In Brussels, where both the European Union and Nato have their headquarters, few officials hold much hope that Donald Trump will have a change of heart and temper his aggressive stance on Ukraine, defence and trade, but they see Keir Starmer as having one of the best shots of talking the US President down from his worst instincts.
Starmer visits the White House today just two days after French president Emmanuel Macron and two weeks after Trump’s bombshell announcement that he was speaking with Russian president Vladimir Putin on how to end the war in Ukraine.
Macron then hurriedly assembled key European leaders in Paris – including Starmer – for an emergency summit. Starmer will host another European gathering in London on Sunday, and a special EU summit will take place next Thursday.
‘The format no longer matters – EU, Nato, UK – as we all have the same aim: save as much as we can for Ukraine’
The shuttle summiting shows how European leaders – including the heads of the EU and Nato – have been co-ordinating more closely than ever on security to ensure they complement one another during contact with Trump.
The key message they want to convey to the US President is that any successful peace deal in Ukraine requires credible security guarantees, backed by the US.
“We have to try everything to keep Ukraine in the game and to keep Nato together,” said one EU official in Brussels. “Starmer is talking with Macron and others to co-ordinate the messaging. The format no longer matters – EU, Nato, UK – as we all have the same aim: save as much as we can for Ukraine.”
European leaders have been speaking to each other regularly as they close ranks and try to respond to the fast-moving chain of events. Macron briefed his fellow EU leaders in a video conference yesterday on his meeting with Trump during which he underlined Europe’s massive contributions to supporting Ukraine, as well as the measures already under way to boost European defence.
Starmer, like Macron, has more sway in Washington than other European leaders, because Britain and France have by far the strongest militaries in Europe, and are the only ones with a serious ability to project force.
“Starmer and Macron are talking to each other,” says Ian Bond, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform. “And Europeans have started the process of talking about defence – outside the EU institutions – and the Brits are invited as we recognise we can no longer rely on the US.
“We’ve gone beyond the Churchill thing where, ‘You can rely on the Americans to do the right thing when they tried all the alternatives’.”
European leaders have warned that Trump has already conceded vital negotiating positions to Putin, including ruling out Nato membership and giving up on territory seized by Russia. But Europeans are angling for a role in the peace talks, notably by offering to put their own troops in Ukraine as peacekeepers.
While the Kremlin has publicly resisted the proposal for peacekeepers, Trump says Putin is ready to accept it. Europeans, however, want the US to provide logistical support behind the plan, because only the Americans are seen as having the resources to enforce a peacekeeping operation.
“We want the US engaged in this because they have the equipment,” said one Nato official. “We also know Trump wants to show that he got a peace deal. We need to show this deal will fail if it is not enforced property.”
In his talks with Trump, Macron referred to the Minsk Accords, the 2014 and 2015 ceasefire agreements negotiated after Russian-backed militias attacked territory in eastern Ukraine. He said the West should avoid such deals in the future as they not only froze the conflict, but they failed to deter Russia from its 2022 invasion.
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