Europe Destroys Diplomacy AGAIN | Ian Proud

## Introduction The exchange foregrounds a simple but unsettling proposition: Europe has steadily dismantled the instruments of pragmatic diplomacy and, by doing so, has made escalation with Russia not just possible but increasingly likely. The conversation frames this not as an accident of policy but as the predictable outcome of a strategic culture that privileges moral certainty, grandstanding, and transactional support for allies over the painstaking work of negotiation. What emerges is a critique of Western statecraft—especially European statecraft—that sees commitment without contingency, solidarity without strategy, and military support without political imagination. The consequence is a Europe that talks a lot about geopolitical autonomy while acting as if it remains unable or unwilling to take the hard decisions necessary to de‑escalate a confrontation with a nuclear-armed major power. ## Russia-NATO escalation and Kiev embassies One striking image from the discussion is of embassies that remain in Kiev despite intensified strikes and cross-border reprisals. That image is used to capture a larger disjuncture: diplomats who embody diplomacy reduced to a symbol rather than a functioning channel for negotiation. The recorded exchange points out that evacuations at the start of the war, when practical necessity dictated them, gave way to a posture of symbolic presence. Remaining in situ during spiralling attacks acts less like a protective shield for civilians and more like a public demonstration of commitment—at tremendous risk and uncertain strategic value. The conversation further highlights how reciprocal kinetic actions—deep strikes inside Russia and retaliatory attacks on Kiev—create a feedback loop. This loop turns local military operations into a theatre where signaling blurs into strategy, and where escalation becomes normalized. As both sides step up the depth and intensity of strikes, what had been a contained, albeit brutal, conflict risks slipping into a broader interstate confrontation. The presence of Western diplomats in Kiev, then, becomes both a symptom and amplifier of a policy environment that has prioritized posture over prudence. ## Western policy and risk of wider war The core critique advanced is blunt: Western policy has institutionalized an avoidance of diplomacy in favor of unconditional support for Ukraine, at a cost that is poorly assessed and poorly articulated. This unconditionality has multiple dimensions. Financially and militarily it commits enormous resources on a long-term basis; politically it narrows the spectrum of acceptable outcomes to maximalist positions; morally it demands that Western publics accept indefinite risk to prevent any concession. This set of choices, the conversation argues, is not only costly but dangerously myopic. Escalation risk is not merely hypothetical. Decision-makers appear to be edging toward what one interlocutor called “salami slicing” — incremental steps that extend the conflict’s scope in search of incremental advantage. Each slice looks manageable on its own; cumulatively they may amount to a threshold crossing where restraint becomes politically or operationally infeasible. The possibility that Moscow could respond by accepting a more internationalized conflict — one that compels NATO to intervene more directly — is raised as a real hazard. War in Europe would be catastrophic in economic and human terms, and the recorded exchange stresses the folly of believing otherwise: misreading Russian resilience, misunderstanding the gravity of historical memory in Russian strategic culture, and overestimating the capacity of NATO and European economies to sustain a protracted continental war. ## How Europe could return to diplomacy 00: 12:01 Europe’s dependence on the US If diplomacy is to return, the conversation insists it must be hard-headed, multilevel, and European-led. There is a paradoxical plea: Europe must stop performing diplomacy as theater and instead get down to the grunt work of setting realistic, politically viable terms for coexistence. That means disentangling three discrete but interlinked conversations: a negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia; a reckoning between Ukraine and Europe over political and economic arrangements that will define Kyiv’s future orientation; and a broader Europe-Russia dialogue about coexistence, security architecture, and interdependence. A central barrier to this approach, repeatedly underscored, is Europe’s dependence on the United States. That dependence is not only military but ideological and economic. The American role has been decisive in shaping the contours of diplomatic options—including the extent and terms of support to Kyiv—and that influence has constrained European autonomy. Yet dependence is not destiny. The argument suggests that strategic independence would require European states to claim the initiative: to step into the uncomfortable space of negotiating with Moscow without the U.S. driving the agenda; to accept political costs at home for the sake of a stable continental order; and to rebuild the institutions and practices of diplomacy that can handle messy, incremental compromises. The exchange does not romanticize this path. It recognizes the political pain such a shift would entail: acknowledging corruption and troubling domestic trends in Kyiv, confronting energy interdependence with Russia, and reframing public narratives of moral clarity into more nuanced accounts of national interest and coexistence. But it is precisely the willingness to accept these costs—and to do the difficult bargaining across three arenas—that would mark a return to mature statecraft. ## Iran, Minsk, and diplomacy as cover Another theme that recurs is the instrumentalization of diplomacy as cover for military or political ends. The recorded conversation is skeptical of narratives that present international agreements as mere pauses engineered to buy time for rearmament or coercion. Minsk II, for example, is defended by the primary speaker as a genuine European diplomatic effort rather than a cynical delay tactic. The implication is that dismissing past diplomacy as window dressing undercuts future efforts: if diplomacy is assumed to be inherently unserious, political actors will lack the will or credibility to negotiate. At the same time, recent U.S. engagement with Iran is seen through a jaundiced lens: diplomatic channels being used alongside, or as a fig leaf for, kinetic objectives. The critique here is methodological. Diplomacy confers legitimacy and opens space for de-escalation; when it is employed principally as a smokescreen for force it loses normative and practical value. The interlocutors call for a reorientation where diplomacy is recognized as a strategic method—one that is not secondary to military means but coequal, particularly when the stakes include nuclear proliferation or the risk of wider regional conflagration. This section of the exchange also touches on a recurring failure mode: powerful actors convene “peace” summits populated primarily by like-minded states, conflate gestures with outcomes, and then declare success. Genuine diplomacy is the messy, unattractive work of bargaining with adversaries in ways that may be politically costly at home. Until the West treats diplomacy as that substantive project, its instruments will remain hollow. ## EU foreign policy and national diplomacy Fragmentation within Europe is identified as a structural problem. The recorded discussion places responsibility partly on European institutions and leaders who have failed to forge a unified strategic posture. When Europe seeks to act like a geopolitical bloc, it often substitutes performative consensus for the hard compromises that true common foreign policy requires. Individual capitals, meanwhile, oscillate between appeasing U.S. preferences and asserting national prerogatives, producing incoherent outco

NATO Is Sleepwalking Into War With Russia | Ian Proud Former British diplomat Ian Proud joins Neutrality Studies to discuss Russia-NATO escalation, Western support for Ukraine, Europe’s lack of diplomacy, and the risk of a wider war. He also talks about Europe’s dependence on the US, the need for direct Europe-Russia talks, Iran diplomacy, the Abraham Accords, and his new novel Searching: A Love Story. Links: Substack: https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/ Searching: A Love Story on Amazon: https://www.amazon. com/Searching-love-story-Ian-Proud/dp/1739543130 Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz. substack.com (Opt in for Academic Section from your profile settings: https://pascallottaz.substack. com/s/academic) Merch: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Donation: https://neutralitystudies.com /donate Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:38 Russia-NATO escalation and Kiev embassies 00:02:12 Western policy and risk of wider war 00:07:52 How Europe could return to diplomacy 00: 12:01 Europe’s dependence on the US 00:17:47 Iran, Minsk, and diplomacy as cover 00:23:40 EU foreign policy and national diplomacy 00:27:21 Ian Proud’s new book and where to follow him #Pascal Well, welcome back to Neutrality Studies. Today, for the very first time in real life, it's my great pleasure to introduce to you again my dear colleague, Ian Proud. Ian, thank you for coming. #Ian Proud Thank you. It's fantastic to meet you in person for the first time. It's absolutely wonderful to actually get together with realists and see them as actual human beings. It's a wonderful experience. #Pascal Here we are in all our human being-ness. It's very different from actually being online, right? Better. #Ian Proud Much better. #Pascal Much better. So, Ian, I would like to ask you actually about your views on what's going on currently. Maybe let's start with Russia and this escalation drive, right? We've seen that over the last couple of weeks, Ukraine and NATO have been firing deeper and deeper inside Russia. They've killed 21, -- 1 of 11 -- mainly schoolgirls. And Russia is now attacking and striking against Kiev. Just last night, they had another large strike. So you, who served actually inside Russia, in Moscow, as a British diplomat—if you got this request from the Russians to evacuate from Kiev, what would you do? #Ian Proud Well, at the start of the war, all the embassies evacuated. It's worth remembering that every single kind of foreign embassy, I think including possibly the Americans, evacuated. So the British embassy, I think, went to Warsaw or something like that initially. So it was an embassy in exile for quite a long time at the start of the war. So that's not anything novel. They've decided to stay, but I think that's a fairly risky thing to do right now during this escalation phase. But that's a decision they'll be taking all the time. If it were me, I'd probably be thinking about evacuating again. #Pascal Yeah, but evacuating—wouldn't it mean a considerable loss of face for the West if they did that? Or why do you think they're staying put, even though it might now risk the lives of their diplomats? #Ian Proud Well, we're in a bizarre situation where we have diplomats with no diplomacy. In Western governments, and the British government in particular, we're really guilty of this—or they are really guilty of this—because we've stopped trying to see a negotiated end to this terrible war, which is only affecting civilians on both sides of the conflict. And we've created this unshakable narrative that we have to support Ukraine come what may, whether that's billions and billions in money, whether that's weapons that won't really see any kind of change in the war, whether that's keeping our diplomats in harm's way even at a time of escalation. You know, we're so afraid of losing face by admitting, actually, that this war needs to end, that we continue to pursue irrational policies. And this is just yet another of a very, very long list of irrational policies. #Pascal So what do you think this is going to do actually now to the dynamic between Russia and NATO? I mean, to me, it seems the longer, the more that we're headed towards even more escalation. I mean, I look at it as Western salami slicing towards internationalizing the Ukraine war. Of course, in NATO's ideal world, this will be a salami slicing toward Russia, right? And I'm wondering there, I mean, how high do you think the risk is that the Russians at some point will say, like, no, now if you want to internationalize the conflict, okay, fine with us, let's go there. #Ian Proud -- 2 of 11 -- I think we are slowly creeping towards a general war in Europe. In fact, Western politicians talk about it all the time as if it's an inevitability, which is one of the most shocking things. And all of our decisions, in particular our decision not to pursue diplomacy, just seem to confirm that. Our blanket support for the Zelensky regime, despite ever-increasing evidence of its corruption—for example, the repression of its citizens, the bussing of young men to the front line, and all those things, the growth of Nazi ideology and its prominence within the Ukrainian military—we seem to be blind to this because we are so fixated on supporting Zelensky to fight to the last Ukrainian that we can't see a way out. So that blinds us to the possibility of a negotiated end to this war. And it's for that reason. And the thing is, I see no change in that mindset. I see absolutely no evidence of a change in that mindset. And it's for that reason that I feel we are gradually, and I think it will take a few years, creeping towards a slow escalation that may lead to a war which, like this war, is completely avoidable. #Pascal But, you know, war... I mean, in what way could Europe actually do a war with Russia? That's the other thing that's on my mind. When you do this kind of escalation from the NATO side, it seems to me even more irresponsible, just keeping in mind all of the productive capacities that you need to sustain that. I mean, it seems to me that they are not there. And even the Americans at the moment are showing that when it comes to Iran, they lack... they lack what it takes. They lack missiles. We know from Ukraine they lack shells. The only thing that seems to have recovered a bit is the drone warfare. They're able to produce drones. But who do you think within the NATO framework is responsible for this type of planning? Because it just seems to me that the Europeans couldn't do it at the moment, even if they wanted to. Well, that actually suggests that there is planning. There is. I think there is. I mean, I do think they plan toward that. #Ian Proud But I can't believe they do plan towards that, because if they looked rationally at the available evidence, the disposition of forces available to them, the economic means, the energy they'd need to do that, they would realize very quickly that a war against Russia would be pointless, massively damaging to the whole fabric of Europe, the economies of Europe, and the citizens of Europe. And in the final analysis, it may ultimately end in a resort to the use of nuclear weaponry, which nobody should hope for, quite frankly. So, you know, the Russians, I mean, a lot of what's happening in the Ukraine war is built on this kind of fantastical calculation that somehow people are going to turn on Putin and overthrow him, which shows a basic lack of understanding of the Russian mindset, a lack of understanding of Russia's worldview based on its history of foreign invasion, whether that's by the Nazis, whether that's by Napoleon, and so on. The Russians will fight if we want to fight, whatever the cost. They -- 3 of 11 -- lost millions of people in World War II. We seem to have forgotten that wasn’t very long ago. How could we forget? So if the calculation is that Russia would crumble against the threat of a general war with the EU, then I suggest that that is a dangerously mistaken view. But I suspect that is the view. But so many of these views are pushed forward based on what appears to be pure fantasies rather than real analysis. #Pascal Hey, very brief intermission because I was recently banned from YouTube. And although I'm back, this can happen anytime again. So please consider subscribing not only here, but to my mailing list on Substack. That's pascallottaz.substack.com. The link's going to be in the description below. And now, back to the video. What would it take for Europe now to de-escalate this? Because it seems to me that Europe has kind of talked itself into a very, very narrow corner, also when it comes to its energy security and whatnot. I mean, the way that the ties with Russia have been cut loose, to me, are utterly irresponsible. But then again, you were a diplomat and you know how the diplomatic ways function. I mean, what would it take to kind of de-escalate and then slowly bring back this relationship? Do you think it is possible to bring it back with the Russians? #Ian Proud I hope that it is. And I also believe, because I've studied the Russian statecraft for many years, that the Russians will be receptive to that. I think it's a mistake to think the Russians don't want a normal relationship with the continent of Europe, because they do. And I believe various efforts have, even since the start of the Ukraine conflict, everything I saw suggested that Russia wanted to kind of, you know, re-engage, kind of address these concerns. You know, the Minsk agreements were part of that process with the European nations, but we have rebuffed their overtures every time. And, uh, so I think the Russians will be receptive to that. But I think it involves three things. You know, I mean, lots of really bad analysis talks about a peace plan between Russia and Ukraine. Of course, that's important, but you need to kind of tease out what's involved in that. You know, there has to be some negotiated deal between Ukraine and Russia, the two kind of parties to the conflict, in which they agree on the terms in which they can lay down arms and live in a peaceful, friendly coexistence going forward. That is just one part of that. The second part of that is what Ukraine's relationship with Europe is going to be. Now, people keep jumbling this into the actual peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. It's a separate point. So this is a conversation between Europe and Ukraine, which I think the Europeans are not entirely ready to have because it's so messy and so costly, including politically costly for the Europeans, that they keep kicking the can down the road, and that's just going to make Zelensky mad every time. But the third vital piece is what Europe's relationship with Russia is going to be in the future, because without that peace, we will only be pressing a pause button or a sort of longer- term conflict with Russia. Europe needs to figure out how it's going to coexist. -- 4 of 11 -- It doesn't have to be friendship, but how it's going to coexist with the largest geographically kind of nation on Earth, the largest military power on Earth, energy independence of Europe, super fat, and all those things it has to kind of figure out. And that involves, you know, dialogue between Europeans and the British, you know, and Russia. So when the Europeans talk about having diplomatic dialogue with Russia, this should not be about the Ukraine-Russia peace. I think we should let the Americans and whoever's involved, you know, outside of Europe, moderate that sort of diplomatic dialogue. The European role in diplomacy is figuring out Europe's role with Russia, Europe's future relationship with Russia. And I think that is a level of thinking that, ah, I've seen no evidence of having emerged, particularly when you listen to the likes of Kaja Kallas, who comes out with these bizarre and maximalist views of, well, Russia will only talk to Russia when Russia withdraws all its forces to the 1991 borders. I