Recent news coverage about U.S. policy on Ukraine – 1) last week’s Paris meeting, in which the Americans presented their ideas for a ceasefire; 2) repeated warnings by Rubio, Trump, and Vance that a failure to accept those ideas would lead to the U.S. walking away; and 3) a decision by most high-level U.S. officials not to attend this week’s follow-up meeting in London – presents these events as part of ongoing “negotiations” and “peace talks,” as an article in today’s Washington Post puts it. However, this terminology points to a deep misunderstanding of what it means for allies to talk with the United States, at least about matters of war and peace.
From the earliest days of the North Atlantic Alliance, discussions between the U.S. and its allies have been massively asymmetric. The U.S. tells the Europeans what it intends to do, the Europeans either go along with it, in which case the policy is implemented, accompanied by logistical and tactical coordination; or else the Europeans fail to go along with it, in which case the U.S. goes ahead and carries out its policy in any case, perhaps adjusted slightly to take account, and punish, European refusal. Most European leaders know the drill: a locus classicus is De Gaulle’s sardonic comment, after being briefed by Dean Acheson during the Cuban Missile Crisis, that he “appreciates M. Kennedy’s message, even though it is a notification and not a consultation, since the decision has already been taken.”
Of course, U.S. discussions with NATO allies are cosseted in cashmere, with well-mannered envoys elegantly, politely, and with great bonhomie presenting the U.S. position as if it were a bona fide negotiation. But it’s not, because a negotiation involves give and take, and when NATO members demur, which they do on occasion, the U.S. almost never changes its position more than cosmetically. A nice example, once again from the annals of U.S.-French relations, is the concession made by Dulles in 1954 to talk with Mendès France in Paris and to send his deputy to Geneva to witness, but not sign, the Accords on Indochina. The U.S. position did not change, for all practical purposes, and, the concession, as the Treasury Secretary put it triumphantly, “put Mendes-France under obligation to the United States, particularly with respect to Germany.”
In an earlier post, I’ve written about why the U.S. goes through this rigmarole: namely, that the U.S. self-definition both in general and with respect to NATO in particular is that of a leader with genuine, voluntary followers. This, rather than any particular military or diplomatic contribution, is what the Europeans provide for U.S. policy; and having a procession of high-level U.S. officials visit various European capitals, be ushered into elegant buildings, and sit across conference tables amid gilded splendor warms the cockles of even the most puritanical European and American hearts. For the Europeans also to expect to have their words provoke a significant change in U.S. policy is a bridge too far.
To return, then, to U.S. policy on Ukraine, what the Trump administration wanted last week was for the Europeans (and, of course, the Ukrainians, though the assumption was that if the former said yes, the latter would too) to go along with U.S. ideas, no matter how inchoate those ideas very likely were. This meant, specifically, to freeze the current lines of fighting, to keep Ukraine in a kind of twilight status regarding the West, and, probably most importantly to the White House, lifting sanctions on Russia and returning to business as usual with the Kremlin. When, as was fairly predictable, the response to these suggestions was not positive, Trump and his people played a golden oldie: the 2025 version of Dulles’s 1953 “agonizing reappraisal of basic United States policy.”
However, unlike most other discussions with the Americans about war and peace, the Europeans, exceptionally, have something, or rather two somethings, that the United States cannot simply furnish on its own, plowing ahead as it usually does. The first of these is a kind of validation of what Ukraine reports the U.S. is doing for it or to it: for example, if the U.S. “walks away” from Ukraine by cutting off weapons transfers or intelligence sharing, a Ukrainian complaint that the U.S. was selling it out to Russia would have far greater resonance within the United States (shades of “who lost China”) and among U.S. allies elsewhere if that complaint were to be concurred in by the countries that had hosted the meetings. Second, the sanctions on Russia that Trump would like to lift are far greater in magnitude on the European side than the American one. If the Europeans refuse to go along with this course of action, the value of solo U.S. action is significantly less.
These points should not be exaggerated. Even if the Trump administration actually contained officials who were genuinely friendly to Europe, it is hardly likely to compromise on or otherwise significantly change its ideas for Ukraine. Rather, in this case, what it may do is to throw a temper tantrum; cut down, but not eliminate, aid to Ukraine; and either accept minor sanctions relief for Russia or else, if the Europeans continue opposing such relief, start speculating about imposing secondary sanctions on them. Nonetheless, unlike their counterparts in past confrontations with Washington, this cohort of Europeans actually can make the U.S. position on Ukraine and Russia more complicated, even if no genuine negotiations take place. All the Europeans have to do, in Nancy Reagan’s inimitable phrase, is just say no.