In 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea, then-Secretary of State John Kerry asserted, “You just don’t in the twenty-first century behave in nineteenth-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.”
Tortuous syntax aside, this was an astounding statement.
Had Kerry convinced himself that nation-states had collectively renounced the use of force to achieve their national interests? Had he decided that the taking or regaining of territory associated with national identity was no longer considered something that might be perceived as a national interest? It was a twee comment, to be sure.
Consider that the post-World War II landscape only stabilized once national borders had been readjusted. There were, in fact, large movements of people as borders shifted in the wake of the Allied victory, accompanied, as large movements of people always are, with great suffering. For instance, 12 million Germans were forced to move as borders changed after the war. The same happened in the Indian subcontinent once the British left; borders shifted and about 15 million people were dislocated and suffered greatly moving to another place.
A concerning flashpoint remains in Kashmir precisely because that is where the border was never stabilized; the same could be said of Israel and its neighbors. There are many other areas in the world where through force or the threat of force, borders and people have moved in recent decades, such as the Balkans. And the movements were based on identity: Germans couldn’t stay in Poland; Hindus couldn’t stay in Pakistan, and so forth.
It’s important, then to keep some historical perspective on these matters, for we have certainly not reached “the end of history,” as some, apparently John Kerry included, have thought. Americans seem to be at a congenital disadvantage in understanding the linkage most nations see between identity and territory, no doubt because our nation was founded on immigration from countries around the world. The territory of our nation was either taken by force or by bargain. What President Donald Trump proposes about Canada and Greenland, for example, is actually a quintessentially American stance.
But there’s a word for that deep connection between land and people that Americans tend not to recognize: autochthony.
Europe is highly autochthonous; identity-tied borders greatly matter in keeping the peace on that continent, and the immense political ferment we see there now, such as in Germany, has a lot to do with leaders erroneously believing Europe had reached a post-autochthonous period in its social history when clearly European voters do not agree.
All of which leads us to the current showdown between the U.S. and Europe over Ukraine. The comments of President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the past several days have served to highlight this chasm between worldviews. All three have advanced the proposition that Ukraine will never get back the territory it has lost to Russia; Ukraine will simply have to accept the loss and make peace with its enemy.
This rankles European sensibilities much more than American ones: A former prime minister of Estonia compared Trump’s stance to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler with regard to the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. The comparison is apt from the European perspective, but it should be remembered that Americans were pretty much indifferent about the Sudetenland back in the day; to Americans, it seemed like a classic European irredentist conflict — the inhabitants of the Sudetenland spoke German, after all. And today, about 70% of those in the Donbass speak Russian. In a polyglot immigrant nation like the United States, irredentism just doesn’t track the same way it does for Europeans.
But surely our NATO commitments mean something? They do if a NATO nation is attacked, but while Russia has undertaken many nefarious initiatives against NATO nations, it has not militarily attacked any. In the American view, this means Ukraine is not a NATO matter, but more of a matter for Europe’s CSDP, its Common Security and Defense Policy, under the authority of which the EU deploys military missions abroad.
If a peace agreement is signed, then it will be up to Europe to police it, for Trump has made it plain that no U.S. troops will be peacekeepers in Ukraine. America’s military aid to Ukraine would also have to be “secured” through Ukrainian concessions, such as mineral rights. Furthermore, according to the U.S., any Russian attacks on a non-NATO European force located in Ukraine cannot trigger NATO’s Article 5 commitment; there will be no American back-up for this operation.
Ukraine has said the key to stability and peace is its inclusion in NATO, and some European leaders, including most recently the prime minister of the U.K., Kier Starmer, has said Ukraine is on an “irreversible path” toward NATO membership. Given that Trump has said he does not think Ukraine should be admitted to NATO, at least for the foreseeable future, this is another point of disjuncture between Europe and the U.S. Applicants to NATO must have resolved all territorial conflicts before they can be admitted, and given that unanimous consent by all members is required for accession, it is unclear what Starmer can possibly mean by his statement.
Ukraine is understandably devastated by the new American position. Until this week, it was even unclear whether a peace agreement would be negotiated without Ukraine’s participation, with only Trump and Putin as “deciders.” Trump’s special envoy has said that while Ukraine will be involved, Europe will not. Ukraine is indubitably in a hard place; after three years of fighting and an immense amount of material support by the West, it has failed to regain its territories and it is still slowly losing territory to the Russians.
Ukraine now seeks hard security guarantees in exchange for its signature on a peace agreement; there is talk of the Americans providing “iron dome” style weaponry to protect Ukraine’s air space in return for mineral concessions, but this is far short of what Ukraine is seeking.
As Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently expressed, “Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees.” He’s right, but it does not make American involvement any more likely, despite recent disputed statements by Vance about “military leverage.” Zelenskyy has even called for an “armed forces of Europe” to be formed in light of American reluctance to be involved in Europe’s defense. Frankly, it would not be surprising in the least if Ukraine strives to develop a small nuclear arsenal, given its precarious geostrategic position.
As for the peacekeeping force, Zelenskyy seeks 100,000-150,000 European (not UN) troops at minimum to guard any ceasefire line. There’s the crux right there: Will Europe agree to put a meaningful number of its troops in Ukraine, presumably for years to come? And even if it agrees, will it actually be able to deploy and fund such a number? And will Europe be able to defend these troops without the Americans should they come under attack? Candidly, none of these things are at all certain. I would argue it is Europe’s weakness that will be at the root of Ukraine’s precarity going forward.
Consider that the U.K. army has fewer than 70,000 soldiers in arms, and its ammo stores are expected to last about 60 days. The French army has about 120,000 soldiers, and also has about two to three months’ worth of ammunition. At most, these nations would probably provide about 17% of their armies for duty in Ukraine; that gives Ukraine about 32,000 British and French troops total, but without the level of material support needed for even a shorter-term deployment. It is unclear whether Germany would commit troops at all; that would depend on which party is in power. While other European nations would surely volunteer to send some troops, their militaries are far smaller than those of the U.K., France and Germany, while the length of the border between Ukraine and Russia is more than 1,200 miles long. Truly, if the fate of Ukraine lies in the hands of the Europeans, things do not look very good.
The U.S. and its NATO allies have reached a point of profound disjuncture over Ukraine. Europe can no longer afford to be militarily weak, and perhaps it is better for Europe if that realization spurs immediate collective action. As one U.K. commentator expressed it, “This country has punched above its weight in foreign policy because we never punched alone. With US firepower behind us, we could bluff our enemies but also perhaps lie to ourselves. We didn’t have to face what we had become, namely a small island with grandiose ideas about itself whose regular army would — as the defense minister Alistair Carns recently warned — be wiped out within six months of fighting something like the Ukraine conflict.”
This is a profound moment of clarity for Europe. The problem is, this important realization may come too late for Ukraine.