Article-5-like guarantees Ukraine’s NATO accession was expressly ruled out by the United States. Nevertheless, Kyiv was promised “Article-5-like guarantees” during negotiations about a ceasefire, suggesting Ukraine would be defended like a NATO ally. Quite how guarantees for a non-member could resemble those for members of the transatlantic alliance remains a mystery in the strictest sense of the word: a truth whose very possibility cannot be rationally conceived.
Backstop The United Kingdom and France kept signaling their willingness to send troops to Ukraine to secure a ceasefire—on the condition that the US provide a “backstop,” meaning an ultimate security reassurance. It was never spelled out what that entailed. A catch-22: The US wanted to offload the deterrence of Russia onto the Europeans. The Europeans called for a “backstop” to keep the US involved.
Coalition of the willing A phrase introduced by President George W. Bush and his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, in 2003 before the American-led Iraq war to recruit (mostly) European allies. The term was repurposed by the Europeans (and other friends of Ukraine) to signal continuing support for Ukraine after the Trump administration drew down military aid to Kyiv. An odd choice of words from the age of “forever wars.” Most of them ended in humiliating failure.
Civilizational erasure The dismal future of the European Union, according to the new US National Security Strategy published in December 2025. The NSS depicts the EU as an enemy of free speech and a destroyer of traditional national identities, overrun by hordes of immigrants who will render the continent “unrecognizable.” But fear not! According to the NSS, far-right “patriot” parties, whom the US will support, will form the “resistance” to European decadence.
Drone wall A metaphor the European Commission came up with after a wave of Russian incursions into European air space in the fall of 2025 made Poland, Estonia, Denmark, and Germany look helpless. Airports were closed for days, military installations were spied upon from the air. The planned drone wall would protect Europe from further interference, Brussels promised. But the most effective shield against Russian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) was already in place: Ukraine’s drone defense.
Greenland An island in the Western Hemisphere, under Danish sovereignty, that has the great misfortune to look far bigger on a map than it is in reality. It already attracted US President Donald Trump’s attention during his first term. Different strategic reasons for acquiring Greenland were given, but the most convincing rationale remains the president’s wish to join the ranks of the last American imperialists, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, who greatly enlarged the US territory around the turn of the century before last.
International law Often invoked by European governments when norms are violated by our adversaries. Not so much when our friends and allies show a rather cavalier attitude to it, like Israel in Gaza or the US in Venezuela. International law then, suddenly, becomes a “complex issue” (Friedrich Merz, Keir Starmer). Luckily, Trump does not “need international law,” or so he told the New York Times, because he is guided by “my own morality.”
Western Hemisphere A long forgotten term that, again, drives US foreign policy, replacing the former lodestar “the West” as a guiding principle. While Europeans were included in the idea of a Euro-Atlantic community based on common interests and values, they find themselves excluded from the geopolitical concept of a Western Hemisphere (the Americas and surrounding territories). What’s more: Hemispheric thinking dictates that the US “absolutely needs” (Trump) to sever Greenland from Europe and incorporate it. Which leaves the Europeans with a conundrum: What is left of the West when its most eminent stakeholder behaves like its adversary?
Jörg Lau is diplomatic correspondent of Germany’s weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT.
