The battle for Ukraine is ending. The battle for Europe is about to begin
Now that Trump has handed Ukraine to Putin on a silver platter, Europe has found itself in the eye of the coming storm
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One would’ve had to have been asleep under a rock for the last six months not to understand by now that America’s days as Europe’s security guarantor are over — but just in case that wasn’t yet clear enough, the events of the last week have dispelled any remaining doubt on the matter.
At the Munich Security Conference that ended today, US Vice President J.D. Vance used his stage time on Friday to eviscerate European leaders, comparing them to Soviet “commissars,” calling into question European democracy, and demanding that the continent "step up in a big way to provide for its own defense.” It was however Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky who laid bare the consequences of the speech: “decades of the old relationship between Europe and America are ending,” the Ukrainian president said. “From now on, things will be different, and Europe needs to adjust to that.”
Not 24 hours later, the first real-world manifestation of this shift appeared before European leaders’ eyes as Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg stated the EU would not be present at negotiations on Ukraine. And neither would Ukraine for that matter — Zelensky has reportedly not received any invitation to the preliminary talks between Trump’s team and Russia in Saudi Arabia, which will take place in the coming days. Kellogg claimed that Ukraine and Europe’s interests would nonetheless be represented — but the Trump administration’s message was loud and clear. In effect, Ukraine has already been cast aside, and the meeting in Saudi Arabia, which was arranged shortly after Trump’s fawning phone call with Putin this week, will likely seal the country’s fate, no matter how preliminary they may seem. How badly Kyiv will suffer following the talks remains to be seen, but Trump already appears to be cutting his losses — his administration has turned a potential deal that would have given the US access to Ukraine’s mineral rights in exchange for future security guarantees into a shake-up, in which Trump officials have demanded these rights as payback for the aid America has already given Ukraine.
Although the dust has yet to settle from this maelstrom of diplomatic upheavals, it is no exaggeration to note that this may have been the most consequential single week in Transatlantic relations since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But its second wave is only starting to be felt in Europe, where alarm over Ukraine is giving way to alarm over Russia’s long-term threat to the rest of the continent itself. Ahead of an emergency meeting framed as a summit about Ukraine, UK PM Keir Starmer nonetheless grasped the bigger picture, calling the meeting a “once-in-a-generation moment for our national security.”
If this is how British leaders are reacting to the watershed changes wrought by Trump and company, the fears along NATO’s eastern shield are orders of magnitude more dire. Although Eastern Europeans have been careful not to show their anxiety publicly, it is indeed more palpable than ever. Poland, despite being called a “model ally” by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on his visit to Warsaw a few days ago, was nevertheless told that future US support for its security is far from guaranteed. “You can’t make an assumption that America’s presence will last forever,” Hegseth told nervous Polish dignitaries. In response to Zelensky’s calls in Munich to create an “army of Europe” to replace America then, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski’s response was coldly realistic — Poland will need to save its own forces to defend Polish soil, not Ukraine.
European leaders are continuing to try to hobble together a multinational military force to maintain Ukraine’s post-war security without America’s help, but it’s no secret that the threat landscape has now expanded much further westward, and behind the scenes, preparations are being made for the inevitable. This is of course no surprise — for years, the EU has been loudly proclaiming that Ukraine’s security is the continent’s security. But for the most part, it was only the states along Russia’s periphery and in the Baltic that truly believed it, and took steps to prepare for the worst case scenario by expanding their military spending, fortifying their borders with Russia and Belarus, and cracking down on avenues of Russian influence within their territories. Now, with Ukraine’s destiny likely to be decided by the end of the year, their attention is turning to what will come afterward, when Putin will have a free hand to wage his war against NATO and the West much more aggressively. An uptick in hybrid warfare is certain; but with an American approach to Europe of the sort Vance presented in Munich, direct military confrontation is much more likely than most Europeans would be comfortable admitting. Trump certainly is not interested in another European war breaking out on his watch, but if Putin is able to sweet-talk him into pining about Russia and America’s glorious past as World War II allies and suggesting Ukraine “may be Russian someday,” then who’s to say Trump won’t shrug off a Russian attack on Estonia to “liberate” ethnic Russians from the “oppressive Tallinn regime”?
The possibility of a Russian attack on NATO’s eastern wall is something all serious European security leaders have been aware of ever since February 2022 — but whereas previously it was a mere hypothetical if Ukraine were to collapse, it has now become as real as a tsunami on the horizon, lurching toward the shore with ferocious inevitability. The shock of this past week may be exactly what European NATO needed to finally confront the fact that it, rather than Ukraine, will now become the primary battlefield between Russia and the West. Nevertheless, to quote former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis on Friday, “while I accept that the statements made by the US Vice President were the necessary medicine for a lethargic Europe, I just pray the cure doesn’t kill the patient.”