On 30 April 1998, shortly after the United States Senate ratified the enlargement of NATO to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, George Kennan warned that the decision could become one of the most consequential mistakes of the post-Cold War era. The veteran American diplomat had already described NATO expansion as “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era”, arguing that Russia would inevitably regard the move as a threat.
Nearly three decades later, the question of NATO expansion remains central to arguments about the war in Ukraine. Le Monde diplomatique presents the issue as part of a wider European debate over whether military escalation can deliver a durable settlement, and whether alternative approaches to the conflict have received adequate public consideration.
According to the analysis, Russia subsequently invaded Ukraine while claiming that preventing Ukraine’s integration into NATO was among its objectives. The possibility of Ukrainian membership had been discussed within NATO in 2008 and again during the period of escalating tensions in 2020–21. The article also refers to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s memoirs in discussing the earlier debate over Ukraine’s relationship with the alliance.
The war, however, has produced costs far beyond the strategic calculations that preceded it. Le Monde diplomatique argues that Russia has failed to achieve its broader military, strategic and geopolitical objectives, while one important Russian objective — preventing Ukraine from joining NATO — has nevertheless been achieved. Ukraine, meanwhile, has lost around 20 per cent of its territory, while the conflict has produced hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, displaced millions and caused extensive destruction of infrastructure.
For Europe, the strategic dilemma became sharper after Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. With uncertainty over the future of American involvement, the European Union and its member states have adopted a more explicitly hawkish position. The article estimates that Europe has committed around €220 billion in aid to Ukraine since 2022, while European industry has increasingly shifted towards the production of missiles, tanks and drones.
The accompanying political debate has also come under scrutiny. Le Monde diplomatique examines the way European media and expert circles have discussed the war, arguing that certain perspectives receive substantially greater exposure than others. As one example, it analyses 53 editions of the French television programme C dans l’air broadcast between 29 June and 14 September 2026. Of the programmes examined, 34 dealt with international affairs, 15 focused on Russia, Vladimir Putin or NATO, and 19 discussed Trump. None focused on Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza, the West Bank, Africa or Latin America.
The article also questions increasingly restrictive definitions of misinformation and “fake news”. It points to a 25 January 2022 New York Times formulation describing information as potentially misleading even when it was “true but without direct connection to the subject”. For Le Monde diplomatique, such standards can contribute to the marginalisation of arguments that challenge dominant interpretations of the war. The article cites figures including Emmanuel Todd, Pascal Boniface and John Mearsheimer as examples of voices whose positions have attracted controversy or limited attention within mainstream debate.
Its criticism extends beyond Ukraine to the broader history of military intervention. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Mali are presented alongside the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and Russia’s war in Ukraine as examples of military campaigns whose political consequences diverged sharply from their stated objectives. The article cites estimates placing the cost of the Afghanistan war at $2.3 trillion and the combined cost of the wars in Iraq and Syria at $2.9 trillion.
The financial burden of renewed militarisation is becoming increasingly visible. Citing figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Le Monde diplomatique reports that global military expenditure reached $2.887 trillion in 2025, marking an 11th consecutive year of increases. European military spending rose by 14 per cent, while Germany increased expenditure by 24 per cent and Spain by 50 per cent. The United States, China and Russia together accounted for more than half of global military spending.
The argument is not simply that Europe should abandon security concerns. Rather, the article questions whether ever-higher military expenditure can provide an adequate response to the challenges confronting governments and societies. Climate change and artificial intelligence, it argues, are problems that cannot be effectively addressed through national military competition alone and instead require sustained international cooperation.
That argument returns the discussion to the institutions created after the Second World War. Their original purpose, according to the article, was not merely to organise relations between states but to establish mechanisms through which international disputes could be managed and crises prevented. The alternative proposed by Le Monde diplomatique is therefore centred on diplomacy, coexistence, confidence-building and the prevention of escalation.
The article does not present such an approach as an easy solution to the war in Ukraine. Its central challenge is more fundamental: whether Europe’s growing commitment to military power is narrowing the range of political choices available to it at precisely the moment when the consequences of prolonged confrontation are becoming increasingly costly.
