If US President-elect Donald Trump attempts to negotiate a “peace deal” that benefits Russia at Ukraine’s expense, Europe must be prepared to provide Ukraine with the political and financial support it needs to sustain its resistance. While Europe cannot decide the war’s outcome, it can improve Ukraine’s prospects considerably.
BRUSSELS – “If one problem can be solved by the Europeans, it is the Yugoslav problem,” Luxembourg’s then-foreign minister, Jacques Poos, asserted in 1991. The Soviet Union was formally, and largely peacefully, dissolved at the end of that year, but ethnic tensions in the Balkans were on the rise, and Poos was adamant that, since Yugoslavia was a European country, Europe, not the United States, should manage the growing crisis there. “This is the hour of Europe,” he proudly declared. And yet, in the years that followed, Yugoslavia endured a bloody disintegration process, and Europe proved incapable of doing much about it.
BRUSSELS – “If one problem can be solved by the Europeans, it is the Yugoslav problem,” Luxembourg’s then-foreign minister, Jacques Poos, asserted in 1991. The Soviet Union was formally, and largely peacefully, dissolved at the end of that year, but ethnic tensions in the Balkans were on the rise, and Poos was adamant that, since Yugoslavia was a European country, Europe, not the United States, should manage the growing crisis there. “This is the hour of Europe,” he proudly declared. And yet, in the years that followed, Yugoslavia endured a bloody disintegration process, and Europe proved incapable of doing much about it.