April 12, 2025: The United States has not backed off from attempting to develop a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. The Americans believe this is a European problem and that the Europeans should deal with it. So far, the European nations have not come up with a feasible peace plan. The Ukrainians are willing to negotiate but the Russians insist that they will keep fighting until Ukraine is once more part of Russia.

All this puts Europe in an untenable position. While Europe is furiously rebuilding its neglected arms industries, the U.S. is no longer available to supply Ukraine. The only immediate solution is for European nations to take weapons and munitions from their own forces and ship them to Ukraine. There are also efforts to purchase weapons and munitions from other sources, like South Korea. Poland has already spent nearly $20 billion on South Korea weapons and equipment.

The Americans still have 100,000 troops in Europe and will not use them in Ukraine to guarantee a peace deal. At the moment, European countries can only muster 40,000 soldiers for Ukraine, where estimates are that a force of 100,000 to 200,000 soldiers is needed. European nations see the dire situation they are in and realize that there is no quick fix. It will take years to upgrade and expand European forces. In the meantime Russia openly boasts that it can and will take advantage of this situation. That means the only viable European peace plan right now is whatever the Russians will allow. The Europeans nations are finding out what NATO can do without the United States. For the moment the thirty European NATO members are scrambling to assemble a large enough military force to dissuade Russian aggression. On paper the European NATO nations have 1.9 million troops. Before the U.S. left with its 1.3 million troops, the total force was 3.2 million. While 1.9 million seems large enough, the Europeans have not agreed on how to handle command and control, or much of anything. In the past, the Americans took care of that because they had far greater resources. Now Europe has to start from scratch to create a new command structure. That could take years when it is needed within months.

The foundation of any European peace plan for Ukraine is to have the forces to maintain and enforce it. The solution is a work in progress and no one knows how long it will take or how effective any solution will be. For the first time in over 70 years, Europe has to manage its own defense against a new Russian threat.