“I’m working tirelessly to end the savage conflict in Ukraine. Millions of Ukrainians and Russians have been needlessly killed or wounded in this horrific and brutal conflict with no end in sight. The United States has sent hundreds of billions of dollars to support Ukraine’s defense with no security, with no anything.”
In a Tuesday night speech to Congress, notable for its 90-minute length and sustained crowing (interspersed with petty swipes and veiled threats), Donald Trump eventually got around to the subject that has dominated global politics since his outburst in the Oval Office on Friday: the war in Ukraine. “2,000 people are being killed every single week — more than that. They are Russian young people, they’re Ukrainian young people. They’re not Americans, but I want it to stop,” he said.
The more I observe international politics, the more I return to former Israeli statesman Abba Eban’s (typically dry) observation, that “political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.” Trump has always been plain about who he is and what he wants (one of his few qualities is that he never pretends to be what he’s not). And he’s never liked Ukraine, and he’s never believed in its war of defence against Russia.
Trump’s speech came barely 24 hours after the announcement that he was pausing aid to Ukraine. As a result, tens of billions of dollars in military assistance, including the supply of not just future aid but arms and associated tech already earmarked (but not yet delivered) to Kyiv has been frozen. To do this to an ally under attack from a murderous neighbour is lethal, and morally treacherous. Ukraine is now dangerously exposed.
A cessation of aid is going to be difficult for Ukraine. Sources over there tell me that the army could continue fighting for anywhere up to a few months, longer if the Europeans really step up. But their message was clear: they need the Americans. I fear they are right. It’s hard to spend any time on the front without running into soldiers using US equipment, while almost all digital communications are run through Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service. For now, though, everything has stopped, except of course the Russian attacks.
That doesn’t bother Trump. In any case, the US has done similar things in the past. Back in the Seventies and Eighties, Washington occasionally paused aid to Egypt when its policies ran counter to American interests, notably when Cairo started cosying up to the Soviet Union. Congress also often attempted to limit the Reagan administration’s aid to Nicaragua and El Salvador on account of their corruption and authoritarian governments. Aid has always been used as a means of chastising regimes that irritated them.
But to slap a longstanding US ally at war with one of Washington’s traditional foes? The only precedent for that is…Donald Trump — in 2019. That year, he halted aid to Ukraine for various supposed and different reasons, mainly, he said, because of Ukrainian corruption. Many suspect, however, that he did it because of Ukraine’s refusal to launch investigations into Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden, as Trump wanted to nobble his likely rival in the 2020 presidential election.
So why the power play this time? It seems that, in the end, the divide on Ukraine between the Europeans and the United States is the one at the heart of so many divorces — irreconcilable differences. In this case, it’s irreconcilable enemies. For the Europeans and Britain, Putin menaces their continent. The threat is on their doorstep, which makes it not just proximate but inescapable. For the Americans, though, geography intervenes. Trump knows this. As he said: “We have an ocean separating us, and they don’t.” It’s China that poses a more serious multi-pronged threat to Washington, ranging from conventional military competition to crime, counterintelligence, and cybersecurity. More than this, China is the only nation that is big and rich and powerful to conceivably challenge Washington for global dominance. Russia is too poor and dysfunctional.
From this position of relative safety, it’s small wonder Washington feels such dissatisfaction at the Europeans who, in its view, simply aren’t doing enough to protect themselves. To America, Europe looks recklessly blasé. As Trump stated last night: “Europe has sadly spent more money buying Russian oil and gas than they’ve spent on defending Ukraine, by far. Think of that. They’ve spent more buying Russian oil and gas than they have defending.” In fact, this American view long predates Trump (even if it wasn’t felt with such force). Biden mentioned it several times, and even Obama complained that “Europe has sometimes been complacent about its own defence”. They are right. In Europe, we have lived off American largesse for 80 years. We love welfare states and so we outsourced our security to Washington to pay for them. Whether we like it or not, in certain regards the true father of the NHS is not Nye Bevan but Harry Truman.
This sort of freeloading was always going to irk a president whose view of geopolitics is fundamentally mercantile. For Trump, everything is transactional. “If we have to safeguard everyone else, what do we get out of it?” is the attitude. As the President said, he wants to deliver “the greatest economy in history”. Behind the vague and typical boasting lies a note of fear. The American deficit, which sits at around $1.2 trillion, has concentrated minds. As the historian Niall Ferguson observed, when superpowers spend more on debt repayments than on defence, they soon cease to be superpowers. Washington did that for the first time last year. The trend must be arrested. The deficit must come down, or else the United States might go down with it.
“For Trump, everything is transactional.”
No wonder, then, that the desire to bring in revenues is high on the Trump agenda; resources, be they in Ukraine or Greenland, are seen as a fruitful means to this end. His beloved, misunderstood tariffs are too, which “are not just about protecting American jobs. They are about protecting the soul of our country. Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again.” The stock market may yet have other ideas.
But for all those statesmen who don’t see Ukraine as a security issue, and are aware of how much leverage Washington has, Kyiv offers value only as a cash cow that can be bilked, not least from a man who’s spent his life bilking everyone he can. And make no mistake, he intends to bilk Ukraine. And it seems his playbook is working. Zelensky has been made to atone. In a letter which Trump read out last night he said: “Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer…. Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it at any time.” This is the deal that was due to be signed until the meeting between Zelensky, Trump and JD Vance descended into finger-jabbing acrimony.
The threat of facing Putin alone has also pushed Europe into action. Not only has Starmer promised that Ukraine’s Western allies would continue providing military aid to secure lasting peace and protect the country’s sovereignty. The PM has also declared the UK’s readiness “to put boots on the ground and planes in the air”, invoking a possible “coalition of the willing” for Ukraine’s defence.
Finally, Europe was getting its act together — rhetorically at least — which you’d think would be music to the White House’s ears. But then Vance hit the airwaves to tell the world that “If you want to actually ensure that Vladimir Putin does not invade Ukraine again, the very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine.”
“That is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years,” he said.
Apart from the inanity of the outburst, forgetting, perhaps, that the UK sent around 150,000 troops to Afghanistan and around 140,000 to Iraq, this response to the European willingness to do what the White House has repeatedly urged them to do is striking. But perhaps not surprising. If Kyiv can survive with only European help, then it may well be goodbye lucrative minerals deal. But more broadly, it is not in the US interest for the Europeans to become totally self-sufficient militarily. If that were to happen, Washington would lose the largest part of its leverage over a continent that is, in the end, the richest and most dynamic free space outside of the US. The ideal situation is for the Europeans to pony up much more cash yet still have to defer to Washington when it counts.
Understand this and understand that the White House is using Ukraine as a means through which to more broadly reorder international relations for a new era; in Trump’s machinations can be seen an adumbration of the world as he wants it to be.
So it remains to be seen, then, what Vance will make of what happened last night in Germany. In response to the White House’s outburst, it overturned the debt brake which prevents it from spending more on defence. “In view of the threats to our freedom and peace on our continent,” said Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin, the motto “whatever it takes” must now apply to the country’s defence. Merz now argues that defence spending must go above 1% of GDP. Isn’t this what America wanted?
Given the heated tenor of the debate, it’s almost impossible to predict what Trump will do, but what is clear is that the United States is no longer a reliable ally. If we are back in the age of empires, then he is a fickle emperor indeed. The lesson for Europe is bleak but unambiguous. We are alone. While Moscow is revelling in Trump’s actions and China is seething at the imposition of tariffs, Europe has no choice but to become self-sufficient. We must understand that paying 3% of GDP for defence now is better than having to pay 6% five years down the line when the Russians are in the Baltics.
Of course, it’s not just foolish but dangerous to take Trump at his word. Of course his speech was filled with exaggerations and lies. The US hasn’t spent $350 billion on Ukraine; in fact, since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Congress has passed five spending bills to provide support to Ukraine, totaling about $174.2 billion. Meanwhile, Europe hasn’t merely spent $100 billion. A February EU fact sheet reported that its member states had provided about $145 billion since the start of the war, and then in February, the EU committed up to $54 billion for recovery and reconstruction.
Minerals, tariffs and the annexation of territory (“one way or the other, we’re going to get it,” he said about Greenland) — it could be the 1800s again in DC. Trump, let’s be clear, doesn’t like war: because it’s expensive. But he likes to fight (or “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as everyone chanted in that room yesterday), and to do so while making “great TV”. His weapons of choice are, it seems, economic, all backed up by massive US hard power in the background of course.
And so, for now, we continue to stumble into an uncertain future, unsure of where the whims of one man will take us next. Trump says it will be like nothing we have ever seen before. And we know we can take him at his word.
