Donald Trump is junking the transatlantic alliance

BUILDING THE transatlantic partnership centred on NATO took decades of troop deployments, joint exercises and steadfast signalling of an unbreakable commitment to its central tenet: that an attack on one would be an attack on all. Yet a weeklong whirlwind left that trust in tatters, as President Donald Trump’s administration overturned almost 80 years of American policy towards Europe. It culminated in the president repeating Kremlin propaganda points as he falsely blamed Ukraine for starting its war with Russia and called Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, a “dictator”.

This revolution in America’s foreign policy began on February 12th, when Pete Hegseth, America’s defence secretary, told America’s allies that his country was no longer the “primary guarantor” of European security. Then, on February 14th at the Munich Security Conference J.D. Vance, the vice-president, unleashed a stinging attack on Europe. Instead of talking about Ukraine, he devoted his address to rebuking Europe over free speech and immigration. “The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia,” he told the audience. “What I worry about is the threat from within.” Mr Vance’s oblique support for the hard right Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party deemed so extreme that part of it is under domestic surveillance, and his decision to meet the party’s co-leader, seemed a blatant attack on his German hosts. A prominent German politician summed up the mood of many: “It seems they are out to get us.”

At the conference European leaders wondered whether what would come next would be as epochal as an earlier Munich conference, in 1938, when Britain’s Neville Chamberlain buckled to the ambitions of Adolf Hitler; or the one at Yalta in 1945, when America, Britain and the Soviet Union carved up Europe. Amid this turmoil, Europe’s democracies have been forced to contemplate the prospect of standing against tyranny without America’s support for the first time since the second world war—and of the huge expansions needed if their armed forces are to do so credibly.

Fears of a Munich-like cave-in to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, were further inflamed on February 18th when senior American and Russian officials met for the first time since Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago. Although the talks were about ending the war, no Europeans or Ukrainians were at the table, leading some to quip that this was because Ukraine was on it. The joke sounded less funny when the punchline was delivered after the meeting by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state. Handing Mr Putin a symbolic victory, Mr Rubio agreed to strengthen diplomatic relations and gushed about “potentially historic economic partnerships” between Russia and America.

Mr Trump’s aggressive and transactional approach to international relations adds to the fear of abandonment. The president had earlier sent Scott Bessent, his treasury secretary, to Kyiv to demand that Ukraine hand over rights to what the Trump administration says are $500bn of critical minerals as payment for all the aid America has given in the past. A lot of the minerals are in Russian-held territory, though America is thought to have asked Russia to negotiate over access. In Munich American officials at first pressed Ukraine to sign a deal, but later agreed to continue to talk.

Europe’s leaders had plenty of warning that they might have to pick up more of the burden. In his first term Mr Trump threatened that America would “go its own way” if other NATO members did not increase defence spending to at least 2% of GDP, a target set after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. They have made progress: 23 of 32 members are meeting the target. Yet the armed forces of many have continued to contract (see chart). Few could have expected to find themselves facing Russia without America’s backing, a situation in which 2% is woefully inadequate.

This was laid bare at two emergency summits called by Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, on February 17th and 19th. These were to discuss sending troops to Ukraine to guarantee its security if a peace deal is reached that is acceptable to Mr Zelensky, and to work out how to finance European rearmament and further support for Ukraine. Mr Macron first floated the idea of putting boots on the ground last year and he has won the support of Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister, who is willing to contribute British forces. But other European leaders have resisted the idea, fearing they may be overstretched. Donald Tusk, Poland’s president, has ruled out a Polish contribution.

The side with the bigger battalions

Since Russia has nearly 600,000 troops attacking Ukraine, a European force would have to be sizeable to have any deterrent value, notes Matthew Savill of the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank. For Britain, that might mean a brigade augmented with air defences and supported by jet fighters. Yet with only 73,000 soldiers, maintaining such a force alongside an existing presence in Estonia “would essentially commit the deployable army”.

When five NATO allies looked at a deployment, it became apparent that European land forces would be stretched dangerously thin, creating gaps in NATO’s own defensive lines. It would be a “gift to Putin” if allies were to dilute their presence in front-line states, says a former American official familiar with that planning.

Faced with such constraints, France and Britain are drawing up tentative plans for a “reassurance force” consisting mainly of Western air power, with only a small contingent of ground troops.

Whatever the force, there is broad agreement that America would have to provide intelligence, air defence, air cover and other “enablement”—not just for logistical and technical reasons, but to deter Russia from testing the deployment. Sir Keir and Mr Macron will travel to Washington to discuss this. “If an American backstop is there,” says one European official, “it will trigger force generation by others.” Some influential voices are proposing alternative arrangements, such as an American-led air shield that could protect Ukraine’s skies without requiring many boots on the ground and a naval force to reopen the Black Sea. However, these are the very same forces that many in the Pentagon believe would be most useful in any future conflict with China in Asia (see next article).

As discomforted as NATO’s European members are at the idea of putting soldiers in harm’s way without what Sir Keir called “a US backstop”, they also have to face the even more uncomfortable prospect that Mr Trump may be planning a Yalta-style partition of Europe into a Western and Russian sphere of influence. In December 2021, before the war, Mr Putin demanded that NATO in effect abandon its central and eastern European members, by rolling back its troops to the borders that prevailed in 1997. Russia’s formal demands do not currently include these provisions. But many senior Europeans fear that Mr Putin will revive them and that Mr Trump could see them as attractive makeweights in a package deal over Ukraine.

Some American diplomats echo that worry. One risk, says Julie Smith, America’s ambassador to NATO until last month, is that Mr Trump will agree to withdraw the 20,000 American troops Joe Biden sent to Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Those forces, mostly deployed to Poland and Romania, with some rotating into the Baltic states, make up only a fifth of American troops in Europe.

If they pull out now, Ms Smith argues, other European allies, such as Britain, France and Germany, might judge it too risky to maintain their own eight battlegroups that are currently on NATO’s eastern front. Alternatively, if Mr Trump is set on punishing Germany, he could withdraw the 30,000-40,000 troops based there. “The lights are blinking red,” she warns. Many alarmed allies have noted Mr Trump’s recent talk of “denuclearising” with Russia. This might even put at risk the deployment of American tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, which are carried by several European air forces.

American officials are suggesting a different sort of peacekeeping force to a NATO presence, including non-European countries such as Brazil or China, that would sit along an eventual ceasefire line as a buffer. Mr Vance is thought to have told Europeans that a European-only force would be less effective at deterring Russia from attacking. Ivan Krastev, a political scientist, jokes that the boundary might be named the “Trump line” to enlist the president’s vanity. Russia, however, is against any foreign troop deployment in Ukraine, so Mr Trump would have to coerce Mr Putin into accepting even this.

Guns or splutter

One alternative to foreign troops would be to build up Ukraine’s armed forces. Mr Zelensky told The Economist that he would need to double the size of his army in the absence of NATO-like guarantees. That would require a serious—and expensive—flow of arms and ammunition. Mr Trump might entertain an arms-for-minerals swap, perhaps to show his supporters that America was getting something in return for its efforts. European countries are also revisiting the idea of seizing frozen Russian assets. France remains opposed to the idea, in part because of the risk of financial blowback, though Friedrich Merz, Olaf Scholz’s likely successor as German chancellor after elections, is more open.

Ukraine, with Europe’s backing, has some leverage of its own. If Mr Trump is so eager for a deal that he concedes most of Mr Putin’s demands, Mr Zelensky might prefer to walk away, betting that it would be better for Ukraine to fight on with European help alone. Likewise, Elina Valtonen, Finland’s foreign minister, told The Economist that she had warned America against a “quick and dirty deal which will probably fail anyway, and which will make President Trump look weak”.

Moreover, the crisis may galvanise Europe into action. In Britain there were hints that Sir Keir was moving towards a big increase in defence spending, with a target of at least 3% of GDP by the end of the decade. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, has proposed activating an “escape clause” from EU budget rules to allow member states to surge defence spending. She has also said the EU may divert €93bn ($97bn) in untapped covid-recovery funds to defence, the Financial Times reported.

Whatever happens in the talks, Europe will need to do more for its own defence. If a deal requires European troop deployments to Ukraine, those commitments, and the need to mobilise new forces to fill the gaps they leave, could be hugely expensive. However, if Ukraine spurns a bad deal, or if diplomacy collapses and the war continues, then Europe could still be left to pick up a much larger share of the bill for military aid—perhaps the whole tab, if Mr Trump washes his hands of the problem. In that case, Europeans might have to choose between increases in spending, seizure of Russian assets or simply watching Ukraine gradually crumble. In practice, the sums are large but hardly crippling: $50bn or so would make up America’s shortfall in aid for a year. The problem would be sourcing weapons. Europe might have to buy many from American producers.

The worst case is that Mr Trump starts to withdraw American troops from Europe and perhaps even the nuclear umbrella, or signals that he will not come to NATO’s aid if Russia attacks one of its members. Such dramatic steps are seen as less likely—at least for the moment. Congress would have to authorise hefty sums of money to pay for any large-scale troop withdrawals, for instance, and they could take years.

But it is not as implausible as a few weeks ago. In private, some European officials speculate on how they might prepare for such a catastrophe. They could, for instance, speed up the procurement of long-range missiles to deter Russia and deepen nuclear consultations with Britain and France, Europe’s nuclear-armed powers.

The paradox is that, despite these swirling anxieties, Europe and America both need each other. The Europeans are grappling with the fact that their principal security guarantor of almost 80 years is not just growing more distant, but in some ways actively hostile. They are increasingly hedging against American retrenchment. But that is not something they will seek to bring about, if only for the cost of mounting a European-only defence against Russia, which one insider puts at 5-6% of GDP a year. The first course of action is, therefore, to stay engaged with Mr Trump, however madcap and rash his diplomacy.

More important, if Mr Trump truly wants a deal that will stick, he will need European aid and, perhaps, troops. And to give Europe the confidence to provide those, he will need to commit America to Europe’s security, rather than sign up to a Yalta-like carve-up. Rarely has the Munich conference seen such a frenzy. And yet the haggling, bullying and nail-biting that will determine the future of Ukraine and Europe have only just begun. ■

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