Even jf the US does agree to provide a backstop to a U.K.-French force in Ukraine - and I don’t think they will - why would anyone have any confidence Trump would honour that promise ?
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Evidence suggests he will not honour an agreement. Take the USMCA (North American trade agreement) which he signed and orchestrated- only to toss it out the window while still fully and legally enforceable.
They won’t, the political legacy of Iraq/Afghan. That said I do think the east & west coast pmc were largely oblivious to the working class men & women who served and Trump has tapped that justifiable resentment, and now Ukr has become a libs issue..
Indeed. At present, though, surely this is part of the diplomatic dance? All options must not just be exhausted but be *seen* to be exhausted. A good portion of UK rhetoric seems based on this proposition? (Actually doing it sans-US a different level of difficult, of course.)
On balance it’s probably better to have the backstop than not. Trump is so unstable that Putin can’t have complete confidence that the promise would not be honoured either. The odds are in Putins favour though, unfortunately.
The aim, primarily, is likely to be the ambiguity. Which only works if Trump isn’t just going to turn around to Putin and go “yeah, we won’t be doing that” which he absolutely could
Churchill spend 1,5 year of trying to win support for the war from Roosevelt. This also seemed to be in vain, but then something unforeseen happened: Pearl Harbour.
No one will. Even presuming a Democratic administration, all nations can be certain that an eventual Republican government will renege on the agreement—even if it’s against US interests to do so.
Asking this US gov’t to provide the backstop is a bit like asking the Bolsheviks to deliver a Tsarist foreign policy. America First is after all, partly a revolt against the very idea of the US as backstop for other people’s security.
I think we have to go through this process in order to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump isn’t a honest broker here. He has no intention of offering security guarantees, so the best Europe can do is ask nicely (knowing it’ll be a nyet).
Exactly! There’s no hope of Trump honouring it.
But at least it can give UK/Europe time to build its defences up so we are in a better position to do it all ourselves.
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That which a Euro Defence Treaty Structure is urgently needed.
EU meets Thursday.
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/02/25/mind-the-gaps-europes-to-do-list-for-defense-without-the-us/
But at least it can give UK/Europe time to build its defences up so we are in a better position to do it all ourselves.