The Trump administration’s potential plan to exclude European allies from negotiations to end the war in Ukraine has caused panic among the continent's leaders but may be the only way to finally resolve the conflict, an expert tells Fox News Digital.
"Trump’s likely rationale for excluding European allies out of direct Russia-Ukraine negotiations is this. First, there’s no agreement among NATO members on the NATO membership for Ukraine. Some are for it and some are against. So it would be a waste of time to add this obstacle to the talks. Second, the Europeans don’t add anything to the talks," Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst, former senior official at the Defense Intelligence Agency and author of "Putin’s Playbook," told Fox News Digital.
"They [Europeans] are not decision-makers here. The only ‘deciders’ – using George Bush’s famous phrase – here are Putin and Trump. And even more accurately it’s Putin," Koffler added. "He holds all the cards, given the realities on the battlefield and outside of it."
The comments come as French President Emmanuel Macron hosts an "emergency meeting" of European leaders Monday to discuss President Donald Trump’s potential plan to largely exclude them from negotiating an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, a move that has caused anxiety on a continent that believes it has a vital stake in determining the terms of any settlement.
Despite the uncertainty for European leaders, Trump has insisted that Ukraine will be involved in any talks to end the conflict.
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"He will be involved, yes," Trump said Sunday of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Meanwhile, Politico reported Monday that Macron and Trump had a "frank" 20-minute discussion just before the meetings in Paris were held, though the details of that discussion are still unclear.
The emergency meeting is being held after a security conference over the weekend in Munich, Germany, where Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, hinted European leaders may not be allowed to take part in a deal the U.S. helps broker between Ukraine and Russia.
Asked about Europe’s potential role in resolving the conflict during the conference, Kellogg indicated such involvement "is not going to happen," arguing he was "from the school of realism" and that adding the Europeans to the mix may only serve to add too many voices to the discussion.
"What we don't want to do is get into a large group discussion," Kellogg said, adding that Trump is hoping to have a resolution to the conflict within "days and weeks."
"You got to give us a bit of breathing space and time, but when I say that, I’m not talking six months," he said.
Koffler believes that Trump shares a similar realism, a dose of reality she believes has been lacking from media coverage of the war.
"President Trump is a realist and he understands that Ukraine has lost the war. In fact, Ukraine lost the war before it started," Koffler said. "Russia holds massive, massive combat potential advantage over Ukraine. Always has, always will. I’ve been saying it for three years. It’s a shame that the Biden administration, assisted by the mainstream media, has created a alternate reality, lying to the American people that Ukraine was winning or could win, just like they lied about so many other things."
"But any serious and honest military intelligence analyst who is not on the payroll of the U.S.-NATO military-industrial complex or of the Zelenskyy’s regime, and who isn’t afraid to go against the media’s party line, known as the editorial line, has known from the very start how this war will end," she added.
But Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for the Obama administration, cautioned against excluding European allies from the discussions, arguing that a deal without their involvement is "unlikely to foster a sustainable end to this conflict."
"President Trump is right to seek an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, and he should be applauded for his efforts. Yet by staking out a role for the United States to be the indispensable negotiator in the war, he risks creating major commitments, as this is not America’s war and we are now being inserted directly into it," Rubin told Fox News Digital. "In analogous diplomatic situations, such as the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, we clinched a deal only after providing major commitments to both parties in the form of economic assistance and military aid, totaling well past $100 billion so far."
While Rubin acknowledged that inclusion of European leaders would be more "complex initially," the payoff would be to "spread the costs" of any guarantees that arise from negotiations.
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"And of course, because Europe is directly impacted by Russia’s belligerence, any deal that's finalized will need their support (in addition to Ukraine’s), otherwise it’s unlikely to foster a sustainable end to this conflict, instead turning these negotiations into just one more stalled diplomatic effort of the many that have taken place in this war since it truly began in 2014," Rubin said.
Macron’s emergency meeting in Paris is expected to be attended by a host of European leaders, according to Politico, including Germany's Olaf Scholz, Italy's Giorgia Meloni, Spain's Pedro Sánchez, the United Kingdom's Keir Starmer, Denmark's Mette Frederiksen, Poland's Donald Tusk and Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof.
But Koffler believes Trump is the only leader in a position to handle what are sure to be difficult negotiations, where none of the world’s leaders will have any leverage over Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Trump is the only U.S. leader who has the courage to acknowledge the obvious – he is not afraid of being blamed for losing the war and handing Putin victory. Which the Democrats and the neocons will almost certainly do," Koffler said.
"It is why Trump is offering to Putin pretty much everything Putin wanted – no NATO for Ukraine, Russia keeps the eastern portion of Ukraine and Crimea, no U.S. boots on the ground in Ukraine, and even potentially membership in G-8 – all to save whatever is left of Ukraine and Ukrainians, to entice Putin to the negotiating table," she added. "Putin doesn’t have to stop the war. In fact, I don’t rule out the possibility that he will not accept anything Trump has to offer."
"The negotiations will be super complicated to begin with. Putin will almost certainly be playing hard ball. And we’ve got very little leverage over Russia. Inviting Europeans would serve no purpose and would only make an already tenuous peace deal impossible to achieve."
