Decision time for Europe

BERLIN – It is past time that Europeans get serious about Ukraine. With Russian President Vladimir Putin posing the greatest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War, the stakes are clear. US President Donald Trump’s approach to the issue has rightly terrified European leaders, but rather than proactively defending their interests, they have spent most of their energy reacting to events and attempting damage control. Earlier this year, many Europeans hoped they could keep the US on side by purchasing more American weapons and liquefied natural gas. They have even shown that they can work together to handle Trump, as they did following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s catastrophic Oval Office meeting, and again following Trump’s chummy meeting with Putin in Anchorage. But zoom out a bit and you will see that European diplomats have been swimming upstream. Regardless of how much energy they put in, the tide is against them in the US, in Russia, and even in Ukraine. In the US, their luck will run out sooner or later, simply because Trump’s core interests