Despite a recent blustering missive from Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and top EU nation representatives, about being excluded from Trump administration discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Leaders regarding possible terms for ending the Ukraine conflict.
The unavoidable fact remains that the U.S. is the only country possessing necessary leadership and leverage to negotiate a mutually acceptable settlement.
Whereas Zelenskyy recently told Newsmax host Greta Van Susteren that Trump "has [to] make a deal, not with Putin, with us, and then pressure Putin. Because any negotiations without us, we will never accept because the war is in Ukraine, not somewhere [else]," he has nevertheless also told NBC News that without U.S. support, Ukraine has "a low chance to survive."
The Ukraine president was stating a broadly recognized fact that European NATO members currently lack sufficient capacities to provide enough weapons or strategic coherence for peaceful resolution without major U.S. backstopping and credible ongoing peacekeeping commitments.
Meanwhile, the EU, with far higher national security stakes, lacks unified commitment or backbone to take on a strong leadership role they now claim to own.
The heads of states of its two biggest economies, Germany and France, are currently hamstrung by internal warfare for their own political survival.
The outcome of a tough reelection challenge for appropriately embattled uber-liberal German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will have a major influence on his country’s future, while French President Emmanuel Macron’s cash-strapped government lacks a parliamentary majority necessary for a major player in addressing the Russia-Ukraine war.
Much of this brouhaha centers upon private Feb. 15 telephone discussions between Trump and Putin along with being sidelined from closed meetings between U.S. and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia.
Then on Feb. 18, delegations led by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met behind closed doors at the Diriyah Palace in Riyadh.
Was the purpose of this meeting to pave the way for an eventual face-to-face meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin?
According to The Hill, Zelenskyy reportedly said that not being asked to participate in the American-Russian meeting was a "surprise for us, I think for many others as well."
Trump responded to complaints that Kyiv wasn’t welcome, saying, "But today I heard, 'oh well, we weren't invited.' Well, you've been there for three years. . . . You should have never started it. You could have made a deal."
President Trump also labeled Zelenskyy whose term expired last year as a "dictator without elections" who is very low in Ukrainian polls, one who played President Biden "like a fiddle" into spending $350 billion dollars --- $200 billion more than Europe spent --- to go into the war.
"On top of this, Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is 'missing,'" Trump added.
Following the Washington-Moscow delegation meeting and a 20-minute call with President Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency meeting of European leaders inside the Élysée Palace to seek a future place at the negotiation table influencing the entire region’s security.
During three hours of talks, leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, NATO, and the European Union were unable to arrive at a common peacekeeping commitment if a Ukraine-Russia ceasefire agreement is reached.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer reaffirmed readiness to consider sending British forces on the Ukrainian ground alongside others "if there is a lasting peace agreement."
Some E.U. nations, including Poland, have said they don’t want their military imprint on Ukraine soil, while France’s Macron was non-committal.
In remarks at a meeting of NATO Minister’s Ukraine Defense Contact Group, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth echoed calls by President Trump for European allies to increase their defense spending to at least 5% of their GDP, instead of 2%, saying what's been invested thus far is "not enough."
Secretary Hegseth emphasized that the U.S. "remains committed to the NATO alliance and to the defense partnership with Europe. Full stop. But the United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency."
Seemingly signaling that America was through with the former Biden administration’s kick-the-war can endlessly far down the deadly road to economic and societal ruin, some NATO members got the "put-up-or-shut-up" message.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis agreed, saying that Europe needs to "wake up" from the "geopolitical and economic lethargy into which it has unfortunately fallen for some time."
She said, "Unfortunately, recent developments and this different view of things from the United States now oblige us not only to face the truth, but to move at a very high speed and implement decisions that we have been discussing for a long time."
Although most NATO members would like America to continue disproportionately picking up the tab to protect them, there is much they can do to help influence Russia to play nicer.
On the economic war front, keep in mind that Europe’s collective GDP is twelve times larger than Russia’s.
Europe also represents a large market for Russian oil, and additionally, European naval presence could disrupt Russian shipping to China.
Fully recognizing that future success and conditions of Trump efforts to bring peace to Ukraine remain uncertain, there can be little doubt regarding progress in motivating European nations to participate or inevitably bear biggest burdens of bad consequences.
And yes, this reflects the sort of strong, long-overdue leadership that might have prevented Russia’s invasion altogether.
(Related Newsmax stories may be found here, here, here, and here.)
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.