Emmanuel Macron spent nearly six hours talking to Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday. He then travelled to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been moving through his own diplomatic sequence, meeting Joe Biden in Washington before travelling to Kyiv and then Moscow. British ministers are speaking with Russian officials, NATO governments are moving forces and equipment, and almost every major European capital is now trying to prevent the confrontation around Ukraine from becoming a war.
Europe is certainly involved in this crisis. What is less clear is whether Europe controls very much of it.
That distinction is becoming increasingly uncomfortable because the confrontation is occurring on European territory, concerns the future European security order and would impose its greatest immediate economic and humanitarian consequences on Europeans. Yet many of the central strategic demands are being exchanged between Russia and the United States. Moscow has directed its major security proposals towards Washington and NATO. Biden and Putin have spoken repeatedly. American intelligence warnings have shaped much of the public understanding of Russian intentions. The United States is coordinating sanctions and military assistance, while Russia continues to treat Washington as the most consequential Western actor.
Macron’s diplomacy this week therefore seems to be about more than Ukraine. It is also an attempt to answer a question Europe has been avoiding for years: can the European Union become a geopolitical power rather than principally an economic one?
On paper, Europe should possess extraordinary international influence. The European Union contains roughly 450 million people and one of the world’s largest economies. Its regulatory decisions affect multinational companies globally because access to the European market is so valuable. European countries collectively spend large amounts on defence, possess sophisticated militaries, and France itself has nuclear weapons and a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Yet economic scale does not automatically become strategic autonomy.
The European security system remains heavily dependent on NATO, and NATO remains heavily dependent on American military power. The United States provides capabilities in intelligence, logistics, air power, missile defence and nuclear deterrence that European members would find extremely difficult to replace quickly. When a major military crisis develops on Europe’s eastern frontier, Washington therefore becomes indispensable even though the United States is separated from Ukraine by an ocean.
This creates an unusual imbalance. Europe may bear more of the consequences of a conflict, while America possesses more of the capabilities required to deter it.
Power, in other words, is not one thing.
GDP is power. Military capability is power. Energy supply is power. Financial markets are power. Technology is power. Geography is power. Diplomatic credibility is power.
Countries can possess enormous quantities of one and surprisingly little of another.
The European Union may be a regulatory superpower while remaining much less capable of independent military action. Russia has an economy substantially smaller than the EU’s but possesses one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals, enormous conventional military capabilities and the ability to create security crises along Europe’s borders.
That asymmetry explains why comparing national power only through GDP can be misleading. Economic resources create potential power, but institutions determine whether those resources can be converted into coordinated action.
Europe’s problem is partly institutional. The European Union is not a single state. France, Germany, Poland, Italy and the Baltic countries do not always perceive security threats identically. They possess separate armed forces, governments and electoral politics. Foreign policy therefore requires coordination among countries whose interests overlap without being identical.
Russia needs one government to make a decision.
The European Union may need twenty-seven.
That difference affects speed, coherence and credibility.
This does not mean authoritarianism is strategically superior to democracy. Russia itself faces enormous institutional weaknesses created by concentrated power. But centralisation can produce advantages in particular forms of crisis management because fewer actors need to agree before policy changes.
Europe trades some speed for representation and national sovereignty.
Again, institutional design creates both benefits and costs.
Macron has spent years arguing for greater European strategic autonomy. The phrase is controversial because different governments interpret it differently. For France, it generally means Europe developing enough political and military capacity to act independently when necessary rather than assuming American involvement will always be available. Some Eastern European countries worry that talk of autonomy could weaken NATO and the American security commitment they consider essential against Russia.
Both positions make sense from their geography.
France is a nuclear-armed state in Western Europe with ambitions to exercise independent global influence. Poland and the Baltic states live much closer to Russia and have historical experiences that make American military guarantees extraordinarily valuable.
A French policymaker can ask why Europe should permanently depend on Washington.
A Polish policymaker can ask why anyone would experiment with replacing the strongest military alliance available while Russian forces are massing near Ukraine.
Strategic autonomy therefore sounds very different in Paris and Warsaw.
This illustrates something I increasingly notice about international relations: geography shapes ideology more than political rhetoric admits. Countries can share democratic values and still interpret the same security environment differently because the physical consequences of being wrong are distributed unequally.
If France underestimates Russia, France remains hundreds of kilometres away.
If Estonia underestimates Russia, the consequences could arrive at its border.
Threat perception is partly an argument about distance.
Germany faces a different constraint: energy. Europe imports substantial quantities of Russian natural gas, and Germany has developed particularly deep energy links with Russia. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, completed but not yet operating, has therefore become part of the current geopolitical confrontation.
This creates one of the most interesting contradictions in European policy. Economic integration with Russia was partly supposed to reduce conflict by creating mutual dependence. If Russia earns revenue from selling gas to Europe and Europe depends on Russian energy, both sides acquire economic reasons to avoid confrontation.
That logic is not necessarily wrong.
Interdependence does increase the cost of conflict.
But interdependence also creates leverage. The question becomes who can tolerate disruption longer.
Russia depends on European energy revenue.
Europe depends on Russian energy supply.
The same pipeline can therefore be interpreted as an instrument of peace or an instrument of coercion.
Its political meaning depends on which dependency is stronger.
This is why Scholz has faced repeated questions about whether Nord Stream 2 would be stopped if Russia attacked Ukraine. Washington wants ambiguity removed because deterrence requires Moscow to understand the economic consequences clearly. Germany has been more cautious about stating every sanction publicly in advance.
That difference may look like weakness.
It may also reflect a genuine disagreement over deterrence. Sometimes keeping consequences ambiguous makes an adversary fear a wider range of possibilities. Sometimes ambiguity convinces the adversary that allies are divided and will never impose the strongest measures.
The effectiveness depends on what Moscow believes.
Again, credibility is the variable that connects policy to outcome.
Macron’s meeting with Putin demonstrated another part of the crisis: diplomacy inevitably involves listening to demands we may consider illegitimate. Putin repeated his argument that NATO enlargement threatens Russia and warned about the consequences if Ukraine eventually joined NATO and attempted to retake Crimea. In that scenario, he argued, NATO’s collective-defence obligations could pull European countries into direct conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia.
The warning was deliberately stark, but the underlying issue is real. Ukraine joining NATO while retaining an unresolved territorial conflict involving Crimea would create extremely dangerous questions about what the alliance was actually committed to defend.
That does not mean Russia therefore receives a veto over Ukrainian membership.
It means NATO should be honest about the commitments it is willing to make.
Security guarantees only deter when everybody believes they will be honoured. Extending a guarantee that members are unwilling to enforce can be more dangerous than refusing the guarantee because it creates false expectations on both sides.
This is why the principle that every country may choose its alliances and the practical question of whether NATO should admit every applicant are different propositions.
Ukraine has the sovereign right to seek NATO membership.
NATO members retain the sovereign right to decide whether accepting Ukraine advances their own security.
Russia does not get to make either decision.
But Russia’s likely response remains part of the strategic calculation because international politics does not stop at legal rights.
This distinction between rights and consequences is uncomfortable but necessary. A country can possess the legal right to do something while still having to consider how another country may react. Recognising the reaction does not legitimise it.
The same distinction applies to diplomacy. Macron meeting Putin does not reward Russia simply because Moscow created the crisis. Refusing to speak with an adversary may communicate moral disapproval, but moral clarity is not always the same thing as strategic effectiveness.
The relevant question is whether conversation changes the probability of conflict.
Macron appears to believe that Europe needs a direct role in constructing a security settlement. That makes sense because any durable arrangement will affect European states long after American attention moves elsewhere.
But there is a danger in European leaders treating the crisis primarily as an opportunity to demonstrate Europe’s diplomatic relevance. Ukraine is not a stage on which France proves strategic autonomy.
The objective is preventing war while preserving Ukrainian sovereignty.
Any European security agreement negotiated over Ukraine’s head would reproduce the great-power politics that Ukrainians are trying to escape.
This is why the phrase “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” matters. Diplomacy becomes easier when two large powers negotiate over a smaller country’s choices. It also becomes less legitimate.
Ukraine’s interests do not perfectly align with America’s, France’s or Germany’s. Zelensky has at times urged Western governments not to create unnecessary panic through increasingly dramatic warnings about an imminent invasion because those warnings themselves damage Ukraine’s economy.
That is a rational Ukrainian concern. Deterring Russia requires demonstrating that the threat is serious. Protecting Ukraine economically requires convincing investors and citizens that collapse is not inevitable.
Western governments can therefore damage the country they are trying to protect if their warnings become indistinguishable from predictions of unavoidable war.
Again, policy operates through expectations.
This crisis increasingly seems to be fought in several domains simultaneously. Russian military forces create physical pressure. Energy relationships create economic leverage. American intelligence disclosures create informational pressure. Diplomacy creates possible off-ramps. Financial sanctions create threatened future costs. NATO deployments communicate alliance commitments.
No single instrument determines the outcome.
This is why asking whether diplomacy is “working” after one Macron-Putin meeting is almost meaningless. Diplomatic meetings are not vending machines where six hours of conversation produces a settlement.
Their value may lie in clarifying red lines, identifying negotiable issues and reducing the probability that one side misunderstands what the other will do.
A meeting can therefore succeed without producing a signed agreement.
It can also create the appearance of progress while changing nothing.
We will only know through subsequent behaviour.
As of tonight, Russia has not invaded Ukraine. Western governments continue warning that the risk is serious. Moscow continues denying plans for an attack. Diplomatic activity is intense.
That uncertainty should remain central.
The temptation now is to interpret every troop movement as proof that war is inevitable or every diplomatic meeting as evidence that peace is returning.
Neither conclusion is justified.
The more interesting question is what this crisis is revealing before we know how it ends.
It is revealing that Europe remains heavily dependent on American military power despite possessing enormous economic resources. It is revealing that economic interdependence can create vulnerability as well as peace. It is revealing that Ukraine’s sovereignty can become difficult to protect when larger powers define the strategic environment around it. And it is revealing that Europe’s ambition to become a geopolitical actor will remain incomplete until it can convert economic scale into coordinated strategic capacity.
That does not necessarily mean building a European army tomorrow or distancing Europe from the United States. Strategic autonomy should not be confused with strategic isolation.
In fact, the strongest form of European autonomy might exist inside a stronger Atlantic alliance: European countries capable of contributing enough military and diplomatic capacity that cooperation with America becomes a choice between relatively capable partners rather than permanent dependence on one.
Autonomy is not the absence of allies.
It is the ability to act when an ally cannot or will not.
Europe does not fully possess that ability today.
The Ukraine crisis is making the limitation unusually visible.
Macron can spend six hours negotiating with Putin. Scholz can travel between Washington, Kyiv and Moscow. European governments can threaten sanctions and attempt to construct diplomatic compromises.
All of that matters.
But when the conversation turns to the ultimate military guarantee underpinning European security, everyone still looks towards Washington.
Perhaps that is not a failure. NATO has prevented major war among its members for decades, and American engagement in Europe has been extraordinarily valuable.
But dependence remains dependence even when the partner is reliable.
The real test of European strategic autonomy is therefore not whether Macron can obtain a photograph at the opposite end of Putin’s enormous table.
It is whether Russia believes Europe itself possesses enough unified economic, military and political power that European decisions change Moscow’s calculation.
That is a much higher standard.
And this crisis is showing how far Europe still has to go before meeting it.
