MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The U.S. has sent more than 100 migrants to a detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Now the American Civil Liberties Union is suing, saying those migrants have been cut off from the outside world - no lawyers and no contact with family. We have more on the ACLU's lawsuit coming up.
But first, world leaders are gathering in Munich for an annual global security conference. Among key agenda items is ending Russia's war on Ukraine. In recent days, however, many of Europe's leaders, including Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have been expressing concerns about being left out of conversations between Russia and the United States to bring the fighting to an end. For more on this, we've called Jeff Rathke. He's president of the American-German Institute at Johns Hopkins University and a former deputy chief of staff to NATO's secretary general. He joins us from Munich. Good morning. Thank you for joining us.
JEFF RATHKE: Pleasure to be with you.
MARTIN: You know, you've been to the Munich Security Conference many times, and I understand that this year's conference just got underway, but what's the mood there so far?
RATHKE: There is a sense of alarm and trepidation, Michel, and that is best expressed by something one European official told me this morning. I asked him where his alarm bell was ringing, and he said on a scale of 1 to 10, it's at a 15.
MARTIN: And why is that?
RATHKE: Well, I think it's because this is the week where the iconoclastic disruptive foreign policy ambitions of the Trump administration are actually taking shape and turning into, you know, real actions. President Trump's call with Vladimir Putin a couple of days ago, the speech of Vice President Vance in Paris, the defense secretary in Brussels. And so what Europeans are seeing take shape is an American policy that doesn't necessarily consult with them in advance, for which Europe is really unprepared.
MARTIN: Is there any consensus among the delegations from Europe about how to work with their American counterparts?
RATHKE: Well, there's one bottom line for all of them, and that is they recognize that Europe needs to devote more resources to defense and that they need to take on greater responsibility for their own security. Now, that may sound familiar because we've been hearing that for many years. And at many iterations of this Munich Security Conference, we've heard people say that they've had a wake-up call. Now the question is, this year, will it really lead to people waking up and taking actions that will address the situation?
MARTIN: So let's talk about Ukraine specifically. A lot of European leaders like to say no deal about the war in Ukraine can happen without Ukraine at the table. I've got a couple of questions about that, but first, what are they prepared to do to make sure Ukraine is at the table?
RATHKE: Yeah. Well, what European leaders have started talking about is the possibility of a significant increase in resources devoted to Ukraine. In other words, to make up for the dwindling U.S. support, which, you know, is already in decline. And so the question will be whether they can put meaningful numbers on the table that will strengthen Ukraine's position as President Zelenskyy approaches these negotiations about bringing the war to an end. Will he feel confident that he's got the weapons, the financial resources and the political backing to defend Ukraine's sovereignty?
MARTIN: There are these comments from the Trump administration about what Ukraine might have to concede. How is that going over?
RATHKE: Poorly. This is an instance where Europeans think the United States has given away much of the store before negotiations even start, whether talking about Ukraine's future relationship with NATO or territorial concessions or the nature of any kind of peacekeeping or, you know, foreign military force that would enforce a ceasefire. All those things have already been conceded in one way or another by the United States, and that has left the Europeans quite frustrated.
MARTIN: So is there any leverage at this point? I mean, if the Europeans want to avoid President Trump dealing directly with Russia's President Putin or to intervene in what they consider already to be concessions that are unwarranted and unwise, what can they do? Is there any leverage?
RATHKE: Well, I think the leverage they have will be directly correlated with their ability to mobilize in the short term significant new resources, whether that's military assistance, financial assistance to keep the Ukrainian government running, civilian assistance to deal with the consequences of war. If they can step that up in the near term, then that will affect the positions President Zelenskyy takes at the negotiating table, and it might also lead to the Europeans being involved in those negotiations, which is something right now the United States is not talking about at all.
MARTIN: That's Jeff Rathke, he's president of the Johns Hopkins American-German Institute. Mr. Rathke, thanks so much for joining us.
RATHKE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
