London summit failed to solve any problems

Participants at the London summit for Ukraine on March 2 tried to put on a brave face even as multiple dilemmas confronted the Europeans.

It's noteworthy that the summit was planned before President of the United States Donald Trump met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, but it acquired a radically different context following the acrimonious Oval Office showdown.

The Europeans — at least most of them — are trying to temper their public criticism of Trump, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in particular, is really going out of his way to avoid any public criticism of the US president.

But that doesn't actually solve the main problem they are facing. They're putting up a lot of show to cover what, for them, is a bad situation while trying to think of doing something.

We also have to look at the fact that after the summit, Zelensky met with King Charles III.The meeting was organized at Zelensky's request.

That was typical of the kind of theater that Zelensky has engaged in on the international stage for the last three years. The meeting with King Charles III made for good optics, and he'll doubtlessly want to use the photos and footage to try to take the attention away from the humiliation he suffered at the hands of Trump and company.

But the meeting with the British monarch has absolutely no practical bearing on the current situation. It doesn't improve Ukraine's position on the ground.

At the moment, there are very few concrete outcomes we can see from the London summit, although Starmer is talking about a coalition of the willing. I will make three points about that.

The first is that the members of this coalition of the willing have not actually been named. The only countries named are the United Kingdom and France.

There are said to be other countries, but they are as yet unnamed. Most of those nations will probably make very insignificant contributions, if any. The fact that no other names can be put forward at the moment for this coalition of the willing tends to indicate that it doesn't amount to very much in real terms. Indeed, it already seems to be fraying, with, for example, President Emmanuel Macron of France proposing some sort of limited and temporary ceasefire only for this to be promptly rejected by Starmer.

The second point I would make about the coalition of the willing is that it is actually a very unfortunate phrase that was coined by former US president George W. Bush to describe those participating in the invasion of Iraq, which is more or less universally regarded now as a disaster. That coalition of the willing had to be created because the US and the UK couldn't get support in the United Nations Security Council for their illegal war.

Starmer may think that the coalition of the willing sounds clever, but actually, its antecedents are not very auspicious or encouraging.

The third issue is that everything Starmer is proposing relies on the US' involvement in the coalition.

In the long term, this could happen as Trump is a very mercurial character. But at the moment, the US is more in the coalition of the unwilling. The announcement that the US intends to freeze military support to Ukraine underlines this in a dramatic fashion. Without US involvement, the whole thing is bound to fall apart.

Starmer wants to place British and other peacekeepers in Ukraine, but they would have to have what he calls a backstop in terms of US air power. If the US doesn't agree to this, again, everything falls apart.

When Starmer went to the White House about a day after Macron and about a day before Zelensky, his visit was presented in the British press as some kind of a great achievement.

In reality, Trump was quite scathing toward Starmer. When Starmer made some comment about the US and the UK always standing together, Trump more or less laughed at him and said, "Do you think you can take on the Russians on your own?"

Russia launched its military operations in Ukraine precisely to prevent NATO from expanding into Ukraine and posing a threat to Russia.

Therefore, it seems really inconceivable that Russia would tolerate the presence of so-called peacekeepers from NATO countries in Ukraine as part of any agreement it would sign up to. Peacekeepers, after all, are supposed to be neutral.

If the US continues to dial down its support for Ukraine, as is presently the case, the Europeans can contribute a bit more, but they're really not in a position to match the amount of aid that the US has been giving.

So everything that was discussed at the London summit hinges on getting the US on board with whatever was decided on. However, the Europeans' ability to get the US on board is questionable, to say the least.

If you look at some of the participants, you had people such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is on his way out. Trudeau is yesterday's person. He's going to cease being his country's prime minister very soon, and Canada is going to have a new political reality. You had Olaf Scholz from Germany — his Social Democratic Party is almost certain to be a junior coalition partner in the next government, but he is the person who just led his party to its worst electoral defeat since the 19th century and will doubtlessly pay a personal price for this.

Therefore, clearly some of the people involved in taking decisions will soon be in no position to carry them through. So, the London summit should be seen as being more an act of showmanship than anything that makes a serious difference.

And that places Starmer in a very difficult position. As the saying goes, he's trying to "square a circle".

It's not really possible to do. If you are determined to continue the conflict in Ukraine, and the US is determined to bring it to an end, then just flattering Trump is only going to take you so far.

Starmer and some of the other European leaders are in an almost impossible dilemma, one that they probably never expected to face. And beneath the brave front, they really don't know what to do.

The author is a London-based senior analyst on international relations and co-editor of the Friends of Socialist China platform.