European left should stop embarrassing itself over Russia

Throughout the Cold War, progressive figures and movements in Europe and the U.S. were regularly accused of being at best naïve about the Soviet threat, at worst Soviet agents and would-be collaborators.

This was accompanied by a constant drumbeat of officially-stoked paranoia about the Soviet menace. When the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union opened up, we were astonished to find not only how weak the Soviet Union and the Soviet military actually were, but that the Soviet leadership had been just as frightened of us as we were of them.

Today, too many on the Left are using the same tactics to denounce the Trump administration and European supporters of a compromise peace in Ukraine. There are ample reasons to condemn Trump, and ample ways of doing so; but for anyone who remembers the Cold War, the language of “treason,” “collaboration,” and “capitulation” should not be among them. And surely critics on the Left should be able to recognize that some of these politically and intellectually bankrupt European governments are generating paranoia in order to win back public support?

Representative of this approach, voiced by a politician on the center-right, but widely and approvingly circulated by the center-left as well, is the speech by French Senator Claude Malhuret on March 4. And it is a perfect summary of what European establishments call the “debate” on the war in Ukraine.

Malhuret described Trump as a “traitor” who is “capitulating to Putin,” aided by “Putin collaborators” in Europe. He said that Trump had displayed his “treason” and taken “another step into infamy” by stopping U.S. military aid to Ukraine. A week later on March 11, Trump resumed aid to Ukraine, having in the meantime, and through this pressure, persuaded the Ukrainian government to join the U.S. in calling for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine — a call met with furious rejection by Russian hardliners, and great caution by Putin.

There is, as yet at least, no evidence that the Trump administration will push Ukraine to give up more land than the territories it has already lost and cannot reconquer. There is also no evidence that it will press Ukraine to disarm — though there may be certain limits of arms that the U.S. and NATO will supply to Ukraine. And as for Ukraine’s independence and path towards the West, the Trump administration supports Ukraine’s future EU membership and the Russian government has publicly accepted Ukraine’s “sovereign right” to this.

So this move by Trump was not “capitulation” but a crude but effective step on the road to a compromise peace.

Malhuret said that “we [i.e. the Europeans] were at war with a dictator [i.e. Putin]. We are now fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor [i.e. Trump].” In fact, the West’s whole approach to the Ukraine War since the beginning has been precisely that we have not been “fighting” against Russia. Not Trump, but Biden and every other NATO leader stated publicly and repeatedly that they would not send their troops to fight in Ukraine. Instead, we have provided arms and money. It is the Ukrainians, not the French or British, who have been doing the fighting and dying.

Malhuret’s speech is structured around the claim that “Ukraine’s defeat would be Europe’s defeat.” From this he draws an entire medieval demonology, a Malleus Maleficarum of awful consequences, including that “the Global South will no longer respect Europe and will decide instead to trample on us.” From which bizarre statement one must assume that it is only Russian spheres of influence to which Malhuret objects. When it comes to France in Africa, he is clearly still living in the 1970s.

In this view, Trump is planning to hand not just Ukraine, but the whole of eastern Europe to Russia, in accordance with Putin’s alleged desire to “end the order established by the U.S. and its allies 80 years ago.” Of course, that order accepted — for it could do nothing else — the fact that as a result of its victory over Nazi Germany, the Soviet army had occupied the whole of eastern and central Europe and imposed its own “order” there.

That “order” came to an end when the Cold War concluded 35 years ago. Today, nothing of the sort is remotely possible for Russia, let alone being discussed between Trump and Putin. For this to happen, is Poland also going to “capitulate”? Will the Polish army miraculously vanish? Has Malhuret ever met a Pole?

Bizarrely, but equally typical for those of his mindset, Malhuret manages, in the same speech, to combine a professed belief that Russia is so strong that it is on the point of dominating the whole of central and eastern Europe with a belief that Russia is so weak that not merely is there no need for a peace settlement in Ukraine, but that Russia is on the point of collapse and that continued EU aid to Ukraine will be enough to produce a Ukrainian victory.

"Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated,” he said. “Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss.”

If so, how does Malhuret propose to justify to French and European voters the enormous increases in military spending for which he is calling, and that are supposedly necessary to resist a hugely dangerous Russian military threat to the EU?

But if the likes of Malhuret really believe that Europe needs to support Ukraine to the death in order to avoid a catastrophic defeat for itself, then logically they must publicly advocate sending European troops to fight Russia. But this they dare not do given the strong opposition of majorities in every major European country.

Instead of hysterical scaremongering and the demonization of alternative voices, Europe needs a calm, sober and evidence-based debate on peace in Ukraine and its own security. Such a debate would recognize certain basic facts: that there can be no absolute guarantee of security for Ukraine other than the utter defeat of Russia, which is simply not possible. More so, that European peacekeeping forces for Ukraine are not a possible part of a peace settlement, but a recipe for endlessly delaying on, and that while the EU can and should go on supporting Ukraine while the peace process continues, to block a settlement and continue the war without U.S. support would mean catastrophe for Ukraine.

Finally, that since Russia has officially accepted the principle of Ukrainian EU membership, the task and duty of Europe is not to make military promises that it cannot in fact fulfill, but do everything possible to reconstruct Ukraine and bring it into the EU.

If these facts are recognized, the EU and Britain can start to think seriously and realistically about how they can contribute to Ukrainian peace and their own future security.