Episode Notes:

On the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we’re here with Jeremy Shapiro to discuss the view from Europe. Jeremy Shapiro is the director of research at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He served in the U.S. State Department from 2009 to 2013.

[:40] European unity?

[2:22] Trans-Atlantic anxiety

[4:54] Uncertainty about America

[7:11] One-year horizon

[10:18] Impact on other relationships

[15:40] Path to nuclear war

Episode Transcript

Nicholas Danforth: My name is Nicholas Danforth, and I'm an editor at War on the Rocks. You are listening to the Warcast, the members-only podcast for what you need to know now. 

On the one-year anniversary of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. We're here with Jeremy Shapiro to discuss the view from Europe. Jeremy is the director of research at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He previously served in the U.S. State Department from 2009 to 2013. Welcome back to the Warcast. 

Jeremy Shapiro: Thanks, Nick. Thanks for having me. 

Nicholas Danforth: So, a year ago, the initial invasion was met with a surprising display of unity amongst European capitals. In the fall we did a series on this. There was more concern at that point, people worried that unity might be fraying. People weren't sure how public opinion was going to hold up during the course of the winter. We're approaching the spring now. It seems like people have renewed confidence about how this is going to play out. Is that fair? 

Jeremy Shapiro: Yeah, I think that's fair. At least it's fair for the, you know, next six to 12 months. I think beyond that, people aren't really thinking. But nobody unifies the transatlantic alliance like Vladimir Putin. I mean, he's done the most for it since anybody since George Marshall. I think it's true that, let's say, Europeans and even Americans have been surprised at the degree of unity that they've shown in the last year. But I think it's been relatively easy, because the Russians have been so egregious, and it's such a clear threat. But I also think that the American effort since before the war, started to frame the war in a certain way to make it very clear that it was a sort of naked, ridiculous aggression. And to pay a lot of attention to unity has really paid off on the unity front. At least hasn't done anything for the war. But it really does mean that the coalition, that the U.S.-European coalition is quite solid. And frankly, I think it has been since the first day. 

Nicholas Danforth: No, as I said that, I mean, there were worries that cracks were going to appear during the course of the winter. People have pointed out we had an unusually warm winter that helped with energy issues. Were there cracks appearing? Were those fears overblown? 

Jeremy Shapiro: Yeah, I think the fears were somewhat overblown. I mean, it's in the nature of the transatlantic alliance that it sort of gets its strength through its anxiety, which is also how my family works, so it's nothing unusual about that. And so it has sort of constant vigilance about this stuff. Any little deviation from unity is sort of exploded in the press and creates all sorts of worries and, you know, that's worth doing, I suppose. But at the end of the day, I think those things were overblown. I mean, there are unity problems, right? There is Hungary of course, which is a small problem, but definitely not on board. There is Turkey, which is a bigger problem and definitely not on board. That's been true since the beginning in both cases. 

But beyond those two, every NATO government is pretty devoted to this war. And it would take a change in government to really change that in any of them. And frankly, even a change in government would not do it. And Italy here is a super interesting case. Italy has always been a weak member of any anti-Russian coalition that you could name. And they changed governments to a quite different radical populist right-wing government in the fall. And that populist government didn't really change their Russia- Ukraine policy at all. And that shows you that what's going on here is something a little bit bigger than just domestic politics. For these European countries, there are a lot of structural incentives to maintain the coalition. And a country, even a country like Italy, really can't think about going against the United States, going against Brussels, going against its European partners, and standing alone in the manner of Hungary. That's just not an option for most of these countries. Of course, you know, various radical governments could decide to stand in the face of that. There is the Hungarian exception that could happen after a serious change of government in some European countries. But I think it's pretty unlikely at the moment. 

Nicholas Danforth: So then, in the spirit of maintaining that productive level of anxiety, what else are you worried about when it comes to unity over the coming months? 

Jeremy Shapiro: Let's say mostly I'm worried about the United States. And I wouldn't say I'm worried about the Biden administration per se, because I think the Biden administration is part of the consensus and really the forger of the consensus that I just talked about. But I would be worried about U.S. politics more broadly. And you think of that in two ways. The first is that I think that the Republicans are looking for attack lines against Biden. And one of the ones that they're very likely to find since the congressional Republicans broadly support the war, is to say that the Biden administration has failed to get the Europeans to shoulder their fair share. So they're not gonna attack the war itself, I think, from the Congress very much. But what they're going to do is attack Biden's implementation of it, Biden's conduct of it, in two ways, really. 

One, in terms of corruption, you know, sending money that gets stolen, and the other in terms of not getting sufficient allied contributions. And that latter one will, I think, put a lot of pressure on the Biden administration to put pressure on the Europeans. And that could cause some rifts. I think they'll be manageable in the next two years. The second way that I think that U.S. politics could be damaging, which is much more serious, I think, although somewhat more long term, is that the Republican presidential primaries are likely to surface a lot of arguments. We just saw it the other day when in reaction to Biden's trip to Kyiv, both Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump came out and said, you know, this war sucks and we shouldn't be paying for it. And that's going to also, I think, have an effect on the administration, but maybe more importantly, one of those guys could be the next president. And in that, if the U.S. has been central to the unity on this, it has forged the unity. It's the reason that countries like Italy can't depart from the unity. And so if that core falls out, the whole coalition collapses. 

Nicholas Danforth: So then what does this start looking like, you know, a year down the road? We have, as you said, been wrapped up in a lot of short-term thinking and concerns about whether or not unity will last for three months. There are good reasons to be optimistic in the long term, but if the war drags on, as it certainly appears to be, how does European thinking about it change? What do governments do? Is there the sense that they're in this for the long haul at the current level of commitment, are they likely to try to enhance their degree of support for Ukraine? 

Jeremy Shapiro: That's a hard question. I'm having trouble with tomorrow, much less next year. Look, I would say that there's a lot of different thoughts on that throughout Europe. I mean, I think that there are quite a few countries that are part of the unity, but are looking to do it with as little contribution as possible, just because they care less about the issue and because they have all sorts of fiscal constraints. And that's principally countries in the west and the more distant from the war. There's the countries in the east, to a degree the north, which are really quite gung-ho and are upping their GDP spending on defense quite a bit. Countries like Poland and Estonia and Latvia. 

And those countries, I think, are going to be looking and pushing their partners to be increasing their contributions. But I think that what decides this is less the attitudes, because the attitudes are a little bit all over the place, than the progress or lack thereof on the battlefield. Interestingly, if the war settles as it appears to be, for right now, into a sort of semi-stalemate, then it becomes very difficult to maintain these sorts of contributions forever. And people start talking about at least kind of coming up with a more livable way of delivering this aid over the long term. But if the Ukrainians gain some momentum, then of course there'll be a strong push to reinforce that success. And oddly, if the Russians gain some momentum, there will be a strong push to be shoring up the Ukrainians further. 

So in some sense it's only the stalemate, the long stalemate, which is really not even going to come into play for at least a year, that creates the greatest challenge for unity and for continued contributions. And I think you see that the Ukrainians are a little bit hip to that idea and are really trying to make sure that they accelerate contributions and that they maintain or establish momentum on the battlefield because they feel, I think correctly, that that's important in the long run. But I do think these are all long-run phenomena. Well, not super long run, but I don't think that it really tells in the next 12 months. 

Nicholas Danforth: Now talk us briefly through how the war has affected Europe's relations with other countries. We've seen them double down in their relationship with Azerbaijan. We've seen predictions that this was somehow going to dramatically shift their approach to China largely go unfulfilled. 

Jeremy Shapiro: Well, there's a couple of things going on there. First, as you were sort of alluding to, it has radically changed the European relationship with various fossil fuel suppliers. Particularly Azerbaijan, Qatar, Algeria, Norway, which is in Europe, but it still has made a huge difference. And importantly, the United States, which has really become in a complete turnaround from even five years ago, a massive energy supplier to Europe, which is like a structural change in international politics. And Saudi Arabia, I think, is another one worth talking about. There is a distinct European approach to these countries, which is very much recognizing that, particularly in the short term, and here we're talking about the next five to 10 years, they're gonna be reliant on these countries for energy supplies that they really need. 

They've worked out a mechanism for this, for the most part. There's still some worries about next year, but I think it will probably be okay. But if you think about the sort of miracle that they accomplished in the last year to basically wean themselves off of Russian gas in 12 months, which everybody said was impossible and has now basically happened, that does mean, of course, that they can't do that again, they can't now go without Qatar and Saudi Arabia and Algeria, that's just not gonna work. So they're going to have to tend to those relationships with significantly more care. But, you know, it looks like that is manageable, even though some of those countries are a bit problematic in a variety of ways. None of them are likely to invade a neighbor in the next few years, so it should be okay. Azerbaijan would say, they're invading Azerbaijan, but you will see, I think that the Europeans will tread very carefully around that conflict, in part for this reason. 

I don't see that there has been a major change in the European approach to China. I mean, the debate about the European approach to China more centers around the United States, and the degree to which Europeans need to follow and emulate the sort of increasingly conscious decoupling that is going on between the U.S. and China, to channel Gwyneth Paltrow. And I think that has a sort of Russia angle because obviously one of the things that the Americans are saying about the Chinese, especially recently, is that they're supporting the Russians and the war and that that should be one of the many reasons why Europeans should become more and more wary about Chinese technology and various types of strategic exports and imports from China. 

Well, that's a debate, which I would say is moving in the U.S. direction for better or for worse. And it has been for the past four or five years. And I think that the Ukraine war has maybe accelerated that a bit, but not really fundamentally and certainly has not changed the trend. I think, as in the United States, there is in Europe a sort of bizarre awakening about the Global South. There has been this very strong realization, my organization ECFR just published a poll on it yesterday, about how even though the West is united, the rest is divided, or the rest is divided from the West, and that countries like South Africa and India and Turkey and Brazil really aren't on board with the war, not in the way that Europe and the United States are, and not in the way that the West seems to feel they should be. 

And so that has occasioned quite a lot of soul-searching about why that is and what to do about it. I wouldn't say it's occasioned a lot of ideas so far. There's still a sort of view that if the Global South just understood the argument that we're making, just understood what was at stake, and we had better communication with them, this problem would be solved. I personally don't believe that. And I think if you talk to any Indian diplomat, they find that deeply insulting, and say that actually there are many more fundamental causes in terms of the way that the international system seems to favor the West and in the way in which there is a sort of hypocritical approach in the international system where, you know, if Russia invades a country in Europe, it's an international crisis, but if the United States invades a country in the Middle East, it's just another tricky day. 

Nicholas Danforth: Final question, you wrote for us over the summer that we were on a path to nuclear war. Are we still on that path? If so, how far along it have we come since then? 

Jeremy Shapiro: Yeah, we're still on that path, I think. As I said in that article, it's not inevitable by any means, and there's lots of ways off the path, but both sides have to be willing and interested in getting off. And the nature of that path is a sort of slow escalation that every time, it's a little bit the dynamic. I've already described, that every time one side starts to win or lose, the other side and their supporters double down and escalate and increase the types of weaponry and the dangers, and reduce the options for the other side. And so since I wrote that article, we've taken a couple more incremental steps along that path. Just the most recent one was the main battle tanks that the United States and much of Europe announced they were sending. And, you know, next appears to be fighter planes. President Biden has just said that there's no way he'll send those. So I suppose by the past pattern, that means they're probably six to nine months away. 

And so yeah, it seems to me we're going down that path. If we remain in a stalemate, we probably won't ever get there, but if one side starts losing, particularly if it's the Russians, I think that there's a real possibility that we will see that escalation quite suddenly. And so in some ways, from a Western perspective, unless we have a plan of maintaining a stalemate or losing, everything we do is actually pushing us down the path toward nuclear escalation. So I remain very worried about it. 

Nicholas Danforth: Always a pleasure to have you on the Warcast, thanks for joining us 

Jeremy Shapiro: Despite predicting nuclear war. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.