There is nothing in the recent history of the US to suggest that it would ever choose peace over primacy.  After the dissolution of the USSR in 1989, the US saw an opportunity for advancing its primacy in the world.  It took it and, in Europe, began expanding NATO’s borders eastwards towards Russia, despite having agreed not to do that in 1991.

In 2008 NATO announced that Ukraine would join NATO.  For Russia this raised the prospect that NATO’s nuclear weapons would be on its immediate western borders.  Russia made it clear that this was not a prospect that it would ever countenance.  NATO reasoned that there was little Russia could do to stop this happening, because Russia did not have the military or economic strength to stop it happening.

It was a calculation on the part of the West that appears to have been mistaken.  Russia has shown that it has been able to deal with the de facto NATO army that had been constructed in Ukraine in the period from 2014.  Russia has also shown itself able to withstand the West’s economic sanctions.

Although Russia is currently winning the war in the Ukraine, the US and the UK have gained much from the war.  The peaceful commercial relationship that had been developing between Russia and Germany, symbolized by the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, has been ended.  A political separation of Russia and Europe has been established that will last for decades.  NATO would of course have liked to defeat Russia on the battlefield.  They failed in this task.  Now NATO is divided on how to proceed. 

If the US thought they could win a conventional war against Russia, it would doubtless continue the war.  But Trump seems inclined to take the ‘win’, the political separation of Russia and Europe, and to move on to establishing American primacy in other parts of the world, particularly in Asia, against what he sees as a much more formidable enemy than Russia, China.  There may be peace in Ukraine, but only so that the US can better establish primacy over China.  He appears to have decided that Russia is not, at the moment, a threat to the Europeans.

The Europeans, however, appear reluctant to accept that the expansion of NATO to include Ukraine is a gambit that has failed.  They are faced with the prospect of a militarily powerful Russia on their eastern border and a much hollowed out NATO. 

The reduction of the operation of the US in Europe leaves the Europeans with a definite problem.  Europe is not by nature a coherent political and economic unit.  Since 1945 it has been held together by a US dominated NATO alliance.  In the face of a much diminished NATO, will the political tensions that resulted in two world wars only some 100 years ago re-emerge in Europe ? That is a very definite prospect.  The recent ‘coalition of the willing’ maneuverings, largely by Britain and France, should be understood within that context rather than as a serious suggestion that Europe should go to war with Russia. Britain, France and von der Leyen are desperate that Europe should be a pole in the emerging multipolar world.  However, in spite of the very determined efforts by von der Leyen’s Commission to limit the powers of the member states, there is an increasingly distinct possibility that Europe will revert to a collection of nation states, each focusing on its own national interests.