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Europe is scrambling to respond to a world order where the United States is no longer the guarantor of peace – but can it step into the vacuum left behind by increasingly chaotic and grasping American diplomacy?
In a single speech to the Munich security conference last week, Vice President of the United States JD Vance almost single-handedly rewrote the long-standing alliance between Europe and the US.
The writing for the relationship has been on the wall for some time, but Vance laid out the US position in the starkest possible terms to a shocked audience expecting a bipartisan presentation on the war in Ukraine.
Vance questioned Europe’s devotion to the democratic process if its politicians were not willing to accommodate far-right parties in political discourse. He said that European politicians, when addressing misinformation and disinformation as a threat, were instead “hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words,” and “If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor for that matter is there anything you can do for the American people.”
The age of cooperation is dead – the age of transactions and deals is well and truly in.
But if it came as a shock that Europe may be politically alone, it may well be militarily alone as well.
President Donald Trump is already seeking to sideline Europe by holding direct talks with President Vladimir Putin. In a phone call last week – the day before Valentine’s Day, ironically – Trump set up a face-to-face meeting with Putin at an unspecified date in the future in Saudi Arabia – neither European nor Ukrainian representatives are to be part of the proposed talks.
Additionally, Trump now expects to make a material gain out of the conflict. The US intends to claim rights to fully 50 per cent of Ukraine’s not-inconsiderable mineral wealth. Maintaining sovereign borders and checking Russian aggression are no longer the worthy goals they once seemed – now the profit motive is in force.
While Trump’s Russian overtures may be a slight to Europe, his admission that some Ukrainian territory at least would remain in Russian hands was a slap in the face to a people who have been fighting for that land since well before the Russian invasion of 2022.
The US president explained that it was Russia who had “fought for that land and they lost a lot of soldiers”, as if that loss of life were not the result of a cruel and illegal war that Russia itself had instigated.
Trump’s admission that Russia should be allowed to rejoin the G7, by comparison, was adding pure insult to injury.
The US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, added a further nail to the coffin when he reiterated that Ukraine would need to surrender its territory as part of any peace process while adding that NATO membership was certainly out of the question.
Finally – as if all that were not enough for European lawmakers to take in in just a few days, Hegseth added that while the US might be willing to negotiate a peace, it would not guarantee it – that would fall to European troops – and expense.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saw the US shift away from Europe with particularly clear eyes.
“Decades of the old relationship between Europe and America are ending,” Zelenskyy said at the same Munich conference.
“From now on, things will be different, and Europe needs to adjust to that.”
What now for the Old World?
Trump has long sought to bully Europe into increasing its defence spending, and while NATO countries have been aiming to raise military expenditure by at least two per cent of GDP since as early as 2006, only two-thirds of its members have reached this goal. Poland and Estonia actually spend more than the US in relation to their GDP, and Greece and Latvia are not far behind.
17 other NATO members have boosted to between two and three per cent of GDP, but six countries – including Canada – still wallow below 1.5 per cent of GDP.
But many within NATO understand that spending must now increase further, and faster. Speaking at a Paris summit called this week in the face of American ‘diplomacy’ in the region, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk made no bones of the need to spend now.
“If we Europeans fail to spend big on defence now, we will be forced to spend ten times more if we don’t prevent a wider war,” Tusk said in a social media post.
“As the Polish PM I’m entitled to say it loud and clear, since Poland already spends almost five per cent of its GDP on defence. And we will continue to do so.”
The Danish government is looking to do the same, with a multi-million defence investment that will see the country spend three per cent of GDP in 2025 and 2026, while Germany’s Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, suggested easing the EU’s fiscal rules for any country that lifts defence spending above two per cent.
Speaking specifically of support for Ukraine, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was similarly hawkish on defence spending.
“Today in Paris we reaffirmed that Ukraine deserves peace through strength,” von der Leyen said.
“Peace respectful of its independence, territorial integrity, with strong security guarantees.
“Europe carries its full share of the military assistance to Ukraine. At the same time, we need a surge in Defence in Europe.”
But there is no doubt that the war in Ukraine – and Ukraine’s sovereignty in any post-war settlement – is going to be a continuing point of contention, no matter what level of defence uplift NATO and the EU can secure.
What cost peace in Ukraine?
Despite European and Ukrainian unease, Russian and US representatives met in Riyadh this week to begin the negotiation process. It’s early days, of course, but so far both sides have agreed there are “economic and investment opportunities” to be explored via the peace process, which suggests this development is less about lasting peace and more about exploiting the situation.
Alarmingly, while his cronies appeared to appease Russian aggression, Trump sought to lay the blame for the devastation of Ukrainian territory on… Ukraine.
“Today I heard, ‘Oh, we weren’t invited’,” Trump said on Wednesday.
“Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years [ago] – you should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
But deals are the last thing on Zelenskyy’s mind. While he has openly said that any ceasefire will need to be backed by American boots on the ground, Zelenskyy has also said that Ukraine must be included in any peace talks – Ukraine will not “recognise any things or any agreements about us without us. And we will not recognise such agreements”.
“The US is now saying things that are very favourable to Putin… because they want to please him. They want to meet quickly and have a quick win,” Zelenskyy said earlier this week.
“But what they want – just a ceasefire – is not a win. We will not sign just anything in order to be applauded.”
However, Trump continues to escalate his anti-Ukraine rhetoric. Just a day after claiming that Ukraine should not have begun the war – an outright lie if anyone needs to be told – the US president took to Truth Social to call Zelenskyy a “dictator without elections” and to insist that only “TRUMP” (and that is Trump’s own use of capitalisation and quotation marks – make of that what you will) can bring peace to the region.
As US-Ukrainian relations continue to deteriorate on a nearly daily basis, European leaders are struggling to keep up. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants to see UK and European troops on the ground in Ukraine and as guarantors of any peace, an idea that some in Europe welcome, while others are more sceptical. Regardless, many European leaders are looking at Trump’s antics with dismay.
“It is simply wrong and dangerous to deny President Zelenskyy democratic legitimacy,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the German newspaper Spiegel following Trump’s spray.
“Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the elected head of state of Ukraine. The fact that proper elections cannot be held in the middle of a war is in line with the requirements of the Ukrainian constitution and electoral laws. No one should claim otherwise.”
The situation is clearly a fluid one, playing out both in the halls of power and in late night social media posts, but perhaps the best place to leave things is with Ukraine’s largest non-NATO supporter – Australia.
In a rare instance of open criticism of Trump, Peter Dutton – leader of Australia’s opposition Coalition party – said in a radio interview on Thursday that Trump was wrong in his characterisation of the war in Ukraine, calling the conflict “a fight for civilisation” and Putin a “murderous dictator”.
“I think President Trump has got it wrong in relation to some of the public commentary that I’ve seen him make in relation to President Zelenskyy and the situation in the Ukraine,” Dutton said.
“And I think very careful thought needs to be given about the next steps because if we make Europe less safe, or we provide some sort of support to Putin, deliberately or inadvertently, that is a terrible, terrible outcome.”
