HE is a former Foreign Secretary so knows a diplomatic car crash when he sees one.
Jeremy Hunt is in no doubt about the seriousness of US President Donald Trump’s astonishing Oval Office dust-up with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday.
The very existence of the Nato military alliance is now on the line, Mr Hunt warned yesterday.
The pact between Europe and the US was struck in April 1949, in the wake of World War Two, and has helped keep the peace for more than 75 years.
But Mr Hunt, who served as Foreign Secretary between 2018 and 2019, in Theresa May’s Conservative government, cautioned that the old order can no longer be “taken for granted”.
He said: “From Europe’s point of view there is an even bigger priority than the future of Ukraine, which is the future of Nato.
“The simple message from what happened on Friday is we can’t take that for granted.”
Mr Hunt said there is a “sliver of hope” a Ukraine peace deal can still be done, but only if European countries urgently shore up Nato by ramping up defence spending to three or four per cent of their respective GDPs.
‘Need tempers to cool’
As PM Keir Starmer prepares to host an emergency summit on Ukraine today with Mr Zelensky and leaders from Europe and Canada, Mr Hunt told the BBC that the stakes could not be higher.
He said Sir Keir’s commitment to increasing UK defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 was “extremely welcome” — but not enough.
He added: “We need European Nato countries to be spending much closer to the 3.4 per cent of GDP that America is spending before America will feel that Europe is pulling its weight.
“If we don’t do that, if America feels it is being unfairly treated, you can see the kind of fireworks and things we’ll be putting at risk. Right now that is a very big priority behind the scenes to make sure that America remains anchored in the Western alliance.”
Trump’s shouting match with Zelensky has plunged the Ukraine peace talks into turmoil, Mr Hunt warns.
But he said: “There is one sliver of hope and that is that President Trump wants a deal and he needs Zelensky to be part of that.
“He doesn’t want to withdraw from Ukraine and abandon it to the Russians in the way that the United States abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban.
“He knows that would be very bad for his reputation, for America’s reputation. He needs a ceasefire that both Putin and Zelensky are part of.
“We need to find a way for tempers to cool down — and for the negotiations to restart, as I think they will.”
As Sir Keir hosts his crunch summit today, Mr Hunt urged that Europe must seize the moment to turbo-charge defence spending and say how they will help police a ceasefire in Ukraine.
Why should Putin deal while he's watching Nato fall apart?
By Maj Gen Tim Cross, British Army veteran of Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo
A PEACE deal in Ukraine looks far away after President Zelensky’s disastrous visit to the White House.
The key questions are: What would any deal look like now? And what happens if there isn’t one?
Is President Putin likely to agree a deal as he watches Nato potentially fall apart?
Even if he does, he may prefer to see a classic UN peace-keeping operation – with everyone wearing Blue Berets, as I did in 1981 in Cyprus.
President Zelensky would probably want some form of “peace support” operation or, better, “peace enforce-ment”, like the ones I deployed on in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s.
But ultimately, such operations must be prepared to use force if either side breaks the agreement. Is Putin likely to agree to that? And who could make up such a force?
Trump has made it clear that the US won’t participate, saying the Europeans, including us, should pick up the bill – both in the air and on the ground.
Even if we were collectively able to do that (which is pretty unlikely), would Putin allow Nato troops in?
And crucially, what would the rules of engagement be?
If, in a couple of years’ time, Russia was to push farther into Ukraine, would any government really allow their troops to open fire and take them on?
President Zelensky will meet the PM and other European leaders to discuss, among other things, security guarantees.
Without the US, such guarantees look slim.