washington and its allies can no longer set the terms of international order alone. And this requires taking steps to avoid pushing Moscow and Beijing too close together — even if Russia retains incentives to maintain stable ties with a rising China.
In other words, the U.S. needs to reset its relationship with Russia.
This doesn’t require legitimizing spheres of influence and, therefore, doesn’t necessarily clash with European sensibilities. But it’s a task that remains impossible without Moscow and Washington resolving their differences over Ukraine.
If Russia concludes that a negotiated settlement in Ukraine has become impossible, the fighting will continue — no matter what. Perhaps until mutual exhaustion, or perhaps the conflict escalates in ways that severely threaten Europe’s security. In either case, political conditions will no longer support a U.S.-Russia reset. This is why Trump has, despite repeated obstacles, remained determined to pursue peace in Ukraine.
But Europe’s response to Trump’s Ukraine initiative has largely missed the forest for the trees.
All too often, the bloc has sought to insert poison pills into negotiations, transgressing Russia’s red lines — like with the Coalition of the Willing’s proposal to deploy a deterrence force on Ukrainian soil. Perhaps this is because, after decades of telling Russia it has no say over the security orientation of a state on its border, a deal that cements a compromise on this issue is too difficult to contemplate. Or perhaps, more cynically, it’s about buying time to build up Europe’s military capabilities and push back the day when Ukraine’s reconstruction bill comes due.
But failing to entertain the compromises necessary for peace would be a major missed opportunity for Europe. A compromise settlement would still allow Kyiv to eventually join the EU and pursue meaningful security, intelligence and defense-industrial cooperation with the West. Despite its many blemishes, the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy is clear in its desire for European countries to stand on their own two feet as the continent’s leading security providers. And an end to the war would advance this goal by making America’s auxiliary role in ensuring Ukraine’s security explicit.
Fortunately, we saw some encouraging signs from the latest Coalition of the Willing summit held in Paris earlier this month. The coalition’s latest proposal for a multinational force makes no explicit provision for the deployment of combat troops on Ukrainian soil, and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s remarks merely called for undefined “military hubs.” This points to the possibility of an agreement on security guarantees that’s acceptable to Moscow being within reach.
Having already shredded its normative credibility, there’s little reason for Europe to pursue a policy course that risks consolidating its status as a strategic sideshow. At the mercy of an increasingly predatory U.S., we are fast approaching the moment where the risks of a “bad peace” in Ukraine are outweighed by the risks of failing to seize the opportunity that such a peace offers Europe to emerge as a more strategically agile hard-power actor.
So long as the war continues, the EU’s dependence on the U.S. will persist, and a European “language of power” will prove elusive.
