Europe’s 2025 Challenge: Halting NATO’s Failing Attempt to Expand Into Ukraine
NATO Secretary Mark Rutte. X/ @reufkanani
By: No Cold War
January 24, 2025 Hour: 11:48 am
A recent survey found that only two Global South countries have actually implemented U.S. sanctions against Russia.
From the beginning of the Ukraine war in 2022, countries in the Global South – which contains the overwhelming majority of the world’s population – have opposed US policy towards that conflict.
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A recent survey found that only two Global South countries have actually implemented US sanctions against Russia over the war, and India increased its oil imports from Russia tenfold during the war’s first year.
Global South leaders, such as South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, stated that the US policy of expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) into Eastern Europe lay behind the war.
But, until recently, support for the war seemed firm in the US and among its European allies. This is now changing significantly. Media speculation has focused on Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that he could end the war within 24 hours, but much more substantial is evidence of a sharp change in popular attitudes to the war. This provides the basis for hopes to permanently end the war.
The Necessity to Restore Economic Links Across Europe
The first pressure changing the situation is economic. On 1 January 2025, for example, a five-year gas transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine expired, ceasing Russian gas exports to Europe via Ukraine entirely and ensuring that the Ukrainian government will shut the pipelines across its territory.
The US’s gradual success in achieving its decades-long objective of cutting the direct export of Russian gas to Europe has reduced the living standard of Europe’s population due to soaring energy prices and has simultaneously dealt a huge blow to Europe’s economy. Price shocks from the war spread out to affect many developing economies as well.
US liquid gas exports, on which Europe is now reliant, are on average 30–40% more expensive than Russian gas. Moreover, this Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is mostly sourced via the devastating fracking method and transported to Europe in an equally ecologically unfriendly way, on huge LNG carrier tankers.
The tremendous economic damage done to Europe has now created increasing opposition to the war, not least among the working class and households at large. More and more people have come to understand that they pay twice for the war in Ukraine: their taxes underwrite the enormous war and militarisation efforts, and at the same time they bear the brunt of the concomitant rising energy prices and imposed austerity measures.
In Germany, the leadership of Christian Democratic, Conservative, Social Democratic, and other ‘centrist’ parties implemented such US-enforced policies, thereby deeply damaging their own economies and societies. This sort of complicity has defined the approach in most European countries until recently and has continued despite the immense unpopularity it created for their own parties.
The overwhelming majority of governing parties in Europe are now deeply unpopular, and there has been a sharp rise of xenophobic and overtly neofascist/fascist forces.
In Germany and elsewhere in Europe, there is a sharp rise of support for parties opposing the war. Lately, an increasing number of politicians have openly stated that it is vital for Europe’s economy to break with this disastrous US policy and resume direct supply of gas from Russia, as well as to reinstate normal trade and investment relations with the Global South and BRICS countries, particularly China.
Former Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine summarised this sentiment by saying there should simply be a phone call to Russia to restore the gas supply.
NATO Cannot Win the War in Ukraine
The second factor changing public opinion is that the US and NATO are suffering setbacks in the Ukraine war. NATO’s expansion into Ukraine is, of course, not the only example of US-supported aggression in the present world situation.
Notably, in Gaza, Israel and the US are able to carry out unbridled military massacres, atrocities, and genocidal policies against the Palestinian people and other countries in the region.
In Europe, however, the US and its allies are confronting Russia, which has the most powerful army on the continent and nuclear forces essentially equal to those of the US. The latter appears incapable of winning this proxy war; only direct intervention by NATO military forces, risking global nuclear war, would turn this around.
The dragging on of the Ukraine war, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of victims –including thousands of children – and widespread devastation, has led to a sharp change in public opinion.
In Ukraine, polls now show that 52% of the population supports the position that ‘Ukraine should seek to negotiate an ending to the war as soon as possible’. Only 38% support the view that ‘Ukraine should continue fighting until it wins the war’.
In Romania’s first-round presidential elections in November, after Diana Șoșoacă, a candidate opposed to the war, was banned from the election, Călin Georgescu, who also opposes the war, came in first place. Romanian authorities, with US support, responded by cancelling the election.
In December 2024, a YouGov survey of Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Denmark showed a sharp increase in support for a negotiated settlement.
In four of these countries – Germany, France, Spain, and Italy – the position to ‘encourage a negotiated end to fighting, even if Russia still has control of some parts of Ukraine’ had more support than the view to ‘support Ukraine until Russia withdraws, even if this means the war lasts longer’. In the US, only 23% of the population thought ‘supporting Ukraine’ should be a US foreign policy priority.
The Situation in Ukraine
Re-establishing normal, mutually beneficial economic ties across Europe is necessary for the region’s economy but is only a first step in bringing an end to the disastrous Ukraine war that US imperialism has imposed on Europe.
NATO’s expansion effort is interrelated with the situation within Ukraine, which has a very large Russian-speaking minority (around 30% of the population) that is a majority in the East and Southeast of the state. Experiences in countries such as Canada and Belgium confirm that bilingual states can only be held together by strict guarantees of linguistic and other rights of the different communities and avoiding policies which are totally unacceptable to either.
Nonetheless, from the 2014 Maidan coup onwards, the Kyiv government, supported by the US, has set out to suppress the rights of the Russian-speaking minority. As the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, which cannot at all be accused of being pro-Russian, stated, ‘the current Law on National Minorities is far from providing adequate guarantees for the protection of minorities… many other provisions which restrict the use of minority languages have already been in force since 16 July 2019’.
Both the attempt to oppress the Russian-speaking population and the question of NATO membership for Ukraine are two issues that must be resolved in order to bring a permanent end to the war.
The Conditions for an End to the War in Ukraine
Europe should undertake honest, serious efforts to bring the Ukraine war to an end. Building on public opinion that is longing for peace and progress and on a peace movement with a strong working-class component, European social and political forces must promote the following steps to end the war in Ukraine:
- Opening peace negotiations without preconditions.
- Calling for a ceasefire.
- Opposition to NATO membership of Ukraine.
- Recognition of language rights across Ukraine and the rights, including self-determination, of the Russian speaking majority in the East and Southeast of Ukraine.
- End of involvement by NATO countries in the Ukraine war, including a halt to all arms sales and withdrawal of all military personnel and trainers from Ukraine – the money saved to be used for strengthening social spending and public services.
It will take a significant period for Europe, and the world, to recover from the disastrous effects of US policy in the region. Permanently halting the war in Ukraine is an indispensable first step.
Autor: No Cold War
Fuente: No Cold War
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