Is Trump deserting Europe?

The Donald Trump administration has told Europe it is on its own in the conflict with Russia.

While the previous Joe Biden administration took the lead in supporting Ukraine in the war with Russia and bolster the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), the Trump administration has indicated it is more interested in cutting a deal with Russia to end the war in Russia with little regard to its implications on Ukraine or Europe.

At the meeting of Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG) in Brussels, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that Europe should take the lead in supporting Ukraine and in post-war peacekeeping efforts. He further ruled out the Nato membership of Ukraine and said US troops would not be part of any peacekeeping force in Ukraine. He indicated that the United States may not even commit to security guarantees — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly said that a ceasefire without US security guarantees is meaningless .

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“The united states does not believe that Nato membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. If these troops are deployed peacekeepers to Ukraine as any point, they should be delayed as a non-Nato mission and should not be covered under Article 5. There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact. To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine,” said Hegseth.

The Article 5 of Nato’s charter contains the collective defence provision which is the foundation of the alliance. It says that an attack on one nation will mean an attack on all nations. Hegseth essentially told Europe that if European troops enforcing the ceasefire with Russia are attacked by Russia, the United States would not support them and Europeans would be on their own.

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Just hours later, Trump held a call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin , whom he has praised over the years and has long had a friendly relationship with. He said after the call that the two leaders decided to immediately start negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Notably, Trump announced the starting of negotiations without involving Ukraine, essentially keeping the country out of the loop in decisions about its future.

Is Trump forcing Ukraine’s surrender to Russia?

For months, Trump's allies have floated plans to end the conflict that would essentially amount to Ukraine's surrender to Russia. Now there are indications that such plans are turning into policy.

Broadly, these plans include freezing battlefield as they exist at the time of negotiations, taking membership of Nato and even European Union (EU) off the table, and creation of buffer zones or even autonomous zones in eastern Ukraine. These terms are favourable to Russia as it has an upper hand in the war at the moment. Without Nato membership and no US assurance of boots on the ground, Russia will have be free to invade again in the future.

Hegseth indicated that these are no longer proposals but policy under Trump administration.

In addition to ruling out Nato membership, Hegseth said that the return to pre-2014 border is not realistic for Ukraine. In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea region. While he did not explicitly say the Trump administration also favoured freezing current battlefield lines, the inference was not hard.

“We must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering. A durable peace for Ukraine must include robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again,” said Hegseth.

In short, Trump has conveyed to Europe via Hegseth that Europe’s problems are Europe’s problems, not the United States. Considering the friendly ties between Trump and Russia, that is not hard to understand.

A US delegation comprising Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet Zelenskyy in Munich on Friday to discuss the end of the war. The meeting would come days after Trump demanded access to Ukrainian natural resources in lieu of continued assistance . Zelenskyy has been open to the proposal, saying previously that it’s better for US and Western companies to access Ukraine’s natural resources instead of Russia controlling them. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was in Kyiv to discuss a potential deal on Wednesday.

US withdrawal from Europe

In the meeting of UDCG, Hegseth indicated that the United States wants to withdraw from Europe to concentrate on China. However, the way Trump has served China victories, by saving TikTok and slapping merely 10 per cent tariffs compared to steep tariffs on other countries, one is not sure if that is really the intention.

Hegseth said that “Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and non-lethal aid to Ukraine”. While he said that the United States remains committed to Nato, he also repeated Trump’s rhetoric that European nations to spend more on defence. He said European nations should boost defence spending to 5 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP). However, even the United States does not spend that much on defence.

Even as Trump has berated European allies of not spending enough of defence, the fact is that most of them are spending more than the desired 2 per cent of GDP on defence .