European leaders have held emergency talks in Paris amid fears that they can no longer rely on their security alliance with the United States. French President Emmanuel Macron called the meeting after President Donald Trump's administration left Europe out of negotiations to end Russia's war in Ukraine.
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00:00Ulrika Franke is a security and defence analyst with the European Council on
00:04Foreign Relations. Welcome to DW. So can European leaders force the US and indeed
00:11Russia to take them into account? What leverage do they have? I mean forcing
00:17them is definitely difficult but the leverage indeed is that the Europeans
00:21will be the one asked to secure any kind of deal, right? That's what we just heard
00:26this whole discussion about sending troops, not sending troops, is it
00:30premature to talk about. The reason why we are talking about this is because the
00:34US has said well we may be negotiating a deal but you Europeans will have to
00:38secure it and then of course you know in that fashion is unacceptable and and
00:44that is how the Europeans will eventually have to get a seat at the
00:47table because if they're being asked to secure any kind of deal they will need
00:50to be involved in it. Okay but a big worry must be that Russia and the US do
00:55a deal, Washington withdraws from Europe, Russia rebuilds its war machine and then
01:01picks up where it left off, leaving Europe to keep a peace that it
01:05had no part in negotiating. Absolutely, what you just described is the worst case
01:10scenario, the horror scenario and unfortunately one that is absolutely
01:13possible. Yes and this is exactly why we have, why we had the panic over the
01:18weekend during the Munich Security Conference, why there are now these talks
01:22in Paris that should go beyond the question of what to immediately do in
01:27Ukraine with regard to Ukraine but what Europe now needs to do is face the
01:32situation that the that the Americans have said we are no longer there to
01:36really secure the continent in the way that we've done over the last years and
01:40decades. You are on your own one way or another, I mean the details are still a
01:44bit unclear but Europe will have to step up and this is exactly the discussions
01:49we need so to avoid these worst-case scenarios where yeah the big powers are
01:54can do whatever they want and Europeans are just standing there saying well
01:58unfortunately we don't have any means to defend ourselves, defend our interests,
02:02defend our allies. Let's talk about the idea of Europe stepping up because
02:07Emmanuel Macron not that long ago suggested the idea of a European army
02:12and everyone turned around and said no no no no no calm down. So is that the
02:18direction that we are heading in if the United States withdraws? I don't think
02:25so. So the European army is a concept that has been around for years and
02:29decades. I mean we discussed this in the 1950s indeed under Emmanuel Macron. This
02:35was a debate now. Volodymyr Zelensky this weekend in Munich held a very strong
02:40speech and indeed mentioned the idea of common European armed forces four times
02:45I think which was really surprising. The question is always what exactly does
02:50this mean? What are we talking about? Are we talking about additional forces? Are
02:53we talking about European forces instead of national ones? If it's the latter who
02:58decides where to send them, when to use them. This is a very long-term thing. This
03:05is something I would say comes after some kind of United States of Europe. So
03:09it's not where I would put most of the effort. It's fine to have this as a kind
03:14of common goal eventually. But let's be very clear. The European army is not
03:19what's going to help us in the next two, three, five years against Russia that may
03:25attack Europe and will help us to face the situation that the US is
03:31basically withdrawing from Europe. Okay so let's talk about that then. So
03:37what's the answer to the next two, three, five years in terms of a European
03:46security without the United States? Yeah no I got that. The answer really is for
03:52the Europeans to do much more themselves at the national level and of course yes
03:58at the common European level. I'm just saying like this is not a time to think
04:01about the color of the uniforms of the European army. So what we need now
04:05is increased defense spending, building up the European industrial military base.
04:11So we need more equipment. We probably need more troops. This is a national
04:15question of where and how to get them. We need more common European training and
04:21common European coordination absolutely. So all of these and the problem
04:27is that all of these recipes these are well known. This is something that has
04:30been said not even just for the last three years and the war with regard to
04:34the war in Ukraine but even for the last 10 years. So it's not so much I
04:38would argue that we need main new ideas. There's no kind of silver bullet that
04:44can come around and we say okay this is the answer. The answers are more or less
04:47known and it is to do more, to do more individually, to do more together and
04:52that will include increasing defense spending quite a bit. But it really is I
04:57mean we're kind of getting to five after twelve rather than five to twelve. Thanks
05:01for talking us through that Ulrike. Ulrike Franke from the European Council on
05:04Foreign Relations. Thank you.