Denis MacShane / Sep 2025
Photo: Wikimedia Commoms
In 1938 as Britain’s ageing Tory Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, was in Munich preparing to hand over Czechoslovakia to the German dictator in Berlin, Jan Masaryk, the witty, caustic Czech ambassador in London (later his country’ s wartime foreign minister in exile), was asked what kind of support London was giving the Czech efforts to avoid being incorporated into Germany. “It’s like an old man’s erection”, he replied.
Today the people of Ukraine must feel the same about the efforts of President Trump and European leaders to save their nation from being annexed by Russia. Once again in London, Trump showed that he was indifferent to, indeed borderline contemptuous of, British efforts to stop the drawn-out Washington betrayal of Ukraine. In his presidential campaign last year Trump said he could end the war between Ukraine and Russia in 24 hours. In fact, he repeated the assurance that when President he would end the war in a single day no fewer than 53 times.
He can indeed probably achieve that stated but so far undelivered ambition and in the process win the Nobel Peace Prize he so openly craves but to do so he must make clear to Vladimir Putin that his illegal invasion of Ukraine, the endless deaths of innocent civilian women and children his missiles and drone bombs have brought about, and the kidnapping of 20,000 Ukrainian children to be handed over to Russian parents must be reversed.
Trump so far has refused to tell Putin in terms this is what the US wants and he will take all necessary measures - economic, political, diplomatic and military - to make it happen. This does not involve the US declaring war on Russia but giving to Ukraine the means to take the fight to Russia instead of waiting for the next drone or missile attack but unable to respond effectively.
It also means asking European NATO allies to step up to the plate and send to Ukraine the means to defeat Putin.
So far, whether in Alaska in August, the first time Trump has met Putin since he launched his war on Ukraine and indirectly on Europe, earlier at the NATO summit in the summer when the Nato Secretary General, Mark Rutte, crawled to Trump calling him “Daddy” or this week at the UK Prime Minister’s residence, Chequers, Trump has never given any inclination he wants to win that Nobel Peace Prize by ending Putin’s war in Ukraine.
At the news conference after the Trump-Starmer meeting the British Prime Minister said that there needs to be extra pressure put on Putin, and adding it's only when Trump puts pressure on Putin that he's "shown any inclination to move".
Macron, Starmer, and other European leaders who have put together the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” to support Ukraine need to come clean. Trump is acting as Putin’s man in the discussions on Ukraine. Trumps epigones, like Vice President J.D. Vance or his former consiglieres Elon Musk or Steve Bannon have nothing but contempt for Europe.
Waiting for Putin to see his efforts to forge a modern-day Anschluss between Ukraine and Russia fade away is as likely as hoping for an outburst of 80-year-old old man’s virility in the pre-Viagra era.
It is time for Kyiv’s allies in Europe still hoping Trump will challenge Putin to accept they are whistling in the wind. It better to let Trump be Trump and accept if Putin is not to win Europe must show leadership.
That needs a clear strategic analysis. An endless procession of retired generals, ambassadors and MI6 chiefs occupy all the space on the BBC, Times Radio – now the go-to radio station for serious international and political coverage or C4 News. They have three things in common. They don’t speak or read Russian. They have always considered Washington the only point of reference for international policy and look with condescension if not contempt on European military or geopolitical capabilities. They see the calls for more defence spending as a means to restore the UK’s military might after 20 years of Britain’s army, navy, and defence industries being reduced to third class status.
They do not seem to understand that Putin needs his war in Ukraine to maintain his hold over Russia. Just as Stalin promoted military leaders like Zhukov, Konev or Rokossovsky in their 40s to command armies to defeat the Germans so too Putin is quietly retiring old guard generals. He has also charged 122 top business leaders with corruption – arguably the Kremlin leader is now much tougher on corruption than Zelensky as Ukrainian oligarchs have been allowed to live with their military age sons in comfort outside Ukraine.
US president Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson offered pro-Ukrainian rhetoric and photo-calls with Zelensky after Putin’s invasion early in 2022. But it quickly became clear that while they were willing to fight to the last Ukrainian and obtain condemnations from the UN and other international bodies in the global north neither Washington, London nor European capitals were willing to make a real military commitment to help Ukraine.
Churchill famously appealed to Roosevelt early in 1941 “Give us the tools and we will finish the job”. America was hemmed in by laws and a Congress that looked askance at foreign entanglements. But Roosevelt worked his way around these obstacles to send Britain the means to take the battle to the invader.
Today there is no Churchill to lead Europe to fill the void that President Trump’s refusal to challenge Putin has created in the last 12 months. Macron, followed by Starmer, now Merz have pledged to raise defence spending and organised conferences of leaders saying they support Ukraine.
But after Putin’s recent incursion into Poland’s sovereign airspace with 24 drones, France sent 3 Rafales and the Royal Air Force promised some warplanes to be sent to Poland.
Poland meanwhile has not helped herself by electing a nationalist, Eurosceptic president and Warsaw closing borders with Germany as Moscow and Belarus push Asian migrants across border sinto Poland en route to richer EU nations like Germany.
Britain, for example, is gripped by the line that switching government support to defence will help growth. Yet the main beneficiary of more defence expenditure will be the US. Europe will fly US made F35s. The UK Defence Ministry has just signed a £750 million contract with Palantir, the controversial US AI firm. It seems impossible to find British or European firms to do AI defence work.
Unlike Airbus, a supranational mass selling civilian airline, the petty national protectionism still operating in the EU and UK suggests the idea of collaborations across European borders in defence products is still off-limits.
The UK has announced it will build a major new warship in Spain at a government-owned shipyard as the breath-taking incompetence of the Brexit era Conservative ministers wound down the UK’s shipbuilding capacity.
The rise of nationalist far-right parties now with growing support knocking on doors of government are not interested in seeing Ukraine prevail over Russia. Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini, the AfD’s Alice Weidel, Viktor Orbán andh Robert Fico have all expressed support for Putin’s vision of a white, nationalist, ultra-Christian Russia and many of them have taken money from the Putin network in Russia.
Early in 2024, Emmanuel Macron proposed some kind of intervention force from Europe to station troops in Ukraine – not to enter into combat with Russia – but carry out non-frontline duties. London pooh-poohed the idea but when Labour won and Sir Keir Starmer became UK prime minister he took over the Macron proposal rebaptising it the “Coalition of the Willing”.
This now includes 31 nations – including bizarrely Turkey whose autocrat leader Erdogan refuses to follow Europe and impose sanctions on Russia. Erdoǧan has now detained or had dismissed as elected city and regional leaders top figures in the main opposition party CHP with all the gusto of Putin arresting Navalny and other opponents.
But quickly difficulties emerged. There is no cross-party support in key Nato nations like Germany and Spain to send soldiers to Ukraine. Trump is completely indifferent to the idea so US air surveillance and satellite intelligence will not be available.
Increasingly the Coalition of the Willing is little more than a Coalition of Waffle. There is little public opinion support especially in France and Britain where Macron and Starmer have very low public support because of poor handling of the domestic economic and social problems the two key countries.
There is more realism in Berlin where Dr Stefan Meister, of the German Foreign Policy institute, DGAP (the equivalent of Chatham House) who speaks Russian and has worked in former USSR capitals insists that
“The Alaska summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has not brought Ukraine closer to peace. Worse, it legitimized Putin’s war policy and brought him back onto the international diplomatic stage. Unless European NATO members can make a greater contribution to supplying weapons and impacting the military balance at the front line, including through security guarantees, they will be unable to impact the outcome of such negotiations.”
This is the brutal truth. Britain building frigates for Spain or submarines for Australia is all very well but is not even a flea bite on Putin’s cynical carapace. He is quite happy with how the war is going. He has support in the global south which America, the UK and EU have stupidly ignored. France has blocked a EU free trade deal with Mercosur in a pure protectionist measure.
The only language Putin will understand is defeat on the battlefield. The new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was elected on a 29% vote earlier this year promising a definitive break with the support his predecessors Angela Merkel and Gerhard Schröder gave Putin.
They supported German industry becoming dependent on Russian oil, turned a blind eye to Putin’s murderous brutality in Chechyna and with other European leaders like David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy and ineffectual EU presidents took no action and in effect excused Putin’s invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014 when he annexed the sovereign territory of Georgia and Ukraine.
But Merz has turned out to be a very cautious Chancellor unwilling to give Ukraine the support it needs, notably in terms of sending Germany’s 500 km range Taurus missile which would allow Kyiv to attacks launch bases for missile and drone attacks inside Russia.
Shamefully the German social democrats as well as the rising far right AfD – openly called “NeoNazis” by many Germans – are seeking to block the use of Taurus missiles. The German Christian Democrats’ post-1945 European policy is built on “Nie weider Krieg” – No More War.
But as with the failure of England and France to stand up to a dictator in 1938, the old man’s erection syndrome rules in most of the governments on Europe today.
