Western Allies Seem on Brink of Fateful Rift

Europeans fear Putin wants to split NATO

Author

Matt Davis
February 17, 2025

Good morning.

Today I went to buy the paper and Harold, a nice old Vietnam war veteran who works as the superintendent at a bunch of apartments on my street, gave me this lego airplane set to give to our kid. “An old lady give it to me this weekend,” he said. The other guys at the bodega asked him if he’d nicked it and he chuckled. I thanked him profusely because our kid loves planes.

Today’s news story, by David E. Sanger and Steven Erlanger, is a piece of analysis based on news in Europe over recent days. Before we get into it, a funny thing has happened to me since I started Reading the Newspaper So That You Don’t Have To(TM) . I’ve also found myself talking about the stories with my friends and neighbors, as well as with you, dear reader. I didn’t do that before on the basis that I didn’t want to cause conflict. But when you read the news in depth, you find yourself confident enough to talk about it with your neighbors without getting into a fight. You also find yourself less able to keep quiet about what you’ve read.

For example, on Saturday, I asked the guy who runs the bodega what he thought of the fact that JD Vance had been in Germany telling the Germans they should support more extremist political parties. He — let’s call him Mr. Bodega — voted for Trump and said, “these guys are really good at saying stuff.” I said, “as long as your taxes are low I guess it’s alright for him to tell the Germans to vote Nazi, then, eh?” And he chuckled.

I couldn’t really believe I’d said that. But I did want him to know that while I do like him personally, I still think his vote was probably bad for global democracy. Mr. Bodega is also from Jordan and has strong opinions about the war in gaza. They fly Palestinian flags in there. So: At some point I do want to ask him if he’s pleased about the Gaza thing. But one day at a time.

I also found myself talking about the “Vance: Vote Nazi” story again at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday afternoon. I went to see an exhibition of German painting by Caspar David Friedrich, who specialized in men alone in the fog, monks staring out at the empty sea, and so on, in the early 1800s. You get the gist:

I was still so shocked by Mr. Vance’s lecturing Europeans to embrace the far right that I found myself asking my friends if they were as shocked by it as I was, over coffee in the cafe. Normally I’d take such an opportunity to make small talk but I just found myself engaged in conversation about contemporary politics in a way that felt…empowering? I’m curious: Have you found that my reading the news so that you don’t have to has been helpful? Or are you more inclined to switch off, as a result?

Are you glad Matt Davis is reading the news so that you don't have to?

Or has it raised your blood pressure?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

I do wonder whether contemporary news literacy is like a muscle we can all work out. If only more of us read the newspaper every day and found ourselves talking about it, perhaps our society would develop something more like core strength and overall, be a lot healthier. It’s a pain to read these stories and yet it’s also not a pain. It even feels rather uplifting, maybe? Perhaps?

Okay. It’s a stretch to call today’s story “news analysis” because it quotes several original sources. European officials…

“…fear that in one-on-one negotiations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Trump is on his way to agreeing to terms that could ultimately put Moscow in a position to own a fifth of Ukraine and to prepare to take the rest in a few years’ time. Mr. Putin’s ultimate goal, they believe, is to break up the NATO alliance.”

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference that “Ukraine will never accept deals made behind our backs.”

“Mr Zelensky predicted that Mr. Putin would soon seek to manipulate Mr. Trump, speculating that the Russian leader would invite the new American president to the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. ‘Putin will try to get the U.S. president standing on Red Square on May 9 this year,’ he told a jammed hall of European diplomats and intelligence officials, ‘not as a respected leader but as a prop in his own performance.’”

There’s an undercurrent emerging in the reporting which is to compare Trump’s efforts to negotiate “PEACE” in Ukraine with the failed efforts by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to fend off Adolf Hitler. He famously returned from a meeting with let’s-call-him-’aitch’ declaring “peace in our time” in 1938. I saw this cartoon over the weekend by an artist called Michael De Adder which makes the comparison directly (albeit while significantly tightening up Trump’s jawline):

This undercurrent is echoed in remarks in today’s story by Kaja Kallas, the E.U. foreign policy chief and former prime minister of Estonia, who said in an interview that she remains worried about “appeasement” of Mr. Putin by Mr. Trump over Ukraine…

"…which she defined as ‘giving the aggressor what he wants’ even before negotiations begin. ‘That’s why we shouldn’t give Putin what he wants, because that will only invite more aggression,’ she said.”

It’s remarkable that you have to spell out the risks of appeasement as if you were talking to five-year-olds and yet that is indeed what Ms. Kallas seems intent on doing. Good for her.

In a meeting with Trump officials this weekend, Mr. Zelensky rejected an American proposal “that the United States be granted a 50 percent interest in all of Ukraine’s mineral resources, including graphite, lithium and uranium, as compensation for past and future support of the war, according to two European officials.”

There’s a particularly amusing quote in the midst of all the horrific reporting about undermining NATO:

“For those in search of Trump’s strategy on Ukraine: Relax,” said Douglas Lute, who served both Democratic and Republican presidents in senior national security positions. “There is no strategy.”

Ms. Kallas closes out the story by emphasizing that if Ukraine rejects Trump’s “PEACE” negotiations, “Europe will support them.”

So, that’s alright then. On Sunday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote an article in the right-leaning Daily Telegraph saying he’d be happy to send British troops to Ukraine to prop up a peace deal.

“Mr. Starmer had hinted in January that Britain would be open to the idea, but his article in The Daily Telegraph left nothing open to interpretation, saying that the decision to commit British troops was not taken lightly.

But “securing a lasting peace in Ukraine that safeguards its sovereignty for the long term is essential if we are to deter Putin from further aggression in the future,” he wrote, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

“The end of this war, when it comes, cannot merely become a temporary pause before Putin attacks again,” Mr. Starmer added.”

That’s a significant intervention. It’s also remarkable for showing British leadership in international affairs for the first time since before Brexit. One slight risk, however, is that it could potentially put Britain in a position where it could be at war with Russia:

“John Sawers, a former head of the British intelligence service, said there were risks to undertaking such an operation.

‘We have to be very clear what the mission is, what the rules of engagement are should the Russians attack,” he told the BBC. ‘Do we fight back or do we simply report it to some other body?’”

You’re welcome!

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.