Europe’s “last summer of peace”?

German military historian Sönke Neitzel has attracted attention by warning that 2025 could be Europe’s “last summer in peace.” He has a new book just published, Abstieg: Demokratische Bedeutungslosigkeit - Ist Deutschland aus der Balance? (Decline: Democratic Insignificance - Is Germany Out of Balance?)

He says in an interview with Deutsche Welle¹:

[T]here are possible scenarios and if you look at Trump and how he's developing this kind of destructive power [sic] towards NATO. And we have a lot of countries [including] Germany [that] would have some domestic troubles. And if you have possibly a peace treaty, a negative peace treaty in Ukraine which frees Putin with these forces to do other things. [my emphasis]

And he proceeds to talk about the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) who are apprehensive about possible Russian aggression against them.

Obviously, European countries are facing a new strategic challenge with the erratic Donald Trump Administration raising serious doubts about whether the US would defend its NATO allies in case of a future direct war with Russia. Germany’s position in the new situation and how far it is willing to go with increasing its military power and readiness is obviously going to be a major topic in the discussion in the coming years.

But his phrase about how “a negative peace treaty in Ukraine” would free “Putin with these forces [currently in conflict with Ukraine] to do other things” struck me with its double significance.

One of the calculations that has been largely unstated by Western countries supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia is that, while Ukraine has an immediate national interest in fighting Russia and reclaiming the Ukrainian territory it has occupied, the interests of its Western allies are of a more secondary order. Like in every other war, we’ve been hearing a lot about the Munich Analogy which is usually interpreted to mean that if Russia isn’t contained in Ukraine, they will soon be occupying Paris.

But it’s less diplomatically respectable to talk about the Afghanistan Analogy, which is the conviction of neoconservatives and liberal hawks alike that the US support for the brave, fiercely-independent, mujahadeen freedom fighters - we now call such fighters Muslim jihadists - against the Soviet Union in 1979-1989 was a decisive factor in the fall of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union itself.

With the Taliban again in power in Afghanistan today, we can certainly say that the Muslim jihadists won out in the long run. But the claimed lesson of it being decisive in the fall of the Soviet Union is far more dubious. Even highly imaginative.

Neitzel’s comment is a reminder of that perspective. His point in the interview is more directly about the longer-term potential Russian threat. But it is also a reminder of the Afghanistan Analogy. If we have to worry about how Russia might militarily threaten NATO countries once they are done fighting in Afghanistan, then it becomes a coldly practical calculation for NATO countries to keep the Russians fighting in Afghanistan as long as possible to do maximum damage to Russia in the context of that conflict.

Obviously, there would advantages to a stable and constructive peace to the Russia-Ukraine War. Though it’s something Donald Trump and his Special Envoy to Everywhere Steve Witkoff are highly unlikely to achieve. But the advantage to other European countries of a longer conflict with Russia in Ukraine is also something that strategists are surely taking into an account, though it would be undiplomatic for them to direct tout that potential advantage in public.

Not to split hairs too finely over this. But if we count Ukraine as part of Europe – which it is – then wasn’t the summer of 2021 the “last summer in peace” in Europe before the massive Russia conventional invasion of Ukraine in February 2022? Ukrainian spokespeople have stressed the point that Ukraine has actually been at war with Russia since 2014, when Russia seized and annexed Crimea.

That’s why such broad labels like The Last Summer of Peace In Europe have to been scrutinized with some caution.

1. Nobody wants war' but it could still happen, German Military Historian tells DW.DW News YouTube channel 04/07/2025. (Accessed: 2025-09-04).