Europe should get own house in order: China Daily editorial

Speaking after the summit of European leaders on Ukraine on Sunday, United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer stressed that there would be potentially grave global repercussions if the European conflict was to continue.

His remark has served to underscore the urgent need for all the parties concerned to keep the window of opportunity open for dialogue.

But while the participating leaders at the summit affirmed their shared commitment to devising a strategy to halt the hostilities and seek a sustainable peace resolution, that primarily seems to comprise providing Ukraine with more military aid and engaging with the United States to persuade it to act as the backstop security guarantee for a peace agreement.

The European leaders are essentially doubling down on their existing position.

Yet the recent fluctuations in US policy toward Ukraine have presented a formidable challenge for European leaders to navigate the divergences with their long-standing ally and craft a unified strategy to facilitate a peaceful resolution to the enduring crisis in Europe. The hastily convened defense summit in London, which brought together a multitude of European heads of state and government, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, seems to have fostered some cohesion; however, it falls short of aligning US President Donald Trump with Europe's stance on supporting Ukraine's demands for peace negotiations. The warm welcome these leaders extended to the Ukraine leader in London and their reiteration to stand together with Kyiv have struck a quite different tune to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's rumbustious meeting with the US leader and amplified the divide between Europe and the US on the Ukraine issue.

In this regard, the outcome of the summit that was scrambled together in haste on Sunday is unlikely to be enough to bring the US president on Europe's side to offer what Zelensky insists is needed before Ukraine sits at the negotiating table with Russia.

Trump has signaled his intention to not only amend the US' ties with Russia but also broker a peace deal that will require compromises from Ukraine. The onus is on these other Western leaders to persuade Trump to change his stance on the issue if they want him to accept their plan.

Rather than pursuing a course that has seen the conflict enter its fourth year, the summit-attending leaders and others in Europe should rethink and reshape their perspectives on the continent's security. But instead, at the London summit, the participating European leaders agreed to spend more on defense as a concession to Trump's demand that the continent must rely on itself for security protection.

While some in Europe may still view Washington as the continent's primary security guarantor, the shock wave the Trump administration has sent so far over the Ukraine crisis has necessitated European countries contemplating the previously unthinkable: that the US security guarantee might not be a given. It will certainly come at a price.

Yet they are still reluctant to accept they are being forced to pivot from their traditional security reliance on the US toward greater strategic autonomy.

Such a reassessment of Europe's situation is clearly belated. It has been the reliance on NATO and that organization's expansionism and relentless roll toward Russia's border that has been a principal factor in triggering the conflict.

In fact, with the focus on relations between Kyiv and the US administration amid the fallout from the two sides' fractious entrenching of positions during their televised talks in the White House, Starmer's most significant remark that "a deal will have to involve Russia" might easily go unnoticed.

It is imperative that Europe cast off the shackles of the past and take accountability for its own security issues, especially now that Ukraine is better armed and funded than most NATO countries.

Russia has long viewed NATO and European Union expansion in Eastern Europe as a threat to its security and sphere of influence. And Ukraine's aspirations to join these Western institutions have been a major point of contention between the two countries.

China supports all efforts conducive to peace in Ukraine, including the recent engagement between the US and Russia. And it is willing to continue playing a constructive role in helping engineer a political resolution to the crisis. It hopes that the window of opportunity that has opened to bring an end to the conflict will not be squandered.