EXPERT INTERVIEWS – As global leaders gather at the Munich Security conference this weekend, they confront profound questions about Russia’s war against Ukraine, the Trump administration’s plans to end it, and fresh uncertainty about the U.S. commitment to European security writ large.
Writing from Munich Friday, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Michael Froman, described “an air of confusion about where exactly the Trump administration stands on the question of the United States’ long-time role as Europe’s security guarantor, not to mention the trajectory of President Donald Trump’s unilateral negotiations with Russia over Ukraine.” New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger said “the great collision has begun,” referring to a clash between the U.S. and its longstanding allies in Europe. “Fault lines in the Western alliance are always on display,” Sanger wrote. “It was the size and suddenness of the breach with the Trump administration that was shocking.”
The anxiety and uncertainty in Kyiv and many other European capitals are the result of a series of midweek shocks: Trump‘s call to Vladimir Putin that was warmly received by the Kremlin and which seemed to jumpstart a negotiation process before any European leaders were consulted; and – more worrisome to Ukraine’s staunch supporters, including many in the U.S. — statements by Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggesting that NATO membership and the return of Russian-occupied land were off the table for Ukraine, before a negotiation even began.
Trump sought to assure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Thursday, saying that “of course” Ukraine would have a place at any negotiating table. For his part, Zelensky repeated the mantras that there was to be no deal on Ukraine without Ukrainian involvement, and, as he put it, “We need real security guarantees.”
The Cipher Brief spoke with two former senior U.S. military officials with extensive experience in Europe – former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Philip Breedlove and former Commanding General of US Army Forces in Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges – about the key elements in any negotiations, what sort of security guarantees might be offered to Ukraine short of NATO membership, and what they view as red lines for Ukraine and its supporters. Both voiced concerns that too much may be given to Moscow before formal negotiations take shape.
“We need to understand that in the end of this fight, Russia has to make sacrifices, too,” Gen. Breedlove said. “We can't have the belligerent, the starter of this war, come out of this with everything it wants and ask the people who have been attacked in this illegal, immoral, inhuman war to give up everything.”
Gen. Breedlove and Lt. Gen. Hodges spoke with Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski. Their comments have been edited for length and clarity. The full interviews are available at The Cipher Brief YouTube channel.
The Cipher Brief: Is it – as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said – “unrealistic” for Ukraine to think it can join NATO, or regain land captured by Russia?
Gen. Breedlove: I agree and disagree with the idea that it would be unrealistic [for Ukraine to regain the territory]. I don't want to sound wishy-washy here, but I do believe that in the short term, that's correct: returning to their original borders is probably too big a leap. But I think we should all look back in history. For instance, the three Baltic nations, we never accepted that they were Russian. And then some 45 years later, they found their freedom and became a part of the West and are now a part of NATO. And so whatever we do in Ukraine, we should never accept Russia going across an internationally recognized border and taking land from a neighbor by force. We should never accept that. Even if we don't get to the pre-war borders in this first agreement, we should adamantly refuse to call that land anything but sovereign Ukrainian land. And then we have another four or five decades to sort it out if we have to, like we got it sorted out in the Baltics.
I think that the stance of the West should be that this is sovereign Ukrainian land – and that includes Crimea, by the way – that is occupied by an occupation force, because that is exactly what it is.
Hodges: Unfortunately, I don't think NATO membership for Ukraine is in the cards, certainly not in the near term. But I think it would be a mistake for the administration to tell the Russians that Ukrainian NATO membership would be put on hold for 20 years, or something like that. I don't know why we would want to do that. That's exactly what the Russians want, of course. NATO membership is the ultimate security guarantee. That's worked for us since NATO's founding in 1949.
There are other things that Ukraine will do, of course, until they get that NATO membership. They're going to continue to grow their defense industry, which is actually growing now, even during this war. They're going to continue to improve and modernize their armed forces, particularly if there's a ceasefire of some sort. They're not just going to put their weapons in the arms room and sit on their rucksack, they're going to keep working to improve their forces, to get ready for when the Russians inevitably resume the conflict. And then I imagine that they will still continue to receive aid from some Eastern European countries, who are very concerned about what happens after this. And hopefully from us as well.
The Cipher Brief: Can – and should – Europe “own” the Ukraine war, as National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has said?
Hodges: I'm not sure I agree with the premise of Waltz's statement. First, this is about American strategic interests. There are millions of Americans who live and work all over Europe. We have economic interests, as well as military, intelligence, and diplomatic interests. The access that we get from bases all over Europe is for us to do what we need to do in Africa and the Middle East — they're not here guarding Germans or Italians.
Secondly, our economic interests are tied directly to Europe's prosperity. Europe as a bloc is our biggest trading partner, so it's in our interest. So to say to the Europeans, you guys are going to have to “own” this, I don't know that that's the right framework that I would start with.
I do agree with Mr. Waltz that Europeans are going to have to play a much larger role, partly because we don't have the assets to do it all by ourselves. But as you may recall, we tried this back after the breakup of the former Republic of Yugoslavia, where the United Nations tried to do something called the UNPROFOR, United Nations Protection Force. It was a failure – not because they didn't have good people, but because they didn't have a clear mission, they didn't have the right rules of engagement, and they didn't have the right chain of command. So then NATO, led by the United States, went in to implement the Dayton Peace Accord and fixed all those things and it worked extremely well.
So here again, it doesn't have to be majority-U.S., it doesn’t even have to be a large percentage of U.S. involvement. But to say you’ve got to fix this without American involvement and without any teeth – the Russians have brushed that aside before, and that's why we are where we are now. For sure, European countries are going to have to continue growing the size of their defenses — not just their defense budgets, but their actual capabilities because the U.S. cannot do it all. But we can't just turn our back on it either.
Gen. Breedlove: Well, clearly we understand what Mr. Waltz has said. This is the policy, and that's the policy we'll have to live under. But while the Europeans need to “own” this effort, if we do not in some way enable this effort, and then Mr. Putin sees that the United States is not in the effort, it will be very hard to hold the line in Europe.
Are the Europeans capable? I believe they are. Let's look at how poorly, how horribly the Russian military has performed in Ukraine. We looked at them as 10 feet tall. Clearly, they are maybe five-foot-three or something like that, because the performance in Ukraine by the Russian military is not to be valued. It's been flawed from the very beginning. And so if you looked at a real “coalition of the willing” of European forces or a NATO force, I believe they could stand.
The Cipher Brief: What sort of security force – if any – may be needed in the event of a peace agreement?
Gen. Breedlove: There is going to have to be a force on the ground. I do not believe that there'll be American boots in that force, based on the way this administration is looking at this. But there's going to have to be a credible force on the ground, because Mr. Putin will not honor anything less than that. If he sees no force, then he understands there's no will to oppose him and he will keep doing what he's doing.
As far as a role for America, I think America has to be a part of this in some way. Clearly our new president is not going to entertain American boots on the ground, but America can enable the other coalition elements, be they a NATO formation or a coalition of the willing formation. U.S. intelligence, U.S. surveillance, U.S. command and control, and yes, U.S. air power should be a guarantor of the safety of that coalition. And that way there are no U.S. boots on the ground, but when Russia looks across the line, they must see a force that is enabled by the United States. That's important to anything that we would expect to stand in the face of Mr. Putin.
Hodges: We won't know the size of the force until we know the actual mission, what the requirement is. That's what will dictate how many people have to be deployed. Are they there to keep people apart? Or are they there to observe? What's their task? We're still probably quite a ways away from nations agreeing to provide troops to do this because so much is unknown.
The scale that we're talking about — for an indefinite period of time — that would be a challenge. The normal rotation deployment model for most [European] countries is six months, which is what our Marine Corps uses. So European countries would either have to change their deployment model for longer deployments, or they would have to generate more force for a period of time.
Now of course it doesn't have to be just Europeans. There could be other countries that might be willing to contribute parts of it. But the more countries you have in this thing, the higher the risk that you don't have this unified force with real capability that would deter the Russians. And that's the key. The Russians have to look across there and say, OK, we're not going to violate the agreement because we will get punched in the face. So the force that's there has to have capabilities in terms of air defense, long-range precision strike, air, sea and land components, drones, counter drones — and they have to have the rules of engagement that allow them to hit back hard, and the Russians have to respect that. If they don't, then this will be a failure.
The Cipher Brief: Which side holds greater leverage, going into a negotiation?
Gen. Breedlove: This is a very dynamic situation. If you'd asked me that question, say a month or two ago, I would have said Moscow is very much enjoying an upper hand. But what we see in the last weeks and days is that Moscow is struggling and their forces on the field are struggling and their support is struggling. Remember, Moscow had to ask North Korea to come help them regain Russian sovereign territory – we have North Koreans trying to rescue Russian land inside of Russia. This tells us something about the Russian military, the status of their capabilities right now.
I think that what we see is that Russia's ability to maintain this war is beginning to see issues. And so both sides want to go into whatever negotiation with some news that puts them in the upper hand. There's this rumor of a Russian offensive that's coming, and the Ukrainians have taken more land in Russia in their incursion into the Kursk region. Both sides are trying to posture for any negotiation, but clearly both sides are having problems manning their formations, supplying certain things to their formations. And so it is a war that is wearing fairly equally on both combatants.
Hodges: I think the Ukrainians could point to the fact that even without adequate support from all of us, they have stopped the Russians. And the Russians are in a very, very difficult economic situation. The Russians clearly do not have the ability to knock Ukraine out of the war.
I don't really know the ability of Russia's economy and their population to keep doing this beyond the end of 2025. We do know that Ukraine is being challenged to generate enough forces and combat power to fight beyond 2025. So it's hard to say who has the most leverage. I think this will depend a lot on outside influences. I am sure though that President Zelensky and the Ukrainian leadership will not accept a bad deal, particularly if it was something that was made over their heads. You can't make them accept it.
Gen. Breedlove: I am hopeful that we get an end to hostilities. If that end is brought about by completely giving into Russian demands, then I am not hopeful for that. We saw the Minsk-1 and Minsk-2 [peace agreements] in the earlier Ukraine wars in 2014, and these didn't ask anything of Russia, and failed miserably. We need to understand that in the end of this fight, Russia has to make sacrifices, too. We can't have the belligerent, the starter of this war, come out of this with everything it wants and ask the people who have been attacked in this illegal, immoral, inhuman war to give up everything. We've got to remember that this is a completely contrived war by Mr. Putin. He is a war criminal. This is an illegal, immoral and inhumane war. We should be recognizing that Mr. Putin is the clear aggressor and cause of all of this, and we need to hold him accountable.
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