Trump vs Zelenskyy: White House spat could reshape security, not just for Europe but US too

This time, Trump isn’t testing the waters because he has a war to contend with. Resolving this will place him in the league of statesmen. That is why he is hell-bent on a deal under which a ceasefire comes about, on an “as is where is” basis, but with an advantage to the US. The broad provisions are that Ukraine postpones its aspirations to join NATO, addressing one of Russia’s primary security concerns. While the proposal does not require Ukraine to formally cede territories occupied by Russia, it acknowledges that these regions would remain de facto under Russian control during negotiations. The Trump administration has proposed that the US receive a significant share of Ukraine’s mineral and oil resources as “payment” for American support.

However, this proposal has faced resistance from Ukraine due to concerns over inadequate security guarantees in return. Following the establishment of a ceasefire, the proposed plan outlines further steps. These include initiation of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to address territorial disputes, security arrangements, and political considerations. There is demand for provision of US security assurances to Ukraine, which may include continued military aid and strategic support.

The complexities of the future of European security which, of course, needs to be preceded by an agreement on Ukraine, needs to be evaluated in this context. The threat perception of Europe and the capability appreciation of Russia should reveal that war could be an unlikely factor in the future; it’s only the threat of war which will remain. Russia, after its dismal military performance against Ukraine knows it cannot militarily, economically or demographically sustain a war against Europe’s power houses – Germany, France, Italy and the UK, especially with their combined strength. These nations also know that the US may withdraw its troops and detach itself from NATO.

US perception of its strategic security prevails with the notion that the oceans are its ultimate defence; it runs deep in American strategic thought, shaped by geography, history, and military doctrine. Its essential theme of “forward defence” falls in line with the universal dictum of war – defence in depth. In this case, Europe facilitates the depth. A military defeat of Europe at the hands of Russia, if at all, would imply the most serious threat to the US mainland. It would be good to remind ourselves what the plight of the US would have been had Pearl Harbour not occurred on Dec 7, 1942, which brought the US directly into the war on both flanks; it would have been the next natural objective of Japan and Germany.

The US can remain outside a European security agreement on the presumption of the unlikeliness of a major war between Russia and Europe. In the remote contingency of a war, a late entry like in 1942 may be perceived by US policymakers as feasible. Of course, it would save the US a couple of billion dollars from its current European commitment and allow it to focus on the Indo-Pacific region where its current real threats lie, from China.

Arguing in favour of such an American policy, it is assumed that threat from a demographically weakened Russia will progressively recede. All Russia will wish for are its bottom-line strategic compulsions; no obstacles in the control of the Black Sea and its coast, and a comfortable offset away from NATO’s “lean on” alignment. The latter implies that its borders remain at a distance from NATO’s. An American withdrawal automatically means that its 100 B61 nuclear bombs deployed in Europe under NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangements at air bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey are withdrawn and a compensatory arrangement is made by British and French assets. This complicates the issue further.

The understanding that military bases in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East serve as outposts to prevent threats from reaching American soil will now need to be rested in favour of early warning from wars and skirmishes where the US would not commit itself unless provoked beyond measure. Trump’s defence establishment will undoubtedly need time to transform through this rollback and there is no certainty that after four years any of this will survive. We need to remember that 9/11 and cyber-attacks proved that adversaries can bypass oceanic and forward-based defences. All this will need to be built into US strategic policy formulation.

Does the Trump administration have the intellectual bandwidth to alter a fundamental thinking in US security and turn on its head something the US people love the most – their security and freedom? It remains to be seen how deeply this form of Trumpism penetrates into the thinking of academia, the military, think tanks and the media. This has all the scope of dividing American society further.

A security schism between the US and Europe would be a significant shift in global geopolitics, and whether the American public could live with it is subject to many factors which need to be examined in far greater detail as we progress.

The writer is a former corps commander of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps and a member of the National Disaster Management Authority . Views are personal