NATO's Terrible Mistake: Proxy-War Turns Against Europe | Anatol Lieven

## Ukraine, NATO, and peace talks The strategic logic that sent Europe down the road of open-ended support for Ukraine is now colliding with hard limits: battlefield stalemate, dwindling Western war materiel, and deep political divisions within Europe about how—or whether—to negotiate a settlement. The conversation makes plain that the central paradox of the past four years remains unresolved. NATO’s eastward expansion and the promise of future Western security guarantees have been both a motivating dream for Kyiv and a red line for Moscow. That contradiction is at the heart of the impasse and explains why neither outright victory nor a negotiated settlement has yet prevailed. Anatol Lieven and the participants repeatedly return to the point that the current Western approach treats Ukraine’s NATO aspirations as a bargaining chip rather than a genuine security guarantee. That ambiguity has created a strategic trap: to keep encouraging Ukraine’s resistance while refusing to put forward a credible framework that could end the war without Russia feeling defeated. The result is a cycle of escalation and exhaustion that is both morally costly and geopolitically dangerous. The idea of a negotiated settlement does not merely require technical concessions; it requires a credible mechanism to lock in guarantees that both sides can trust—something the present institutional architecture has not produced. The suggestion that talks are beginning—private meetings in Vienna between Germany, France, Britain and Russia—signals limited movement, but the conversation cautions that such steps are tentative and fragile. Any meaningful negotiation must be driven by the major European powers rather than pan-European bodies that are politically paralyzed by member-state rivalries. Even then, the political conditions in Kyiv, Moscow, and across Europe remain hostile to compromise, which means that a credible process will be as much about domestic politics as about diplomacy. ## Can a Ukraine deal hold? Stability will not follow automatically from slapped-together agreements. A recurring thread in the discussion is the distrust each side holds of the other’s commitments—rooted in prior broken promises and unstable intermediaries. Russia’s demand that Ukraine never join NATO is framed in Moscow as a vital security need; for Ukraine, surrendering territory or the prospect of alliance membership cuts to the core of sovereignty and national survival. That makes any deal structurally precarious: what one side considers a concession, the other sees as surrender. Lieven underscores the practical impossibility—at least for now—of ordering Ukrainian forces to abandon fortified positions that have been defended at appalling human cost. Even if political leaders could accept territorial compromises on paper, they would need mechanisms to make them credible long-term. That is where international institutions should theoretically come in: Security Council resolutions, UN peacekeepers, or enforceable multinational guarantees. Yet the conversation paints the UN as debilitated by financial coercion and political sidelining; the U.S. relationship with the UN has weakened its ability to play the central role required to stabilize a settlement. A viable pathway, the exchange suggests, would involve compensatory assurances—security guarantees, economic commitments, and verifiable arms limitations that let leaders on both sides claim they secured vital interests. But those assurances must be embedded in durable, enforceable frameworks and supported by the major European powers. Without that, ceasefires will be fragile and violations routine, making another round of large-scale fighting likely rather than unlikely. ## US weapons limits and Iran A striking theme in the conversation is the structural limit on Western military capacity. The West has been treating high-end weapons and missiles as effectively infinite; the reality, as the interlocutors observe, is otherwise. Sustained commitments to two theaters—Ukraine and a potential extended conflict with Iran—have stressed U.S. and allied inventories. This is not a trivial logistical problem; it reshapes strategic calculations because it exposes the assumption that Western material superiority is inexhaustible. The narrative that military procurement can be ramped up quickly to meet all contingencies is being tested. As stockpiles of advanced interceptors, long-range strike munitions, and air-defense assets are drawn down, policymakers face stark choices: prioritize one theater at the expense of another, curtail operations, or push for political compromises that reduce materiel demands. If the United States cannot deliver critical defenses to Ukraine, the front-line consequences would be immediate and severe. Likewise, in the Middle East, depletion of certain categories of munitions has constrained options for escalation and sustained strikes. Lieven argues that the Pentagon and political leadership have not internalized these limits. The consequence is twofold: first, policymakers may continue to pursue maximalist goals without recognizing the diminishing returns of available capabilities; second, the reality of scarcity might force an eventual—or sudden—policy pivot toward negotiated settlements or de-escalation. The timing and politics of that pivot remain uncertain, but the resource constraint is now a hard engine pushing strategy. ## Trump’s Iran strategy The exchange treats the recent U.S. policy toward Iran not as a coherent grand design but as a sequence of choices driven by opportunism and miscalculation. The view attributed to Anatol Lieven is blunt: the campaign against Iran was not part of a carefully calculated long-term strategy but rather a misread assertiveness, encouraged by allies and fuels of momentum. That assessment matters because it means the escalation was unlikely to be easily contained once begun. When strategy is thin, feedback loops—political pressure from allies, domestic political considerations, and military momentum—can drive escalation into conflict. The interlocutors highlight how the American negotiating team was diverted to handle Iran at the expense of other crises, illustrating how political preferences and short-term aims disrupted more intentional diplomacy elsewhere. The lack of forethought about Iranian countermeasures and the resilience of Tehran’s regional relationships produced a protracted, resource-intensive confrontation that has snared Western policy-makers in a damaging spiral. If anything, the Iran episode demonstrates how political narratives about strength and deterrence can founder on the ground. When leadership convinces itself that battlefield pressure will compel capitulation, it may ignore indicators that the opponent is prepared for prolonged resistance. That misalignment between expectation and reality is one reason the U.S. and its partners now face both strategic fatigue and diminished leverage. ## Israel and US political shifts The conversation moves quickly into how American domestic politics and Israeli policy shifts are reshaping the regional landscape. U.S. political realignments—especially around foreign policy positions—have tangible consequences for how conflicts are prosecuted and how sustainable alliances behave. The interlocutors note that American and Israeli decision-making cannot be disentangled from electoral incentives, lobbying pressures, and the changing posture of major parties. This domestic dimension complicates diplomacy. If U.S. policy fluctuates with electoral cycles, other actors will hedge accordingly. Israel’s domestic politics likewise influence the breadth and intensity of regional operations; its strategic choices ripple outward across the Middle East and feed into the broader supply-and-demand constraints on Western military resources. The result is a geopolitical environment where alliances are transactional and contingent, and where lon

NATO's Terrible Mistake: Proxy-War Turns Against Europe | Anatol Lieven NATO's European Forever War is now turning decisively against the EU. The elites that have been cheering the carnage on for the longest time are starting to catch up with the actual battle field reality. Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute, discusses why Ukraine’ s NATO question and territorial deadlock make a lasting settlement hard. He examines US weapons limits, the Iran war, changes in US and Israeli politics, Morocco’s role in the Ceuta migration crisis, and why China is avoiding a move on Taiwan. He also argues that Western foreign-policy institutions repeatedly fail to learn from past wars. Links: Anatol Lieven at Responsible Statecraft: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/author/alieven/ Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz. substack.com Merch: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Donation: https://neutralitystudies.com /donate Timestamps: 00:00 Ukraine, NATO, and peace talks 07:46 Can a Ukraine deal hold? 16:51 US weapons limits and Iran 21:15 Trump’s Iran strategy 25:13 Israel and US political shifts 28:31 Ceuta migration crisis 33:40 China, Taiwan, and Western failures #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies. Today, with an update by the wonderful Anatol Lieven, the Director of the Eurasia Program and Andrew Bacevich Chair in American Diplomatic History at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Anatol, welcome back. #Anatol Lieven Hello, very nice to be back. #Pascal Thank you very much for coming online again. I really wanted to pick your brain about the current situation, how you are viewing maybe first Russia and Ukraine, where this one is going, and then in a second stage also about Iran. But, I mean, you've been writing about Russia and Ukraine for a long, long time, and I will never forget the essay that you wrote back in April 2022 about Ukraine's coming neutrality, which then didn't come because it was made impossible. But you were one of many people who said, look, this Ukrainian neutrality would solve the whole problem. And that solution never emerged. Where do we stand today, four and a half years later? #Anatol Lieven -- 1 of 14 -- Well, I mean, on the neutrality issue, you know, the former and the most successful Ukrainian commander-in-chief, General Zaluzhny, who was pushed out by Zelensky and sent to London into exile as ambassador, he this week came out with a statement saying, look, Ukraine is never going to get into NATO. They're never going to let us in. They're never going to fight for us. Therefore, you know, we have to make alternative arrangements. Well, you know, at their meeting in London, Germany, France, Britain and Zelensky announced that Ukraine had to still have the right to join any military alliance. Well, the Russians have set that as one of their red lines, you know, because given that they went to war largely to prevent that happening, if they accepted it, it would mean them accepting essentially defeat. So, I mean, why the European countries continue to insist on this? Look, I mean, if it's a bargaining counter and you offer to give it up in return, say, for the Russians giving up the demand for the rest of the Donbas, that's one thing. But to do that, you would have to actually open negotiations with Russia, which previously they completely rejected. Now they are sort of edging towards, but of course there's a great problem here with the Europeans. I mean, Trump, it seems, is quite willing to—well, he has in fact accepted this as a point—but the Europeans have to come on board as well because otherwise, the Russians fear, with good reason, the Democrats win in 2028 and they tear up any agreement that Trump has made. So, you know, this has to be a comprehensive deal. The Europeans are also, of course, calling for a preliminary ceasefire, an unconditional ceasefire, which is ridiculous. A, the Russians won't accept it. B, it would mean, you know, a situation like between 2014 and 2022. It would be extremely unstable. It would be repeatedly violated, and very likely it would lead to a new war. So, yeah, the underlying causes of this war, including Russia's fear of NATO expansion and essentially being surrounded by NATO territory, have to be dealt with. But with the Europeans, of course, an additional and critical problem is: at what level do you conduct these negotiations? At the level of the European Union, it's completely impossible. The Baltics and the Poles will block anything, and the idea of a European, you know, intermediary reporting to Kaja Kallas is absolutely ridiculous, of course. So it has to be the Germans, the French, and the British. And I think they are beginning to edge towards that, but very, very hesitantly. Meanwhile, within Europe... #Pascal What makes you believe that they're inching toward it? I mean, there have been talks for a while: oh, maybe we should appoint a special representative, blah, blah, blah, but then they never did. And recently Keir Starmer in the UK left, but his successor doesn't seem any more willing to host talks at all. So is it a hope, or are there indications that the Europeans are actually seeing that this is not going anywhere? Yeah. #Anatol Lieven -- 2 of 14 -- Well, it's been reported in the New York Times this week that last month the representatives of Germany, France, and Britain did meet with the Russians in Vienna. So, I mean, very much in private, of course, but talks, some kind of talks, have begun, which is, you know, a positive sign in itself. But they're proceeding very slowly, partly because in recent months—so I think this is fading now again—but because of the Ukrainian attacks on the Russian energy sector and supply routes to Crimea, there's been all this stuff happening from people who, I mean, it's difficult to say whether they can really believe this, these so-called military experts, or whether they've so committed themselves to Ukraine that they will now basically say anything. But it's led to all this talk in the Western media. And you always have to remember that, you know, so many Western politicians, they get their information either from the media or, of course, from intelligence sources who are also, I mean, their intelligence services are also often unconditionally now committed to Ukraine. And so you've had all this talk of Ukraine now achieving momentum, and the tide has turned, and Ukraine can force Russia to some kind of surrender. Well, of course, this has proved completely empty. I mean, yes, the Ukrainians have done some damage, but they only knocked out about 13% of Russian refining capacity. And, of course, the Russians have retaliated by doing very much greater damage to Ukraine. You know, they've closed the port of Odessa, closed Ukrainian seaborne exports and imports, destroyed hundreds of gas stations across Ukraine. And in any case, you know, this doesn't necessarily bring the Russians any closer to victory on the ground. On the ground so far, the war still seems completely bogged down. Russia has been advancing, but, you know, still very, very slowly. Now, I mean, I think, you know, I mean, for the future, if things continue as of now, the war will go on and on. Hundreds of thousands more people will die. And eventually there will be some kind of unstable peace of exhaustion. But obviously we have to go on hoping and working for something, you know, more stable than that. #Pascal Hey, just a very quick note. The best way to support this channel is by signing up for my free Substack. You can also help with a paid subscription there, or you can get some of our new merch on neutralitystudies.com. Links below. See you there. So what do you think the strategy will be? I mean, if now Mr. Zaluzhny actually said that, look, I mean, NATO has been dangled in front of our eyes like a carrot in order to make us jump through hoops. I mean, if such an appreciation actually starts to spread in Ukraine and it's clear NATO will neither fight for us nor save us, there needs to be some form of arrangement. What would you think is the most reasonable approach in order to negotiate anything? Because maybe this is where we can draw now parallels to Iran. Iran is very adamant about if there's any peace agreement, not just the MOU. The MOU was just the road to the peace agreement, right? But if there is something, it must go through the Security Council, and it must be a Security Council resolution, which would actually solve the kind of -- 3 of 14 -- quagmire of how to bring it through the U.S. House and through Congress. But what do you think would be a diplomatic approach that would even have reasonable chances not only of succeeding, but then also of holding? Because if I was Russian, my greatest question would be, how would I ever trust that these people live up to their promises? Because they've made so many, including Minsk, and then were proud of saying, like, "Ha, ha, ha, we never meant it." #Anatol Lieven Yeah. Well, I mean, you're quite right. The failure of the United Nations has been one of the great tragedies of this war. I mean, I've talked to UN officials, and they basically say that the President— Secretary General—and his staff are completely just broken. You know, the United States has, over the years, reduced them to total impotence. And because you're absolutely right, I mean, the UN is the obvious institution through which to achieve and ratify and stabilize a peace agreement. And of course, to produce peacekeepers on the ground, you know, to monitor it—the peace agreement. But of course, I mean, above all under Trump, but, I mean, in effect actually under Democratic administrations as well, you know, the UN has been totally sidelined and, of course, it's terrified of losing all its remaining money from the US, you know, at which point several very well- paid jobs would disappear in New York and Geneva. I mean, for that to happen, the British and French, who are, of course, permanent members of the Security Council, would have to take an initiative themselves, together to introduce it, for example with the Chinese. But I haven't met anyone in positions of influence or authority in London or Paris who say that that is remotely likely to happen. Of course, I mean, down the line, but we are, what, how many months—seven months, eight months away still? I mean, if Le Pen wins the French presidential elections, then things could change because she will have different priorities. She has never been enthusiastic about this war. And she also, of course, very much does see herself as the heiress of de Gaulle. And also, of course, it just desperately needs to save money, including money that's going to Ukraine. But also, I think, would want, you know, to try and play a leading part on the world stage. So perhaps, perhaps, you know, without talking about Le Pen's domestic policies or anything else, but possibly on Ukraine, then things might change. But of course, she may well not win. And in any case, we have to get through, you know, all the way until next spring. I mean, perhaps when, I mean, if the Iran war can be brought to an end, the Trump administration will then, you know, actually re-engage with this peace process from which it's been, of course, totally absent ever since they attacked Iran. But, I mean, one should say, I mean, there is also a key problem on the Russian side. I mean, many of Russia's demands I find entirely reasonable. But they're also calling for Ukraine to withdraw from the last, I mean, it's a very small area, it's only 2,000 square miles, but the last bit of the Donbas that Ukraine still holds. Every Ukrainian I've talked to has said to me that this is just politically completely impossible for any Ukrainian government. -- 4 of 14 -- You know, they have accepted now that they have to accept de facto Ukrainian, you know, Russian possession of the territory that Russia now ho