Filenews 17 February 2025 - by Lionel Laurent
"Eastern Europe is no longer at the center of U.S. foreign policy... The world questions whether NATO would be willing and able to respond to a call to defend it." One would expect to hear those views today in Brussels, with European leaders outraged by Donald Trump's choice to ignore them as he prepares for talks with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine while shifting more of the burden of continental security onto his allies.
However, those words were written 15 years ago in a 2009 letter to Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, by leading figures in former Iron Curtain countries such as Poland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Even then, the fear was that the U.S. attempt at rapprochement with Russia while shifting toward Asia would make Europe's eastern tip more vulnerable. Today, when the Trump administration says that Ukraine is unlikely to return to its pre-2014 borders and that the biggest security priority is China, we can imagine that U.S. allies are feeling a sense of déjà vu as well as anger.
In fact, there are so many examples in the past that show that "America First" essentially means "America as usual", and it is somewhat strange to see Europeans so surprised. In 2013, hours before the U.S. and France led a coordinated attack on Putin's Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad, Obama left Paris to its fate in a last-minute U-turn. In 2021, the Biden administration's chaotic unilateral withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan betrayed and angered European allies like France, who for years had been mocked for its alleged lack of military resolve. These events emboldened Putin and fuelled expectations of a post-American world. Trump's attempt at rapprochement with Russia, along with his threats of tariffs on the $1.3 trillion U.S.-EU trade relationship, will do the same.
The question, therefore, is not whether the U.S. will leave its allies exposed, but what European Union leaders ultimately plan to do when that happens.
Outraged demands for a seat at the table of Putin and Trump, however justified, are not enough. They reinforce U.S. views that Europeans are merely followers and as unprepared for peace as they are for war. Like a diplomatic passenger in the back seat, the EU supported Ukraine economically, militarily and morally without defining its own project or interests, for fear of breaking unity. This may have helped keep the pressure of sanctions on Moscow and military aid to Kiev maintained. But the cost has been the absence of a strategy in anticipation of Trump's arrival or a clear policy to boost morale among war-weary voters, who have booed governments they have linked to high inflation and a weak economy because of the war.
It's as if European leaders assumed that the early wave of public support for Ukraine would last forever, like the applause for nurses during the pandemic. By contrast, in many countries, support for a ceasefire in exchange for territorial concessions has increased. Financial markets are already getting Trump's message and betting on benefits, including falling energy prices. European diplomats worry that years of talk of a more assertive Europe has led to complacency, likening it to a call for retirement savings that has been completely ignored. Initiatives such as the wider European Political Community or the opening of EU accession negotiations with Ukraine have failed to bring about decisive change.
Given the urgent need to define and defend their own interests and those of Ukraine, it is time for leaders to step aside from building pan-European consensus and forge more flexible alliances. A group of countries such as non-EU Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Poland would bring together Europe's two nuclear powers, its largest economy, an influential government in line with Trump and Europe's biggest defense consumer by GDP.
The EU should also make a concerted effort on defense — its biggest weakness and biggest confrontation with Washington — to show it can act strategically without U.S. orders. This means that it should not be consumed by a "German-style" debate about money or "French-style" about leadership. Given the trillions of dollars needed to prepare for a postwar Ukraine, maximum flexibility should be the keywords: EU fiscal rules could be looser, crisis-era bailout funds could be redefined, and borrowing encouraged for initiatives like air defense.
Europe has good reason to worry about the outcome of the Trump-Putin talks, as my colleague Marc Champion has written. But it's also stronger than it looks. More than a quarter of a century after the EU embarked on its own geopolitical path, "America First" cannot mean that Europe will remain. 'Europe as usual'.
Performance – Editing: Lydia Roumpopoulou
