Donald Trump’s Ukraine Policy Places the Future of Europe in Peril

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To say that the return of United States President Donald Trump to the White House has put the future of the transatlantic alliance into question is a severe understatement. In their first few weeks, the Trump administration made it abundantly clear that the former status quo of the postwar order would not be tolerated. These early actions risk permanently damaging the U.S.’s relationships with its allies, while also increasing their susceptibility to future Russian aggression.

This reality became evident in one of the administration’s first interactions with world leaders. On February 12, 2025, U.S. Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth gave a speech in front of the U.S,’s European allies, who are a part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance guaranteeing collective defense. The primary focus of Hegeth’s message was to express that the Trump administration believes they face much greater dangers from China and from domestic concerns, so they no longer see ensuring Europe’s security as a priority. Hegseth thus called for NATO countries to increase their defense spending and to supply the vast majority of aid to Ukraine.

This increasingly adversarial relationship was on display once again a mere two days later, when Vice President JD Vance gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference, excoriating the U.S.’s European allies for domestic issues he sees within their countries. His criticisms included misleading claims about European countries’ handling of free speech and the migrant crisis. Vance also broke precedent by declining a meeting with then-German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in exchange for a meeting with and tacit endorsement of the far-right Alternative for Germany party.

Saudi Arabia has played a key mediating role in Trump’s bid to end the war in Ukraine quickly, with the U.S. meeting Russian delegates in Riyadh on February 18, and Ukrainian delegates in Jeddah on March 11. The original meeting with Russia ignited concerns among the U.S.’s European allies that the U.S. could force Ukraine to agree to a peace deal that places Russia in an advantageous position for a potential future invasion, stressing the necessity of Ukraine’s involvement in any decisions about its future.

To force Kyiv to begin negotiations, Trump temporarily paused aid and intelligence to Ukraine. Even the temporary pause in aid had devastating consequences for Ukraine, including significant losses in the Russian region of Kursk, which Russia managed to recapture, taking away a key bargaining chip for Ukraine.

The harshest criticism toward the U.S.’s European allies has been reserved for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who Trump falsely claimed is a dictator. Trump also made misleading claims about Zelenskyy stalling or outright preventing elections from taking place, despite Ukraine’s constitution preventing elections from being held under martial law. In a push to force Ukraine to hold elections and seemingly undermine Zelenskyy’s legitimacy, Trump allies have also held meetings with members of Zelenskyy’s Ukrainian opposition parties.

Other actions taken by the administration that signal a drastic shift in U.S. foreign policy toward detente with Russia include siding with Russia and North Korea in a United Nations vote condemning Russia’s invasion, withdrawing from groups designed to investigate and hold Russian leaders accountable for war crimes in Ukraine, and ceasing the tracking of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia.

The strained relationship between the Trump administration and Ukraine came to a head during a White House meeting in the Oval Office on February 28. The purported intention of the meeting was for Trump and Zelenskyy to sign a deal for rare earth minerals in exchange for the U.S.’s continued support for Ukraine. However, the meeting quickly devolved into an unprecedented display of antagonism where Trump and Vance accused Zelenskyy of not being grateful enough for U.S. military aid and claimed the war would have been lost in weeks without U.S. support.  

European countries have raised concerns the Trump administration could sabotage the European contributions to Ukraine’s war effort by limiting the use of F-35 aircraft purchased from the U.S., either through a rumored “kill switch,” or by withholding software updates, ammunition, and spare parts if the administration were to disagree with European defense measures taken against Russia.

These actions are a significant departure from the nearly eighty years following World War II when the U.S. played a major role in defending its allies and interests on the continent. This is evident in the administration’s stated position that Ukraine maintaining the borders it had prior to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its 2022 full-scale invasion are “unrealistic,” and that Ukraine should not be allowed to join NATO.  

While Trump has attempted to bring the war to an end on his terms, Europe has been working to ensure their security in a potential future devoid of U.S. leadership on the continent. The United Kingdom and France have discussed spearheading a deployment of peacekeeping troops to enforce the postwar borders. On March 2, European leaders met with Zelenskyy in London to affirm their continued support. The same month, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced the “ReArm Europe” initiative, which could secure up to 800 billion Euros to bolster the European Union’s defense spending and raise additional aid for Ukraine.

Countries on NATO’s eastern flank have gone even further, with Poland announcing a drastic increase in their army size, their withdrawal from an anti-personnel landmine treaty alongside the Baltic States, and discussions about hosting French nuclear weapons on Polish soil, ensuring a nuclear deterrent independent of the U.S.

A generous interpretation of Trump’s actions that assumes no malintent is that the administration views China as a much more significant threat, and thus they are shifting their resources to counter them in the Pacific. However, this does not explain the incredibly hostile manner in which both Trump and Vance have acted towards the U.S.’s allies in Europe, their insistence on refusing to criticize Russia, and their willingness to form economic deals with Russia after the ink on a ceasefire deal has dried. A refusal to punish Russia for their unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine will not permanently end the war, but only delay a continuation of it.

When dealing with a country that has undertaken as brutal and deadly of an invasion as Russia has, both the moral clarity of who bears responsibility for the invasion, as well as the strategic clarity of the capacity in which the U.S.’s NATO allies can rely on it, is required. Both of these, however, are severely lacking in the current administration. To protect itself, Europe must ensure it possesses sufficient conventional and unconventional warfare deterrence capabilities independent of the U.S.
The beginning of the second Trump Presidency leaves Europe at a crossroads. Not since the end of the Cold War has Russia posed more of a threat to other European states, including a potential direct challenge to the NATO alliance in the coming years. At the same time, not since the interwar years has a U.S. administration seemed so disinterested in the welfare of Europe. Peace will not come through rapprochement; appeasement in the face of an enemy bent on your allies’ destruction only begets further aggression. The NATO alliance’s responsibility is to preserve Europe’s post-World War II peace by convincing Russia an invasion of any NATO member guarantees a war it cannot win.