Europe drafts Ukraine peace plan as US backstop evaporates

The outline of a European peace initiative for Ukraine took shape on Sunday, but its foundations rest on an assumption that is rapidly dissolving: that the United States will underwrite the security of any force deployed to enforce a ceasefire. Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are attempting to construct a plan that can function without the American air power and intelligence architecture that has sustained Kyiv's defence for three years. The gap between that ambition and the military reality is where the next phase of the war will be decided.

The Sunday initiative and its missing pillar

Starmer announced the joint effort after a weekend of frantic diplomacy. The British prime minister had travelled to Washington on Thursday seeking what officials called a "backstop", a commitment that US air power, surveillance and command-and-control assets would be available to protect a European-led stabilisation force if Russia violated a truce. He left without one. On Friday, the Oval Office meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy collapsed into open acrimony, with the US president accusing his Ukrainian counterpart of "gambling with world war three". Any residual hope that Washington would sign a security guarantee evaporated in that exchange.

The British government had modelled its planning on the assumption that a US backstop was the non-negotiable condition for deploying British and French troops into a conflict zone. Without it, the legal and military basis for putting European soldiers in harm's way becomes contested. Ministry of Defence planners have privately acknowledged that a stabilisation force without American enablers, airborne early warning, air-to-air refuelling, suppression of enemy air defences, would be operating at a level of risk no NATO member has accepted since the Cold War.

Ricketts' verdict and the peacekeeper dilemma

"Is Europe going to get a backstop commitment from the US? I don't think so," concluded Lord Ricketts, who served as the UK's national security adviser from 2010 to 2012 and as permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office. His assessment carries weight because it reflects the consensus of the British security establishment: the Trump administration's transactional approach to alliances means that Article 5 guarantees are no longer treated as automatic, and a new commitment to protect a non-NATO peacekeeping mission in Ukraine is politically inconceivable in Washington.

This creates a logical trap. A ceasefire requires monitors. Monitors require protection. Protection requires credible deterrence. Deterrence, in the European theatre, has for three decades relied on the US nuclear umbrella and conventional air superiority. If the first two elements proceed without the third, European governments are asking their soldiers to serve as tripwires without the wire. The French government has been more willing than the UK to discuss deployment without explicit US guarantees, but even Paris has not committed forces without a defined command structure and exit strategy.

The eroding security compact

The deeper story is not about Ukraine but about the architecture that has allowed Europe to spend roughly 1.5 per cent of GDP on defence while the United States maintained approximately 100,000 troops across the continent. That compact, European economic integration underwritten by American military hegemony, functioned because both sides accepted the bargain. The Biden administration repaired some of the damage from Trump's first term, but the structural shift was already visible: the 2022 National Defense Strategy designated China as the "pacing challenge" and Europe as a theatre where allies must carry more burden.

Rachel Ellehuus, deputy director of the Europe programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, put it plainly: "It's been clear for some time that the US has other security priorities, domestically and in the Pacific, where it sees a long-term challenge from China. It's something NATO allies have known for a decade, but until now, there has been nothing to shake them into action." The shaking has arrived. The question is whether the response matches the scale of the strategic rupture.

European rearmament: rhetoric versus procurement

European leaders have spoken the language of strategic autonomy for years. The 2022 Versailles Declaration, the European Defence Industrial Strategy, the European Defence Fund, all point toward a continent capable of acting without Washington. But the numbers tell a different story. European NATO members collectively increased defence spending by 11 per cent in real terms in 2023, yet critical enablers, strategic airlift, aerial refuelling, intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance satellites, long-range strike, remain overwhelmingly American. The European Defence Agency estimates a shortfall of €100 billion in capability investment over the past decade.

Germany's Zeitenwende, announced by Olaf Scholz three days after the full-scale invasion, promised a €100 billion special fund and a permanent increase to 2 per cent of GDP. Two years later, the special fund is largely unspent on major platforms, and the 2 per cent target is met only by counting pensions and administrative costs. France has the most complete military toolkit but lacks the depth for sustained high-intensity operations without US logistics. The UK, after years of cuts, is rebuilding stockpiles but has fewer than 150 operational main battle tanks and a single carrier strike group.

The NATO survival question

Ellehuus framed the stakes bluntly: "Will NATO survive now? That's a harder question." The alliance has survived Suez, the French withdrawal from the integrated command, the Euromissile crisis, the end of the Cold War, Afghanistan and the first Trump term. Each crisis produced adaptation. The current crisis is different because it attacks the core bargain: American security guarantees in exchange for European political alignment and base access. If the guarantee becomes conditional, the alignment frays. Poland and the Baltic states, which have invested most heavily in the US relationship, are already hedging, deepening bilateral ties with Washington while pushing for EU defence integration as insurance.

The White House's reported interest in direct security talks with Russia, bypassing both Kyiv and Brussels, compounds the fracture. A European security order negotiated between Washington and Moscow, with Europeans as spectators, would replicate the Yalta dynamic that the EU was designed to transcend. It would also render any European peacekeeping force in Ukraine a fragile interlude, dependent on a Russian-American understanding that could shift with the next phone call.

What a European-only force would require

Military planners in London, Paris and Berlin have begun sketching the requirements for a credible stabilisation force without US enablers. The minimum viable package includes: a division-level headquarters with organic signals intelligence; two to three brigade combat groups with integrated air defence; a dedicated ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance) task group using European satellites and drones; a logistics tail capable of sustaining 20,000 personnel at 500 kilometres from home bases; and a political mandate that permits pre-emptive strikes on Russian systems that threaten the force. None of this exists in a ready state. The Eurodrone programme is years from operational capability. The FCAS/SCAF next-generation fighter is a paper project. The European Patrol Corvette is a procurement programme, not a fleet.

The financial cost of building these capabilities from a standing start would run into hundreds of billions of euros over a decade. The political cost, sustained defence spending at 2.5 to 3 per cent of GDP across multiple electoral cycles, has no precedent in post-Cold War Europe. The alternative is to accept that any European force in Ukraine operates at Russian sufferance, a proposition that transforms peacekeeping into a hostage situation.