The Free Press
PARIS — The American people voted for change, and change—more profound than perhaps anyone now understands—is what we Europeans are getting. Whether the Trump administration is being strategic or merely falling into a painful trap when it calls for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, what I hear is clear: Europe had better get its act together.
So far, I see no signs of an adequate European response to America’s new posture, only the tears offered by Christoph Heusgen, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, in the wake of J.D. Vance’s recent speech.
Monday’s emergency conference on Ukraine, initiated by President Macron to deal with the fallout from Munich, ended in Paris with the usual words of support for Ukraine but no serious commitment to supply peacekeeping troops in the event of an eventual ceasefire, much less clarity about long-term security—for Ukraine or for Europe itself.
Europe has no choice. The American president, the secretary of defense, and the secretary of state have told us that we cannot depend indefinitely on the United States. We must unite or die. If we do not act, we will endure—in two, three, or five years—a new Russian assault, but this time in a Baltic country, Poland, or elsewhere.
Action, in this case, can mean only one thing: the formation of a new European Army, under independent European authority. Not NATO, dominated by the United States and its troops, but a European Army, under European command, like the one proponents of “strategic autonomy” have been dreaming and talking about off and on for three quarters of a century. Without this we will be vassalized.
This might seem radical, even far-fetched. And yet the notion is not only more necessary than ever before—it might also be more achievable than many believe.
Of the 800-plus artillery systems provided to Ukraine during the war, roughly three quarters have come from European countries, not the United States. A similar ratio applies to tanks and fighter planes.
Our defense industrial base can and should be ramped up. Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, has called for a commitment to spending 3 percent of economic output on defense, which seems like a minimum request: It is more than the current average of 2.7 percent but less than Poland’s Europe-leading 4.1 percent.
As for actual troops, a European force will not have to start from scratch. The European Union has already approved the creation of a rapid reaction force, elements of which were training in southern Spain in October 2023. It has a European Union Military Committee (EUMC), composed of high-ranking officers from 27 nationalities, based in Brussels, and that provides the Council with major strategic options. It has a European Union Military Staff, consisting of 200 people, also in Brussels, already operational and currently responsible, for example, for all aid to Ukraine.
It has Battlegroups, each with a strength of 1,500 soldiers, requiring 10 days to be deployed. These groups have already operated in Chad, Congo, and Macedonia, and two of them are fully ready, on high alert, and deployable at any time.
If additional manpower needed cannot be recruited from all of Europe, at least soldiers could come from those countries that do refuse to bow before the Putinists, Islamists, and one day, perhaps, the Chinese, who seek to subdue us.
What’s more, there is, at Europe’s borders, a battle-hardened army of 1.2 million active-duty personnel: the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As President Zelensky has already proposed, this could be the spearhead of this new European force.
I will see those troops next week. There is no other place in the world I wish to be on February 24, the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—the first total war on the European continent since 1945.
I already know enough to say that the famous Russian offensive in Donetsk, started last fall, has been stalled for months. I know; I’ve filmed every street of the martyred city of Pokrovsk. I’ve seen enough to know that the Ukrainians, as long as we in the West help them, will hold the line as they did, for nearly one year, in Bakhmut or, today, in Chasiv Yar, a place no one speaks of anymore but where they are still resisting.
In other words, I don’t think Ukraine is on its knees. Far from it.
I saw President Zelensky in Paris a few weeks ago. More recently, I saw his trusted adviser and brother in these trials, Andriy Yermak, who should be the first awarded the Order of the Liberation that Ukraine will create when it wins. And of this, I can testify: There is an untamed spirit of resistance; an unwavering determination to defend both Ukraine and Europe.
“Do you believe,” the young Churchill of Kyiv told me, “that we have made so many sacrifices to give, in the end, 20 percent of our country to a genocidal neighbor? And don’t you see, Europeans, that we are fighting for you, and that it would be your death knell if we were forced to yield?”
Those words challenge us Europeans with special force.
Will Europe be able to commit and press “Go”? Until now, the greatness of this community was like that of its namesake Greek princess Europa: a myth that we sang best because, ironically, it never quite materialized. Will it finally be made real? Will we, citizens of Europe, muster the tragic dignity this historical moment demands of us? That is the existential question.
Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, author, and filmmaker. His latest book is Israel Alone.
Translated by Emily Hamilton.