Trump’s Special Envoy to Russia Jared Kushner declared after the newly resumed trilateral talks on Ukraine in Abu Dhabi that “If Europe could identify one person to speak on their behalf, that would be a bigger achievement than getting the Russians to include them in the negotiation.” He had earlier met separately with representatives from the EU, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK who traveled to the premises but didn’t participate in the trilateral talks that the US mediated between Russia and Ukraine.
Zelensky echoed Kushner’s call by demanding that Europe appoint a representative before the month is over. In his words, “I think that in November, not later, we need to accept who will represent Europe in negotiations. It will be better because they will get [a] mandate for negotiations and they will get a mandate from all Europe, all this coalition.” For as hopeful as he is that someone will receive such a mandate, no European envoy can realistically represent the entire bloc’s interests vis-à-vis Russia.
Its several dozen states are much too divided over Russia for them all to agree on the post-war European security architecture that Kushner has been tasked to negotiate and the likely parameters of which were detailed in the preceding hyperlinked analysis for those who aren’t already aware of them. In particular, anything that even remotely complies with Russia’s security guarantee requests from December 2021 that were rejected by the US and NATO at the time would be objected to by Poland and the Baltic States.
The only way to get them to comply is for the US to “creatively coerce” them, ideally together with the rest of European NATO (E-NATO), most of whose members would probably have to be “creatively coerced” first in order to go along with whatever the US agrees to with Russia about this. For example, one scenario is mutual military pullbacks by E-NATO and Russia from their shared frontier, which could also include the one between E-NATO and Russian ally Belarus.
The participation of a European representative in any talks that result in any compromises on the post-war European security architecture between Russia and the US would therefore only be to superficially legitimize the US’ consequent coercion of E-NATO into compliance. Poland and the Baltic States, which perceive Russia to be an existential threat no matter what others’ views on the subject may be, would never voluntarily agree to any military-security compromises. They can only be coerced into them.
If a European representative at the talks where such compromises are agreed to presented themselves as having “a mandate from all of Europe”, was presented that way by others, or was perceived to have such a mandate, however, then it would make it relatively easier to coerce them into compliance. That’s because they’d be presented by that representative and whichever (likely supranational) body appointed them to their role as being responsible for “dividing” E-NATO and “threatening the bloc from within”.
While that might not suffice for coercing them into compliance, it could legitimize coercion by other (likely Western) E-NATO members, not to mention the US. Their grounds would be that such a compromise, such as E-NATO pulling back its forces from the border with Russia and Belarus if those two do so too, would be for the “greater good” that Poland and the Baltic States are “selfishly obstructing”. That would veritably be true in that case and is a plausible reason to coerce them into compliance.
