By Rich Lowry
Friday, November 28, 2025
In the contention over the U.S. peace plan for Ukraine,
the Europeans are in their accustomed role — carping from the sidelines.
Not only can the once-great European powers no longer
dictate the fate of far-flung parts of the world, they can’t even dictate the
end of a war involving a European country whose fate they deem crucial to their
own future.
We’re a long way from the British controlling about a
quarter of the globe’s territory in the early 20th century; a long way from
British and French diplomats, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, drawing
the lines in 1916 to divide up the Ottoman Empire; a long way from Napoleon
sitting with Tsar Alexander in Tilsit in 1807 and rearranging the map of
Europe.
France was once so diplomatically central that there are
dozens of Treaties of Paris, whether in 1259 (between King Louis IX of France
and King Henry III of England) or in 1951 (setting up the European Coal and
Steel Community).
Now, France scurries around with its European
counterparts to react to whatever the American president is doing.
It’s gotten so bad that some European analysts speak of a
potential “scramble for Europe,” or attempts by richer, more powerful outside
countries to influence the course of Europe.
The late conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer
maintained of the U.S., “Decline is a choice.”
This isn’t quite right with regard to Europe, whose great
powers were kneecapped by the cataclysms of the early 20th century. France bore
the brunt of World War I, suffering 1.4 million dead and 4.3 million wounded
and a ruinous economic cost.
As for Britain, stretched to the max, it got steadily
eclipsed in power and influence by the United States as World War II
progressed.
The less said about Germany’s role in all this, of
course, the better.
And then the European colonial empires inevitably
dissolved.
So, Europe was going to be diminished compared to its
glory days. Its current fecklessness, though, has indeed been a choice, born of
strategic fantasy and economic incompetence.
Strong militaries were deemed a thing of the past, or
something unnecessary as long as Uncle Sam was around. The Brits, for instance,
are hard-pressed to maintain a 73,000-strong military, and the size of their
once-storied surface fleet is at a historic low.
Europe imagined itself “a diplomatic superpower” but has
learned to its regret that “soft power” not backed up by hard power is of
limited utility. Both the Nobel Committee and Amnesty International have
considerable soft power, too, but no one pays attention to them regarding
high-level geopolitical questions.
Economically, the EU “regulatory superpower” has hobbled
growth — over the last 30 years Western European labor productivity declined
from 95 percent of the U.S. level to 80 percent — while Europe’s commitment to
“net zero” greenhouse emissions has driven insane energy priorities.
Years into the Ukraine war, Europe is still dependent on
gas imports from Russia.
None of this means that the U.S. should go out of its way
to give Europe the back of its hand. Whatever its other failings, Europe has
collectively given Ukraine more aid than the United States has and was
justifiably furious at the initial 28-point Ukraine proposal. That plan had the
embattled country handing over to Moscow strategically important territory that
is still in Ukrainian hands; agreeing to a limit on the size of its military;
and the U.S. taking currently frozen Russian assets in Europe to rebuild
Ukraine (getting 50 percent of any profits) and to pursue joint investment
projects with Russia.
Negotiations with the Ukrainians have reportedly produced
a more reasonable version, but it is Washington and Moscow that matter most
here.
The analyst Robert Kagan famously wrote years ago that,
in their divergent approaches to the world, “Americans are from Mars and
Europeans are from Venus.” Having long outsourced power politics to Mars, it
turns out that Venus has limited influence even in her own backyard.
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