Letter from Washington: Why Trump ignores Europe

Last week, President Donald Trump announced that the United States will start negotiations with his Russian and potentially Ukrainian counterparts to end the war in Ukraine. Europeans were incensed that Washington has cut them out and asserted, in the words of EU high representative Kaja Kallas, “no peace deal can be made … without Europe at the table.” So what gives? Does the lack of coordination with Europe reflect Trump’s inherent hatred of Europe? Are the disagreements between the US and Europe so deep that the Trump administration wants to avoid working with Europeans?

Unfortunately, to even ask questions like these exaggerates the importance of Europe to the Trump administration in these negotiations. It didn’t cut out Europe any more than it cut out the Guatemalans. In both cases, Trump and his team didn’t think they were necessary to the talks, so they didn’t invite them. It is not a plot against Europe: it is yet another demonstration of Europe’s increasing geopolitical irrelevance.

Rather than expressing continental-level FOMO, Europeans should be telling the Trump administration why their absence will doom the talks. The essential feature of any negotiation is that you only want people at the table who are relevant and indeed necessary to the solution you seek. Everybody else just distracts and delays from the already difficult task of finding an agreement. Unfortunately, it is hard to make the case that Europeans are necessary to these negotiations.

“But we do matter,” one can hear various Europeans foreign ministers shouting in a squeaky little-brother voice from the back of the auditorium at the Munich Security Conference. “We have money to pay for reconstruction, we have security guarantees to give to Ukraine, and sanctions to put on or lift off Russia.” And the British and the French even say they have troops they could put on the ground to enforce a ceasefire or a settlement.

These are indeed assets. But it is high time for Europeans to recognise assets are not enough to create geopolitical relevance. You also need to be able to credibly threaten to deploy or withhold these assets to enforce your preferences. And Europe does not have this capacity. Europe’s disunity and dependence on the US means that European countries will broadly accept whatever emerges from talks between the US and Russia. Indeed, they will probably contribute to the policy through reconstruction money, security guarantees, and sanctions relief. So why bother having them at the table?

This has long been the pattern. Europeans may complain and whine about US policies, but their deep dependence on the US for security (and now energy) means that they have little choice but to accept and even contribute to whatever policy emerges from a US geopolitical negotiation. In the past, this has meant that the post hoc intra-alliance negotiation is only on the European contribution to a US-decided priority—the war in Afghanistan is a prime example.

Europeans need to stop asking why the Americans cut them out and demonstrate that they need to be cut in. They need to show not just that they have assets, but that they can strategically deploy (or withhold) them as part of a negotiation

In the end, Europeans need to stop asking why the Americans cut them out and demonstrate that they need to be cut in. They need to show not just that they have assets, but that they can strategically deploy (or withhold) them as part of a negotiation. This means that Europeans need to form their own peace plan, deploy carrots and sticks—and, above all, show that they have sufficient unity to implement them.

But instead, they emerged from the summit meeting in Paris on Monday publicly fighting about whether they could deploy a peacekeeping or tripwire force to Ukraine. The message to the US (and Russia) was clear: we do not need to invite Europeans to the table. Until they can put their own house in order, Europeans will have no choice but to watch from the sidelines.