Europe’s Stubbornness over Ukraine is Crazy

Speech by Ralf Dekker, Foreign Affairs Committee, Dutch Parliament, 26 March 2025

Chairman,

On 3 and 4 April, the 32 foreign ministers of NATO countries meet in Brussels to discuss the strategic challenges facing the NATO alliance.

Of course this meeting will be mainly about the Ukraine conflict. The papers routinely discuss Russian aggression which is said to pose an acute and immediate threat to Euro-Atlantic security, plus the ‘worrying cooperation between Russia and North Korea.’ Support from Europe is considered essential to put Ukraine in the best possible negotiating position. It is also claimed that continued military support to Ukraine remains important even after any truce with America.

There is much to be said about this.

The battle in Ukraine is a proxy war between America and Russia. The Russians are winning. America and Russia are currently in negotiations on normalising their bilateral relations, and also on the conditions under which hostilities can be ended. 

Ukrainian soldiers, with support from the West, are fighting and dying in huge numbers. It is a sad and horrific situation stemming from the old US foreign policy which luckily now seems to have been abandoned. The command and control, the arming, the intelligence all comes from NATO, i.e. America. When this stops, the war will soon be over. 

Ukraine itself, without US support, is not a military player of consequence against Russia. If NATO and US support continues, it may take a little longer but even then peace will be largely shaped on Russian terms, which will then be even more unfavourable than at present. There will be no question of creating a favourable negotiating position for Ukraine with Europe's help.

Russia's interests and considerations in this conflict, the security of its western border and the protection of Russian privacy, are well understood, whether you agree with them or not. These interests have been put forward unchanged for years but have never been taken seriously into account. This has nothing to do with aggressive expansionism. On the US side, Russia is finally finding an ear.  Mutual understanding is growing. 

The constant tendency of European countries to forget or distort the background and cause of the conflict and to keep suggesting that this is expansionist Russian aggression is unfounded and irritating.  Moreover, it creates needless complications and disturbs relations with Russia and now also with America. 

What remains of Ukraine will in all likelihood have a neutral status. Military support to that country then makes no sense.

I would also note here that apart from reports from the partisan secret services of Ukraine and South Korea, there are no serious indications of a substantial role of North Korea in the Ukraine conflict. This still seems to be a fabricated story that was used to justify escalation and target Russian territory with long-range missiles.

So we at Forum for Democracy completely disagree with the assumptions used in the upcoming discussion. In our view, these are damaging to Europe. As mentioned earlier, European countries have been vassal states of America on the Ukraine issue. With America drastically changing course, it is crazy for Europe to stick to the old wrong course. The big people are trying to settle their quarrel. The toddlers must now shut up for a while and hope the misery stops. 

To my surprise, what is not on the agenda at the Brussels discussion is America's claim to Greenland. This does seem to me to be an eminently relevant topic for this group. How to deal with this? Are we going to support Denmark if America claims this large island by force? Will that be an Article 5 situation? I would like a response from the Minister.

Thank you