The American Century in Europe is finished.
Transatlantic ties will be profoundly affected by two geopolitical earthquakes that occurred on Wednesday.
A phone conversation between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin drew Putin out of hiding as the two men discussed ways to settle the conflict in Ukraine and even agreed to trade visits from the two presidents.
"Take ownership of conventional security on the continent," US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth admonished European partners during his visit to Brussels.This turning point exemplifies Trump’s “America First” philosophy and his penchant for viewing every partnership and issue through a financial lens. His independence from establishment advisors mired in Western foreign policy myths, whom he believes undermined his first term, is further shown by this.
Hegseth may have recommitted to NATO, but there is a fundamental shift.
The United States’ involvement in two global conflicts with their origins in Europe ensured the continent’s independence from the Soviet Union. While campaigning, Trump implied he would not support alliance members who had not spent enough on defense. In doing so, he brought back an age-old argument that Winston Churchill had made so persuasively in 1940 regarding the moment when “The New World, with all its power and might” will come “forward to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
“We have a little thing called an ocean in between,” Trump said on Wednesday, reviving a line of reasoning that previous presidents, fearful of foreign entanglements from the republic’s inception, had invoked.
Hegseth’s startling candor
The second Trump administration will undoubtedly impose fresh demands on America’s European partners, forcing governments that prioritize social expenditure over defense to make painful decisions. Last month, Europeans need to raise more money for their armies, according to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who spoke to the European Parliament. “If you’re not on board, enroll in Russian classes or pack your bags and head for New Zealand,” he warned.
Hegseth, however, continued to shock. He reiterated Trump’s demand that allies devote 5% of GDP to defense spending and stated that the United States will put its border security and increasing conflict with China ahead of Europe’s security concerns. “The United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency,” declared the new head of the Pentagon, donning a stars-and-stripes pocket square.
Contrast this hard new strategy with Trump’s dream of relocating Palestinians from Gaza so that the “Riviera of the Middle East” may be built. In light of new political facts, it’s a reasonable reaction. Gone is the Greatest Generation, the warriors and leaders of the Second World War who foresaw the perils of a European power vacuum. By the time they reach their mid-50s, most Americans have grown out of the Cold War and can remember the Soviet Union as an adversary. Furthermore, America’s greatest rival is in Asia, not Europe. The continent has still not taken up its own defense 80 years after the defeat of the Nazis, so it’s legitimate for Trump to ask.
American and European presidents who have come before them have neglected to update NATO for the modern day. Looking back, the transatlantic alliance was left vulnerable by the most nationalist and transactional American president since the nineteenth century.
Speaking on Sirius XM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently said that the United States should play the role of “back stop” rather than “front end” when it comes to protecting Europe. Additionally, he censured major European nations. It would need reductions to welfare programs, unemployment benefits, the ability to retire at 59, and all these other programs, according to those who oppose increasing spending on national defense, according to Rubio. That’s a decision they took. Are we really funding that?
Trump has shown his contempt for the old US foreign policy of multilateralism with his treatment of friends like Mexico and Canada and by demanding that Denmark relinquish Greenland. He never stops gushing about Putin and Xi Jinping, the presidents of China and Russia, for their intelligence and might. He clearly considers them to be the sole appropriate conversation partners for the stern leader of another superpower, the USA.
“Trump’s agenda isn’t about European security: it’s that he thinks the USA shouldn’t pay for European security,” stated Nicholas Dungan of CogitoPraxis, a strategy consultancy based in The Hague. Global big-power interactions are displacing the liberal international order’s purposefully institutionalized frameworks; this is not a new age of transatlantic ties.
The unpleasant US message over Ukraine that Europe was hoping to avoid
Over Ukraine, we will see the new US-Europe reality put to the test.
Following his conversation with Putin, Trump declared that talks to terminate the conflict in Ukraine will begin “immediately.” Putin has been isolated by the West following his unlawful invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign democracy, three years ago.
An unsettling indicator for the administration in Kyiv was the exclusion of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The war policies and actions of the Biden administration revolved around Zelensky. Even if Trump did phone Zelensky later on Wednesday, speculation is rife that he will craft a deal that benefits Russia. When a reporter asked Trump about Ukraine’s potential role in peace talks, he seemed to pause and consider the question before responding, “I said that was not a good war to go into,” seemingly agreeing with Putin’s narrative that the conflict was caused by a neighboring authoritarian state brutally invading a nation.
An unsettling comparison from the past
Trump has promised a summit with Putin in Saudi Arabia and a call between the US and Russia; this might be an indication that he is removing Zelensky and Europe from the arrangement.
“Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations.” In a joint statement, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, the EU, the Commission, the UK, and Ukraine all issued a warning. “A just and lasting peace in Ukraine is a necessary condition for a strong transatlantic security,” they cautioned Trump, who appears to desire a peace settlement regardless of the cost.
What European sources have been telling me off the record, in back channels, behind the scenes for the past two years is exactly what the US position on Ukraine as expressed today should not surprise anyone in Europe: Similar to the division between West Germany and East Germany, Dungan said that Ukraine should be governed by the European Union rather than NATO.
A harsh historical irony would be evoked by such a remedy. Putin, who bewailed the Soviet Union’s disintegration from his perch as a KGB officer in Dresden, may, with the assistance of the United States, be about to establish a new East Germany in Europe in the twenty-first century.