My latest for TVP World, on Ukraine and Trump/Greenland:
1) There is, as there has always been, a real danger of Trump ending US support for Ukraine, even if the Europeans are paying for it. Just to blackmail Zelensky into accepting a bad peace deal, or now to coerce Europe on his latest fantasy, annexing Greenland.
2) This is happening as Russia intensifies its airstrikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure. So far, Ukrainians have shown an admirable resilience and ingenuity in repairing and improvising, but now more European deliveries of air defence systems and ammo are urgent.
3) Macron’s claim that 3/4 of Ukrainian battlefield intelligence is provided by France, not US, is ambitious but intelligence doesn’t replace weapons.
4) There are ways to tackle the manpower problem of the UA armed forces, by limiting length of service and multiplying pay to get more people to sign up, but also by having younger and more convincing officers and NCOs for training, as most defections happen after basic training – and finally by replacing humans by ground based combat robots, as recently happened very successfully in Donbas.
5) Trump’s latest tariff threat is clearly crossing a Rubicon for Europeans. The mood in Brussels and other capitals is: „Enough is enough“. There will be a unified answer by the EU, and it won’t be nice. A threat of retaliatory tariffs on US products and services (incl. digital) is definitely on the cards.
6) Norway and UK are totally on board with this (so much for Brexit). Even many of Europe’s national populists are now attacking Trump, such as Farage and the Denmark Democrats.
7) Cooperation and coordination of the Europeans with Congress is crucial, and has already begun. There are hopeful signs that Senators and Congresspeople, at long last, man up to prevent Trump from destroying NATO and throwing Ukraine under the bus.