The Sentinel Weekly: It won’t be over by Christmas
Plus assets talks, more naval drone strikes, FCAS squabbling and more
Journalists love to simplify, and for good reason: Cutting through the woolly language of business and diplomacy is a valuable service. But sometimes we cut too deep; nuances are lost, and contingencies come to be seen as inevitable.
One such case is the idea that the US is directly negotiating peace terms with Russia on Ukraine’s behalf, as if it were a vassal state, rather than brokering a potential deal between two sovereign powers. News reports abound with ‘warnings’ and ‘deadlines’ and ‘ultimatums’ for the Ukrainians to accept whatever terms are handed down to them.
Having failed to achieve peace for our time by Thanksgiving, Donald Trump is now said to want a deal by Christmas – and so the sense of inevitability takes hold, filling column inches and even moving markets. In reality, Ukraine isn’t ready to surrender, nor Russia to accept any other outcome.
The Ukrainians are outnumbered and under pressure on the battlefield, but commentary about their imminent collapse is mere speculation. Pokrovsk holds; Kupiansk is mostly liberated. Russian tactical breakthroughs are routinely snipped off and encircled. Meanwhile, Ukraine is still able to operate at the strategic layer with drone strikes on oil tankers and airfields.
In any case, predicting when an army might collapse is a fool’s game. For more than a year in this same war, it was Russia that seemed on the brink. From the Kyiv traffic jam of spring 2022, where a 60km-long Russian convoy ran out of fuel, to Prigozhin’s narrowly aborted march on Moscow in summer 2023, sober voices were predicting the fall of Putin. And yet here we are.
The loss of American support would hurt Ukraine, of course, which is probably the only reason its leaders continue to engage with the whole charade. But short of joining in the attack themselves, or encouraging Russian nuclear escalation, it should not be assumed that the Americans can force Ukraine’s hand.
The unsteady hand of history
Commentators have delved into the past for parallels, but few have ventured beyond the European theatre of the Second World War, surely the most over-invoked conflict in all of history. This month alone, the leaders of Czechia and Germany – along with too many columnists to count – have warned against a repeat of the 1938 Munich Agreement, which ceded the Sudetenland to Hitler only for him annex the rest of Czechoslovakia and invade Poland within the year.
The lesson against appeasement is an apt one, but beyond that the comparison is weak. Czechoslovakia elected not to fight without support from Britain and France. With its fortifications abandoned and its war economy barely up and running, it was powerless to resist further threats. Ukraine, by contrast, has put up a spirited fight for nearly four years and developed a cutting-edge arms industry. That will still be true if foreign support is withdrawn tomorrow.
Another mistake is to think that there must be a linear relationship between peace in Ukraine and a wider Russian war on Europe. It’s true that Putin will begin to threaten NATO countries if he wins in Ukraine, as Finland warned this week. But there’s a good chance he’ll do that even if the Ukraine conflict is not resolved.
Ukraine’s lines are fortified, its people mentally prepared for a prolonged struggle for survival. The rest of us are not. Moreover, it’s much easier in any land war to defend than to attack. If Russia chose to freeze the war in Ukraine, it could defend its positions with a fraction of the forces it’s currently using to attack, freeing them up for operations elsewhere.
Narva to Nanjing
Scenarios for a Russian attack on NATO, like the Narva scenario outlined in The Sentinel last week, don’t actually require the Ukraine war to be resolved. That would surely be Putin’s preference, but he wouldn’t be the first dictator to open a second front after being stalemated on the first.
Consider another Second World War parallel, this time from the Pacific theatre. With Taiwan already occupied, Japan began a full-scale invasion of China in 1937. It quickly captured the capital Nanjing, Shanghai, and other coastal cities. It was as if Russia had taken Kyiv, Odesa and Kherson in 2022.
And yet China fought on, drawing Japan into futile engagements in its vast hinterland. By 1941, four years into the war, the Japanese were effectively stuck. And that’s when they attacked America.
There was a logic to it. They already controlled the most useful parts of China, and could hold them relatively easily. But other prizes were in reach of Japan’s formidable navy and marines – the Philippines, Singapore, perhaps even India. And for a society already at war, attacking the Allies was politically palatable.
Europeans should take heart not only from China’s eventual victory, but also from the help it received. The US maintained an embargo on many Japanese goods and provided material assistance to China from the beginning of the war, which it stepped up significantly after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Most famously, it sent volunteer pilots and cutting-edge fighter planes to operate from Chinese airbases, loosely under Chinese command. The Flying Tigers, as they were known, helped deny Japan control of the skies and became a powerful symbol of solidarity in the face of an aggressor.
Could European aviators join the defence of the Ukraine? History teaches us that every conflict is unique – but also that the world is full of surprises.
In the news
EU leaders will try to agree on a plan to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine at a high-stakes meeting today, but must first convince a hesitant Belgium. Another option is to issue common EU debt, but that would require unanimity and Hungary is opposed. Diplomats have vowed to stay in Brussels until a deal is reached.
Ukraine claimed to have struck and disabled an advanced Russian submarine with an underwater Sub Sea Baby drone on Monday. The Kilo-class submarine, which costs around $400 million, was docked underwater at Novorossiysk port.
Ukraine said it had struck Russian energy infrastructure in the Caspian Sea with naval drones, Business Insider reported. Ukraine has no access to the Caspian Sea, meaning the drones would have had to be launched from another country.
A Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down an “out of control” drone approaching its airspace over the Black Sea on Monday, the defence ministry said. It did not give details on the type of drone or who might have launched it.
The European Commission plans to “revise our procurement rules to not always choose the cheapest option, but to choose a strategic European option,” defence spokesperson Thomas Regnier told The Arsenal.
Rheinmetall has sold a “two-digit number” of Skyranger air defence systems to the Dutch armed forces for a “high triple-digit million euro” sum, to be delivered from late 2028. Kongsberg will provide its command and control system, ensuring interoperability with existing Dutch air defence systems.
KNDS and Leonardo have agreed to jointly develop a new mobile artillery system, with KNDS providing the weapon and Leonardo supplying the wheeled platform, electronics, and drone defence. They intend to bid for a forthcoming Italian tender.
Further reading
The Franco-German squabble over the FCAS jet fighter project comes at the worst possible time as the Trump administration ratches up the pressure on Europe to buy American weaponry, Martin Leng from the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics wrote in an op-ed for The Sentinel.
Europe must increase its security-related capabilities in outer space, hardening its network of satellites against potential hostile interference, Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Josef Aschbacher wrote in an op-ed for Euractiv. They recommend expanding Europe’s launch capacity and funding dual-use technologies.
“From now on, Europe will have to act as if it is on its own,” Bill Emmott wrote on his personal Substack. The former Economist editor joins a chorus of mainstream voices casting doubt on the Atlantic alliance. “The West may not be dead forever, but it must be considered defunct for as long as either Trump or Vance occupies the White House,” Emmott wrote.
A growing number of young Europeans have responded to US hostility by rallying online around radical European federalism, Politico’s Nick Vinocur wrote this week. Their wishlist includes direct elections for the Commission president and the creation of an EU army.
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The Sentinel is taking a break for the holidays (hence the early newsletter). We’ll be back in the first week of January. Merry Christmas!