The So-Called Coalition of the Willing

Imagine you are a Ukrainian defender on the front line and you hear about the outcome of the latest meeting of the “coalition of the willing”.

For three years, you’ve been holding off Russian drones and meat waves, fearing for the safety of your loved ones back home, sheltering from missile strikes at night.

And then you read the coalition’s announcement:

“Planning will continue to move forward in the coming weeks.”

Planning?

It’s been three years. To where has “planning” brought us? To a point where only 6 out of 30 countries are even considering sending troops to Ukraine. And only France has clearly stated willingness to go ahead without first requesting Russia’s blessing.

You, the Ukrainian defender, sitting in that trench near Pokrovsk, would probably want to ask Europe to stop pretending, to stop imitating progress when there is none. You would probably be thinking in very colourful language, because at this point, it’s getting extremely frustrating.

Europe is clearly not ready to fight alongside Ukrainians. Not ready to deter future Russian attacks. Not ready to offer real security guarantees. Announcements of “plans” should not fool anybody any more. So far, Europe is putting the larger part of its effort into wasting time.

If Europe was truly ready and willing, the decision to help Ukraine would already have been made. But it hasn’t. And maybe that’s the truth we need to face: we are not ready to be willing, let alone doing. This coalition’s discussions about sending troops and equipment continue to go nowhere, so troops and equipment will continue to go nowhere. 

But if we are not ready to send troops or equipment, the question arises: What are we ready for?

If we can’t fight together with our allies shoulder to shoulder, if we can’t offer credible guarantees of security to those defending our continent, can we at least throw money at the problem? Please?

Basic honesty should compel us to abandon the charade of talking about plans which only one out of thirty “coalition” members are ready and “willing” to implement. Instead, let’s build on what we do have—money. It’s logistically quite easy to transfer money to Ukraine.

Let’s be willing to at least invest euros, if not blood. We can easily spare a little of our luxury for braver people in the trenches who are actually willing to fight.

With enough funding, maybe they can keep defending all our lives until we finally come up with a plan of action, not just a plan of planning. Maybe we can become a coalition of the fighting, perhaps “in the coming weeks”.

But while we prevaricate and show no evidence that we have moved from planning to implementation, we are losing the last remnants of our credibility in the hearts of the men and women fighting in the dirt and chaos of Pokrovsk, Kursk, and countless other hotspots on our continent’s 1,400 mile border with hell.