“The free world needs a new leader.”
This extraordinary lament from the European Union’s top diplomat was prompted by last week’s Oval Office dressing-down of Ukraine’s embattled leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But for Kaja Kallas and other European leaders, the internationally-televised scolding by U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance was merely an outward and gut-twisting sign of a wholesale shift in American attitudes to the European continent.
Why We Wrote This
President Donald Trump appears to be ditching America’s eight-decade transatlantic alliance. That has left European nations scrambling to face Russia on their own, a challenge they had never imagined.
The shift began with Mr. Trump’s unilateral agreement with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin last month to open talks to end the Ukraine war without involving either Ukraine or America’s European allies. It gathered pace this week with Washington’s announcement that it was pausing arms shipments and intelligence sharing with Kyiv.
While the Europeans’ immediate priority is to keep Mr. Trump from abandoning Ukraine altogether, Ms. Kallas’ “help-wanted” plea reflects a much deeper worry.
It is that the decades-old transatlantic alliance – the United States-led “family of democracies” bound by shared interests, shared security concerns, and shared values – cannot long survive.
That is not just because the European allies have found themselves disagreeing with Washington over specific policies and strategies with regard to Ukraine.
Increasingly, they have found themselves speaking an entirely different language.
In the European view – which until Mr. Trump’s reelection was shared by both Republicans and Democrats in Washington – the greatest security threat on the continent comes from Mr. Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and his determination to retake control of other formerly Soviet democracies.
The Europeans, like Ukraine, insist that any peace deal giving Mr. Putin what he wants – annexation of eastern Ukraine, limits on Ukraine’s military, no NATO membership for Ukraine, and possibly even Mr. Zelenskyy’s eviction from office – would reward the Russian leader’s aggression and embolden him further.
They also recall that Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 violated a ceasefire Russia had agreed under the Minsk accord, suggesting that Mr. Putin cannot be trusted to abide by any commitment he might make now not to resume fighting.
Mr. Trump, however, seems to share Moscow’s view of the war.
To the alarm of its European partners, Washington sided with Russia and a handful of its allies, including North Korea, to vote against a recent United Nations resolution condemning the Russian invasion and supporting the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Mr. Trump has said he is confident that Mr. Putin wants peace and will honor the terms of a deal.
He has also made it clear he sees his role as a neutral deal-maker between “the two sides,” as if he holds the aggressor no more to blame than the victim for the war.
Most disconcertingly for the Europeans, Mr. Trump has matched his softly-softly approach toward Russia’s president with increased pressure on Ukraine.
For now, Europe has gone into scramble mode. It is doing all it can to prevent an outright breach between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelenskyy. Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been in regular contact with both Washington and Kyiv.
His was a key voice in convincing Mr. Zelenskyy to write a conciliatory letter to the U.S. president this week, voicing “regret” over the Oval Office spectacle, committing to peace talks under Mr. Trump’s “strong leadership,” and expressing readiness to give U.S. companies a major stake in his country’s rare-earth minerals and other resources.
Mr. Starmer and other European leaders – especially Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has a good personal relationship with Mr. Trump – have also been insistent that they need to stay on the best possible terms with Washington.
Italian Government/Reuters
They know Europe needs America if it’s going to have any realistic hope of ensuring a peace deal that leaves Ukraine with a credible capacity to deter further attacks.
In a series of summits in recent days, European leaders have accelerated plans to increase their military spending, send more aid to Ukraine, and potentially assemble a force capable of policing an eventual peace deal.
But European rearmament will take time.
And even if European troops and aircraft took the lead as peacekeepers, their deterrent effect would depend on Mr. Trump’s willingness to provide U.S. logistics and intelligence support and, crucially, a military “backstop” should they come under attack.
So far, Mr. Trump has been reluctant to give such an assurance.
He has reiterated a commitment to Article V of the NATO alliance, by which an attack on one member state is an attack on all. But he has also said that he does not consider that this would be relevant in the Ukraine context.
Mr. Starmer has been playing down this hesitancy. He has repeatedly voiced confidence that Britain’s close security, intelligence, and military partnership with America will remain strong.
But other European leaders harbor growing doubts that Washington can still be counted on as a reliable ally, much less as the actively-engaged senior partner in their transatlantic partnership.
“I want to believe that the U.S. will stay by our side,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a national television address on Wednesday night. “But we have to be ready for that not to be the case.”
For Ms. Kallas, that prospect is especially jolting. She was once Prime Minister of Estonia, one of the previously Soviet Baltic democracies that fear Mr. Putin may one day turn his rearmed military their way.
And she is not alone.
Friedrich Merz, the pro-American conservative in line to become Germany’s next chancellor, said last week he was now convinced Europe had to build a security alliance “independent” of America.
The Trump administration, he said, seemed “largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”
