What The Hell America!

AS IF DONALD TRUMP’S FIRST-TERM THREATS or the brutal performances by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance on their recent trips to Brussels and Munich weren’t enough, last Friday’s Oval Office ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ought to put the fear of God—or at least American abandonment—in Europe.

Yet, if Monday’s crash quasi-summit in London is any indication, it’s pretty clear that European leaders remain at sixes and sevens when it comes to formulating a coherent response. Beyond the quite understandable shock and dismay at the Trump administration’s enthusiasm for blowing up the foundations of American strategy and European security, the continent will have to collectively cast off past habits and rapidly adapt to new realities.

To be sure, for Kyiv and its supporters, the tenor of the London meetings was a balm to soothe Ukrainian wounds. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was an anti-Trump, welcoming Zelensky to 10 Downing Street on Saturday by noting cheering crowds and assuring the Ukrainian leader that he had “full backing across the United Kingdom.” Starmer reaffirmed that a loan of roughly $2.5 billion, first agreed in October, would be financed through seized Russian assets, and an additional transfer of $1.6 billion in air defense missiles. On Sunday, Zelensky also had a photo-op audience with King Charles at his Sandringham residence.

Nineteen national leaders and senior European and Canadian diplomats joined the London discussions; this was, in effect, NATO without Washington. Again, Starmer captured the sense of the occasion. The West is “at a crossroads in history today,” he intoned, “This is not a moment for more talk. It’s time to act.”

However, most of the action revolved around the discussion of a “peace plan”—really, just a cease-fire—thrown together by Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, who called it a month-long “truce in the air, on the seas, and energy infrastructures” and addressing ground combat only in a “second phase.” This seems to have been intended to be an alternative to plans coming from the White House, but one meant to hold whatever tenuous ties to the Trump administration can be salvaged. Starmer and his continental colleagues want to believe that the United States is “not an unreliable ally.”

There are, of course, very good reasons for Britain and Europe to try to smooth the waters—even after the contretemps in the White House, Zelensky is doing his best to stroke Trump’s vanity while avoiding the kind of cease-fire terms proposed in London. As the threat of lost American support is terrifying to Kyiv, a larger withdrawal of American military support to the continent would cripple, for many years, NATO and European defense in general: Britain’s nuclear deterrent is American-made Trident missiles carried by British submarines. Alliance command structures are built on an American backbone. European “strategic autonomy” remains a distant dream.

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YET WITH BOLD LEADERSHIP and clear thinking, the Europeans can provide Ukraine with the support it needs to prevent much further Russian conquest while America-proofing itself in the longer run.

The first step in Europe’s revival should be to turn its traditional pecking order on its head—this is a moment where Western Europe should be following Eastern Europe. Macron’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, notoriously argued back in 2003 that Eastern Europeans “lost an opportunity to keep their mouths shut.” Two decades later, Macron admitted that “we missed opportunities to listen.” Macron and Germany’s chancellor-to-be Friedrich Merz need, in particular, to listen to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who came to London urging reinforcements of Europe’s eastern front. Departing for the London summit, Tusk laid down a correct marker: “It will be a real test of the intentions and capabilities of each European state to have more European troops present in Finland, the Baltic states, and Poland on the border with Russia and Belarus.”

Even if Western Europe is now listening, it’s not clear that they’ve got the message: The Balts were not invited to London but were instead briefed afterwards by Starmer on the results. Beyond any bad national habits there is the question of what role NATO and the European Union can play in forging a more independent European security and defense capability. Both these institutions are creatures of American power and, unfortunately, include as members Putin-loving leaders such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Slovakia’s Robert Fico. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission—the EU’s “executive”—has been stalwart in her support for Ukraine, and her announcement Tuesday of a plan to free up $843 billion in defense financing across the EU is welcome.

Meanwhile, Western Europe’s longstanding hostility to Turkey and its strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is now strategically problematic. Erdoğan is, to be sure, a true autocrat, but Ankara’s security interests in the Black Sea and the southeastern European littoral can make it an important pillar of any anti-Russian coalition.

Any such coalition must indeed pay greater regard to Southeastern Europe. The Bulgarians—who have long hosted NATO “air policing” operations—also were not invited to London. Romania was represented, but only by Ilie Bolojan, who serves as an “interim president” until Bucharest reruns the elections invalidated by Russian meddling. Because meddling in Southeastern Europe—in Transnistria and the rest of Moldova—is Putin’s second-favorite sport, Europe cannot afford to ignore the region.

THERE IS AT LEAST ONE MORE fundamental problem: the obsessive focus on “peace plans.” While preferable to the shameful proposals oozing from the Trump White House, the Europeans in London were still too content to reward Russian aggression and to assume Putin can be trusted to keep any bargain longer than it would take to rebuild his military for further assaults on Europe’s democracies. Europe needs to stymie Putin’s designs and decisively defeat Russian imperialism. Ukraine is offering the West a historic geopolitical opportunity.

European success on the Ukrainian battlefield is also the best path to restoring the transatlantic alliance. To atone for the shame Trump and his lieutenants have brought to America, we must regain a sense of humility. Better that the crow is served by our allies than our adversaries.

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