Dalibor Rohac
This article is brought to you by American Purpose, the magazine and community founded by Francis Fukuyama in 2020, which is proudly part of the Persuasion family.
It is too easy to succumb to despair about Europe’s future, as the Ukraine war continues and the continent faces two unfriendly global superpowers, China and the United States. The EU, built in more idealistic times, is adapting at a glacial pace to the new reality. Besides the bloc’s notorious incrementalism, European governments face a myriad of internal challenges, including slow economic growth, poor demographics, and increasingly unhinged domestic politics.
Yet there are green shoots of optimism—particularly in the EU’s continued commitment to Ukraine. At its recent meeting, the European Council adopted its 19th package of sanctions against Russia, targeting Russia’s shadow fleet, several Chinese companies involved in oil trade with Russia, as well as companies helping Russia circumvent the sanctions. Just the night before, the U.S. Treasury surprised some with its own sanctions imposed on Rosneft and Lukoil—the first update to U.S. sanctions policy against Russia since Donald Trump’s arrival in the Oval Office.
This is not the first seemingly big swing in U.S.-Ukraine policy. In late September, Trump claimed Ukraine could retake its full territory and hinted at transferring Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. The White House meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in mid-October, which Ukrainians hoped would finalize the deal, saw the plan scrapped. Of course, the encounter came just a day after a lengthy call between Trump and Vladimir Putin, following which preparations began for the now-aborted summit between Trump and Putin in Budapest, Hungary.
Throughout this wild cycle, Europeans stayed the course. The coalescing of European leaders behind Ukraine after the meeting in the Oval Office was instantaneous, accompanied by a 12-point peace plan endorsed by Zelenskyy. With an administration that seems internally divided on how to deal with the war, a united European front remains the best strategy to demand some putative bargain with the Kremlin that would then be imposed by Trump on Ukrainians and Europeans.
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