When it comes to European security, Britain and France share a special responsibility. Once they had the world’s most powerful navy and army respectively; now they possess nuclear weapons. If Donald Trump’s America is unreliable, then London and Paris are the continent’s final guarantors.
To which you might answer: heaven help us. The fact that this obligation now rests on Emmanuel Macron and Sir Keir Starmer might be definitive proof of history’s grim sense of humour.
But no matter how unpopular they might be, their leadership of Europe’s two biggest military powers gives them a unique duty to ensure that Ukraine survives Russia’s onslaught and Vladimir Putin never launches any more wars of conquest.
How should they fulfil that task? The first point is that, so far, events in 2025 could have been worse. Mr Trump and Putin might have agreed between themselves to end the conflict on Russia-friendly terms and then sought to impose this settlement on Ukraine, just as Britain and France jointly enforced the Munich surrender on Czechoslovakia in 1938.
If Putin had shown even the slightest flexibility on any of his demands, this might have happened. Instead, thanks to his own obduracy, he may have missed his chance to ally with Trump and force Ukraine to surrender, with the rest of Europe watching helplessly.
When it comes to European security, Britain and France share a special responsibility. Once they had the world’s most powerful navy and army respectively; now they possess nuclear weapons. If Donald Trump’s America is unreliable, then London and Paris are the continent’s final guarantors.
To which you might answer: heaven help us. The fact that this obligation now rests on Emmanuel Macron and Sir Keir Starmer might be definitive proof of history’s grim sense of humour.
But no matter how unpopular they might be, their leadership of Europe’s two biggest military powers gives them a unique duty to ensure that Ukraine survives Russia’s onslaught and Vladimir Putin never launches any more wars of conquest.
How should they fulfil that task? The first point is that, so far, events in 2025 could have been worse. Mr Trump and Putin might have agreed between themselves to end the conflict on Russia-friendly terms and then sought to impose this settlement on Ukraine, just as Britain and France jointly enforced the Munich surrender on Czechoslovakia in 1938.
If Putin had shown even the slightest flexibility on any of his demands, this might have happened. Instead, thanks to his own obduracy, he may have missed his chance to ally with Trump and force Ukraine to surrender, with the rest of Europe watching helplessly.