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News Analysis
Europe’s Leaders, Dazed by an Ally Acting Like an Adversary, Recalculate
Faced with undisguised hostility from the Trump administration, Europeans are preparing for what is shaping up to be a go-it-alone era.
Reporting from London
For years, European leaders have fretted about reducing their dependence on a wayward United States. On Monday, at a hastily arranged meeting in Paris, the hand-wringing gave way to harried acceptance of a new world in which Europe’s most powerful ally has begun acting more like an adversary.
President Trump’s plan to negotiate a peace settlement in Ukraine with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, with neither the Ukrainians nor Europeans invited to take part, has forced dazed leaders in capitals like Berlin, London and Paris to confront a series of hard choices, painful trade-offs and costly new burdens.
Already on the table is the possibility that Britain, France, Germany, and other countries will deploy tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine as peacekeepers. European governments are affirming the need for major increases in their military budgets — if not to the 5 percent of gross domestic product demanded by Mr. Trump, then to levels not seen since the Cold War days of the early 1980s.
“Everybody’s hyped up at the moment, understandably,” said Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London. “What is clear is that whatever happens, Europe will have to step up.”
That could put its leaders in a difficult spot. While public support for Ukraine remains strong across Europe, committing troops to potentially dangerous duty on Ukrainian soil could quickly become a domestic political liability. Estimates on the size of a peacekeeping force vary widely, but under any scenario, it would be an extremely expensive undertaking at a time of straitened budgets.
President Emmanuel Macron of France, who first floated the idea of a peacekeeping force last year — to widespread skepticism in Europe — has been weakened since his decision to call parliamentary elections last summer backfired and left him with a fragile government.
Germany may not have a new coalition government for weeks after its election on Feb. 23. On Monday, its chancellor, Olaf Scholz, dismissed talk of peacekeepers as “completely premature” and “highly inappropriate” while fighting was still raging.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, who does not have to face voters for four years, said that Britain was open to “putting our troops on the ground if necessary.” But former military officials said that after years of budget cuts, the British military was not equipped to lead a large-scale, long-term mission in Ukraine.
“Frankly, we haven’t got the numbers, and we haven’t got the equipment,” Richard Dannatt, a former head of the British Army, told the BBC. He estimated that Britain would have to supply up to 40,000 troops to a 100,000-strong force.
For some Europeans, it is too soon to talk about a post-American era on the continent. Mr. Scholz and Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, warned leaders not to sunder the trans-Atlantic alliance, whatever the current tensions.
As a practical matter, a peacekeeping force would be difficult without logistical support from the United States. American security assurances, analysts said, were crucial to making it politically acceptable in European capitals, where some leaders will have to win approval from their parliaments. Mr. Starmer spoke of an “American backstop,” saying that was “the only way to effectively deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again.”
Professor Freedman said he believed that senior Trump administration officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, understood those realities and were not bent on pulling America’s security umbrella from Europe. But he said that Mr. Trump’s goals were harder to decipher; his drive for untrammeled power at home has been deeply alarming to Europeans.
“In the past, you assumed that this was a serious, competent country,” Professor Freedman said. “It’s unnerving to think that might not be the case. There is a sense that the guardrails just aren’t there.”
At the Munich Security Conference this past weekend, the anxiety boiled over when Christoph Heusgen, who chairs the gathering, broke down in tears during his closing speech. It was a jarring display of emotion from a seasoned German diplomat, but Mr. Heusgen could be seen as merely channeling the feelings of his fellow Europeans.
His anguish was not prompted by the surprise news of Mr. Trump’s phone call with Mr. Putin nor by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s warning that it was unrealistic for Ukraine to join NATO. Rather, it was in response to Vice President JD Vance’s blistering speech at the conference, in which he urged Europeans to stop shunning far-right parties and accused them of suppressing free speech.
“We have to fear that our common value base is not that common anymore,” Mr. Heusgen said.
Many Germans viewed Mr. Vance’s comments as brazen election interference. The vice president, who skipped a meeting with Mr. Scholz, did find time to meet with the co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, Alice Weidel. Germany’s mainstream parties have refused to enter coalitions with the AfD, which German intelligence agencies classify as an extremist organization.
Mr. Trump, meantime, has threatened to hit the European Union with sweeping tariffs. That could damage the bloc’s economies, which would make it even harder to lift spending on defense. NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, has called on the alliance’s members to increase their spending to “considerably more than 3 percent” of gross domestic product (the United States spends 3.4 percent).
In 2023, Germany spent 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, while France spent 2.1 percent and Britain 2.3 percent.
Beyond the political and economic provocations, European leaders are struggling to make sense of the Trump administration’s strategy for Ukraine. Mr. Hegseth’s remarks signaled a reduction in American support for Ukraine’s war goals — something that European leaders regret but privately acknowledge they share.
Yet Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, on a visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, last week, suggested that the United States could supply a “long-term security shield” for Ukraine, provided it obtained access to the country’s valuable minerals. Mr. Trump’s announcement of negotiations between him and Mr. Putin blindsided European leaders and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
“A contradiction runs through the United States’ approach,” Nigel Gould-Davies, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a research group in London, wrote in an online essay. “It has signaled that the U.S. alone will negotiate an end to the war but also that Europe alone must pay for and enforce an outcome it has not played a role in deciding.”
This assumes that Mr. Trump can strike a deal with Mr. Putin. Analysts note that the United States has already granted Russia two major concessions — ruling out Ukrainian membership in NATO and suggesting that it is unrealistic for Ukraine to reclaim all its territory — without receiving anything in return.
Some liken Mr. Trump’s approach to his nuclear diplomacy with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, during his first term. Meeting Mr. Kim in Singapore, Mr. Trump gave him a valuable concession — no more military drills between the United States and South Korea — without getting a reciprocal gesture. The negotiations petered out, and North Korea has yet to give up its nuclear arsenal.
In this case, analysts said, the odds against a quick breakthrough might spare European leaders from having to commit troops, at least for now.
“Unless the position on the ground improves greatly to Ukraine’s advantage, it’s hard to imagine Russia signing up to a deal that allows large numbers of NATO troops — including British ones — on its border,” said Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute, a research group in London.
Professor Freedman said that Mr. Trump would have to persuade Mr. Putin to agree to terms that are acceptable to Mr. Zelensky — an exceedingly long shot.
“We’re a long way from the circumstances where it makes sense,” he said of a peacekeeping force. “I can’t get past the incompatibility between what Trump can offer and what the Russians want.”
Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades. More about Mark Landler
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