A taboo has been broken in Europe. Only a few months ago, it would have been inconceivable for European leaders to propose sending European troops to Ukraine. But on February 26, French President Emmanuel Macron said the deployment of European forces to Ukraine could not be “ruled out.”
Last fall, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates took to the pages of Foreign Affairs to issue a warning: with America facing the most dangerous geopolitical landscape in decades, dysfunction in Washington threatened to turn that danger into disaster.
A Deep Defense Is Hard to Beat.
Many held high hopes for Ukraine’s 2023 summer offensive. Previous Ukrainian successes at Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson encouraged expectations that a new effort, reinforced with new Western equipment and training, might rupture Russian defenses on a larger scale and sever the Russian land bridge to Crimea.