There is little more U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration could do to signal that their objectives in Ukraine radically differ from those of Europe. And yet, Europeans continue to be in denial.
To put it bluntly: For Trump, Ukraine is nothing more than a buffer state between the spheres of influence of two great powers—the United States and Russia, notwithstanding the latter’s dismal economy and conventional military.
Trump’s strategic objective is to normalize relations with Moscow through reverse triangulation, believing he can pull it away from China. Ukraine’s sovereignty or territorial integrity are not issues Trump is willing to expand much capital on.
The clearest evidence of this is in the concentration of U.S. pressure solely on Ukraine, through calls for President Volodymyr Zelensky to resign—one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s original war aims—and the suspension of American military aid. Meanwhile, this U.S. administration has engaged Russia in talks about normalization and exerted no pressure on Moscow even though the war would end overnight if Putin withdrew his troops from Ukraine.
This is a fundamental schism between the strategic threat assessments of the United States and its Europeans allies, who consider the Russian invasion of Ukraine an “existential threat.”
Yet, Europeans have been incapable of matching this sea change in American foreign policy with bold action to protect their own security and avoid a spiked ceasefire in Ukraine that strengthens Russia. The time for presenting a plan to the Trump administration was between his election in November 2024 and inauguration in January 2025.
If Europeans truly want to be actors of their own security, they must now create facts on the ground that Trump and Putin cannot ignore. Two priorities emerge: supercharging military assistance to make up for the suspended U.S. aid as much as possible, including through direct purchases from the Ukrainian defense industry and, if Zelensky is forced to step down, ensuring that Russia cannot interfere in or manipulate the Ukrainian elections that would follow his resignation.
In order to succeed, Europeans have to make three immediate crucial choices that risk further dividing them.
First, they can no longer pretend to want to credibly implement a porcupine strategy for Ukraine—arming it to the teeth—without seizing Russian assets present in their countries and using them to fund the war effort. European countries’ low growth rates, high energy costs, and the financial pressures of their social models offer no other solution. This has become more urgent with the Trump administration’s decision to immediately suspend its military aid to Kyiv.
The potential negative fallout on Europe’s economies is real but this has to be a price Europeans are willing to bear if they truly feel their security is threatened. That is the kind of strategic skin in the game that will catch the attention of the United States and Russia.
Second, Europeans must resolve the growing tension within their ranks between those who want to prioritize beefing up defenses in EU frontline countries and those who support deploying a small reassurance force in critical locations in Ukraine, which may ultimately be blocked by the U.S. administration or fail to deter renewed Russian aggression.
Two uncomfortable hypotheses underpin this choice. One is that the U.S. security guarantee, even for NATO countries, is no longer automatic. The second is that given their limited military means, Europeans may have to sacrifice Ukraine to safeguard their own security.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s disrespectful and dismissive comments about a European reassurance force in Ukraine led by France and the UK in a Fox News interview on Monday is the latest signal that there will likely not be strong U.S. backing for such a force. The best—but unlikely—scenario Europeans can hope for is some American logistical and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support, but not the air defense and air cover both France and the UK want. These would require putting U.S. troops in harm’s way—something no Republican is willing to support at this stage.
Europeans seem to be trying to convince themselves that the erstwhile vague and ill-defined rare earths deal the United States and Ukraine are meant to sign constitutes American security guarantees in all but name. This could turn out to be a deadly miscalculation, not only based on the failed precedent of Trump’s 2017 rare earth minerals deal in Afghanistan. By the time the deal is implemented, Ukraine may be led by someone more submissive to Moscow and less anchored in the European camp, should Trump succeed in forcing Zelensky to resign and hold elections. Even before that scenario could play out, Putin is already working to undermine the deal by dangling access to rare earths in the Ukrainian territories Russia illegally occupies.
Finally, Europeans face a slightly longer-term choice. They must decide whether to continue to deepen their military dependence on the United States through increased purchases of American weapons or to match U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s promise to “[empower] Europe to own responsibility for its own security” with massive investments in European-made weapons, whenever possible. Empowerment can’t be based on dependence.
Europeans have so far lacked the strategic leadership to make these kinds of choices that reset parts of the terms of the continent’s security architecture. But none of this is out of reach for a group of countries—the EU, plus the UK and Norway—that make up more than 15 percent of global GDP.
Even if Europeans conclude that without U.S. air cover they cannot provide credible security guarantees to Ukraine by deploying their own troops, they can still help the country while drawing a security dividend.
By intensifying cyber and hybrid support, building joint defense ventures between European and Ukrainian companies in-country, conducting military exercises in Ukraine, and stockpiling capabilities either in Ukraine or on the EU’s borders with Ukraine, Europeans can create a second-best scenario.
This would also allow them to benefit from the battle-tested experience of the Ukrainian military and innovations the Ukrainian defense industry has developed in the course of this war.
