Trump’s compromise peace in Ukraine is a strategic opportunity for Europe – POLITICO

Zachary Paikin is a research fellow in the Grand Strategy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

It’s been more than six years since the EU’s former High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell declared the bloc must learn to speak the “language of power.” And yet, Europe’s response to today’s tectonic geopolitical shifts suggests little in the way of learning.

The bloc’s reaction to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was to pursue a normative approach, which eschewed any possibility of identifying a mutually acceptable off-ramp or compromise with Moscow. The inevitable result was an increase in Europe’s security dependence on the U.S., deepening its vulnerability to great-power predations in a fast-changing world. And since U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Europe has only compounded this initial strategic misstep.