The new “peace plan” proposed by Donald Trump reveals how fragile Europe’s security position has become.
But this weakness did not emerge overnight.
It took shape over 15 years — between 1999 and 2014.
A tectonic shift within Europe that continues to shape our ability to act today.

Here is the full context:

4.1.0a – Europe’s Tectonic Shift (1999–2014)

A reconstruction of the silent, overlooked shifts that prepared the loss of Europe’s political center.

4.1.0a.1 – The Double Enlargement

Between 1999 and 2007, Europe changed more profoundly than at any time since the end of the Cold War.
The EU expanded into Central and Eastern Europe, and NATO followed almost in parallel.
What was understood in the West as the “completion of unity” was experienced in Russia as the
shrinking of its sphere of influence.
The enthusiasm for integration obscured the fact that, in the eyes of many states, the EU and NATO
were not two separate entities but one interconnected project.

Russia, meanwhile, was in a phase of internal consolidation.
When Putin took office in 2000, he inherited a country in economic and social collapse.
His early outreach to Europe — at the time genuinely intended — met with no structural response
from Brussels or Washington.

The Western mindset was: history had been decided,
Europe’s eastward expansion was “natural,”
and Russia would sooner or later follow.

This logic overlooked reality:
Russia did not see itself as a candidate, but as a pole.

Thus began the tectonic tensions that would later become uncontrollable.

4.1.0a.2 – Putin’s Warning (2007)

At the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Putin articulated what had been growing in Russia for years:
the sense that the West disregarded its security interests.

What mattered was not the rhetoric but the diagnosis:
NATO was expanding toward borders that had previously functioned as strategic buffer zones.

Helmut Schmidt recognized the same fracture.
He spoke of the “West’s inability to recognize the limits of what it could demand” and warned against
isolating Russia.

But in the West, self-confidence prevailed;
Putin’s warning was interpreted as aggressive tone,
not as an expression of geopolitical fear.

4.1.0a.3 – The Bucharest Break (2008)

The 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest was a turning point —
a quiet but profound strategic rupture.

Germany and France warned against offering Ukraine and Georgia an invitation:
it would create promises they could not keep.
The United States nevertheless pushed for a “Membership Action Plan” perspective.

The result was a compromise that was no compromise at all:
• no accession,
• but the public promise of future accession.

Egon Bahr later called this “the most irresponsible sentence uttered by the Alliance since 1949.”
Because it had a double effect:

• In Ukraine, it created the expectation of Western integration — without a security guarantee.
• In Russia, it confirmed that NATO intended to cross the final red line.

Later that same year, the conflict in Georgia escalated.
Moscow saw it as the beginning of Western interference;
the West saw it as proof of Russian aggression.

Both sides interpreted the same event in mirror image.

That was the real break.

4.1.0a.4 – The Years of Strategies (2009–2013)

The reality was:
• The EU pushed ahead with its Eastern Partnership (2009),
promoting institutional and economic integration of Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia.
• Russia saw this as indirect NATO expansion,
because economic alignment generates political and security ties.
• The United States supported these processes — it could afford to, as American risks were not territorial.

At the same time, Central and Eastern Europe developed a new political self-image:
economically rising, strongly pro-American in security matters,
and culturally more conservative than Western Europe.

Under Donald Tusk (until 2014), Poland became the center of this new European identity.
Together with the Baltic states and Romania, Warsaw pushed for a tougher stance toward Russia —
and increasingly found an attentive ear in Washington.

During these years, two understandings of Europe emerged:

The Western one — cooperation as a political adhesive.
The Eastern one — integration as a protective wall against Russia.

This tension remained unresolved
but implicitly shaped the entire Russia policy — and later its escalation.

Meanwhile, Russia tested Europe’s responses:
cyberattacks, political influence operations, disinformation.
Not as a grand offensive masterplan,
but as expressions of mutual distrust and experimental political pressure.

The CSCE/OSCE, originally founded to manage precisely such tensions,
had long been marginalized.
Its principle of shared security
had been replaced by exclusive alliances.

Peter Brandt said in retrospect (2023):
“The OSCE would have been the only arena in which Europe’s security order could have been
renewed together with Russia.”
But no one used it.

4.1.0a.5 – The Association Agreement (2013)

The EU’s Association Agreement with Ukraine
was formally economic, structurally political,
and in reality a security policy shift.

It required regulatory alignment,
institutional commitments,
and a distancing from Russian economic structures.

Ukraine faced a choice between two integration areas
and two models of the future —
without the strength to manage such a conflict.

When Yanukovych postponed the signing in November 2013
under Russian pressure,
the Maidan began.

Russia saw the EU’s policy as Western interference,
the United States saw the protests as an opportunity,
Europe saw Ukraine as a values project.

Victoria Nuland’s remark — “Fuck the EU” —
was not a slip,
but an indicator of diverging Western strategies.

Europe was the environment, not the actor.

4.1.0a.6 – Maidan, Crimea, and Donbas (2014)

The escalation from Maidan to Crimea unfolded in less than two months.
It was not a linear process
but a political implosion overlaid with regional dynamics.

Maidan: a societal revolt against corruption and clientelism,
but also a power vacuum interpreted differently by various actors.

Moscow saw a regime change supported by the West.
Brussels saw a democratic uprising.
Today we see:
both were incomplete — and both were true.

The annexation of Crimea was not spontaneous expansion,
but a rapid security reaction to an unstable and unpredictable environment.

Soon after, unrest erupted in Donbas:
initially social, then political, and finally military.

A local conflict became a proxy war.

The OSCE — the only place for negotiations —
was too weak politically to have an impact.

4.1.0a.7 – The Tectonic Line

The events of 2014 revealed that Europe no longer possessed a functioning security framework.

For Russia, Ukraine was
• culturally close,
• historically significant,
• geopolitically indispensable.

For the West, it was
• a test of European values,
• a symbol of democratization,
• either a bridge or a bulwark — depending on perspective.

Between them, Ukraine was crushed.
Russia’s actions were a mix of self-assertion,
historical anchoring,
and strategic calculation.
The West responded with sanctions
without first examining its own mistakes, omissions, and illusions.

Thus Europe lost precisely what had defined it since 1990:
a political center that sought balance instead of new frontlines.

4.1.0a.8 – The Quiet End of the Center

In 2014 the illusion ended
that Europe could expand without strategic self-reflection.

The notion also ended
that one could shape security without Russia
while at the same time expecting peace with Russia.

The tectonic shift that began in 1999
and became visible in 2014
produced a Europe that was
politically divided,
strategically insecure,
and institutionally exhausted.

It was the end of the old center —
and the beginning of the crisis that still shapes Europe today.