Secretary of State Marco Rubio has put the world on notice: the United States is on the verge of washing its hands of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Yesterday Rubio told reporters:
“We need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable. If it’s not possible, if we’re so far apart that this is not going to happen then I think the president is probably at a point where he’s going to say we’re done…”
Rubio echoed the new sentiment in the White House regarding Europe and European wars:
“It’s not our war. We didn’t start it. The United States has been helping Ukraine for the past three years and we want it to end, but it’s not our war…”
And Trump did spend almost three months working on the problem!
“President (Trump) has spent 87 days at the highest level of this government repeatedly taking efforts to bring this war to an end. We are now reaching a point when we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not. Which is why we’re engaging both sides.”
I only hope that Donald Trump is as quick to abandon tariffs if/when tariffs raise prices and harm the US economy.
That said, there is a very real impasse here:
The current Russian government does not want peace. Moscow wants to reabsorb Ukraine, or turn Ukraine into a client state, independent in name only.
This would mean a return to the status quo under both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Ukraine and Russia were the same political entity for about 200 years, from the 1790s through 1991. From the cold lens of geopolitics and history, an independent Ukraine is the exception, not the rule.
This doesn’t mean that I’m in favor of that. But the world is full of groups that want independence—or their land back—who can’t have either. Ask the people of the Lakota Nation what they think about the US government claiming ownership of the Black Hills. Also: when are we going to give Texas, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and California back to Mexico?
The government in Kyiv does not want ‘peace’—or not only peace. The current government in Ukraine wants the Russians to give up all Ukrainian territory that they currently occupy, including the Crimean Peninsula. The Kyiv government wants Russia to acknowledge Ukraine’s 1991 borders, apologize, and submit to a war crimes tribunal. Not even Ukraine’s most zealous western allies believe that that is going to happen.
The Europeans are more bark than bite. Anti-Russian sentiment runs high in most European countries at present, especially in the halls of government. European leaders, from Emmanuel Macron to Kaja Kallas, have talked about sending their own troops into Ukraine…teach the Russians a lesson, once and for all!
The problem is: these same countries are plagued by aging populations, and a young generation that has little interest in joining the military.
Polls show that most young Germans aren’t interested in joining up. Can one blame them? Since the beginning of the twentieth century, wars haven’t resulted in positive outcomes for Germany.
Sentiments among the Gen Z cohort are similar in France and the UK. The young people in Western Europe want no part of a war started by middle-age men and women who will never put their lives on the line.
And that’s now, while we’re still talking about a hypothetical war. Imagine how gung-ho Europe’s Gen Z will be once the bodybags start coming back from the battlefields of Ukraine.
Farther north and east, there is a little more martial spirit, but martial capability is another matter. Many European countries have not been primary combatants in a major conflict at any time in the modern era.
I occasionally see keyboard warriors from Sweden and Finland, talking tough on social media about whupping the Russians. Do a Wikipedia check, and see when was the last time Sweden or Finland fought a war—much less won one.
This doesn’t mean that Europe can’t rebuild its military infrastructure and culture, of course. But that will take years, and it won’t happen quickly enough to help Ukraine.
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None of this bodes well for the future of Ukraine as an independent nation. Does anyone really believe that Russia and Ukraine will agree to a peace deal in “a matter of days”? And when the Trump administration does declare that “we’re done”—in Rubio’s words—that will almost certainly mean an end to all military aid.
At that point, Macron, Starmer, and the other European leaders will outdo each other making bold statements. For a while, Ukrainian flags will outnumber the flags of those nations in their respective legislatures and government offices. But none of these leaders is about to launch his nation on a suicidal war with Russia that his population doesn’t support. Europeans are very committed to an independent Ukraine—so long as they don’t have to bleed for it.
Russia will either take over Ukraine, or (more likely) partition Ukraine down to a rump state encompassing Kyiv and everything west of that: about half of Ukraine’s 1991-defined territory.
Once again, this isn’t the ideal outcome. But it’s probably the inevitable one.
-ET