As Trump proves unreliable, Europe rushes to firm up defenses on its own
| Paris
French President Emmanuel Macron took to the airwaves on Wednesday night, telling the public that the moment had come for France to tighten its purse strings and make tough choices in order to bring peace to Ukraine.
“Your country needs you and your commitment,” said Mr. Macron over the dinner hour, as he called for a major European rearmament in the face of Russian threats. “Political decisions, military equipment, and budgets are one thing, but they will never replace the fortitude of a nation.”
Mr. Macron’s rallying cry comes as European leaders are scrambling to reinvigorate their suddenly tenuous Ukraine policy. After U.S. President Donald Trump sent the continent into a political tailspin this week, first publicly feuding with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy before announcing that the United States was suspending all aid to Ukraine.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onFor Europe to defend both itself and Ukraine, Europeans will need to agree on what sacrifices they will be willing to make and at whose expense. That’s not easy, even with Russia and now the United States viewed as security threats.
The episode was broadly interpreted as the U.S. abdicating its decadeslong role as guarantor of European security. Now, European leaders must not only ensure Ukraine’s future peace, but their own.
In order to do so, Europe needs money, and to get it will inevitably mean dipping into public reserves. The biggest challenge for European leaders now is to convince taxpayers that Ukraine’s future is their future, too – and that every individual will need to make sacrifices for the safety of the whole.
“Trump has basically handed Ukraine over [to Russia] on a plate,” says Douglas Webber, professor emeritus of political science at the INSEAD business school in Paris. “Europe has had to grow up very quickly.”
Different levels of urgency across Europe
On Thursday, European Union leaders met in an extraordinary summit in Brussels to discuss defense and Ukraine, including EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s ReArm Europe defense package. The plan, which calls on member states to increase their defense spending to 1.5% of GDP and provide €150 billion in loans, could free up €800 billion in aid to Ukraine.
The plan would allow countries to avoid being penalized for exceeding spending limits, something that the EU has been strict about in the past. And while Europeans will not be hit with specific taxes for defense costs, they will feel the pinch, says Jacob Kirkegaard, a political economist and a senior fellow at think tank Bruegel. “It’s not costless.”
Those in cash-strapped countries like Italy and Greece – who have Europe’s first- and second-highest deficits, respectively – could be the first to put their foot down. In a 2024 poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations, 63% of Italians and 55% of Greeks were opposed to increasing defense spending to Ukraine. Meanwhile, a large majority in Sweden and Poland – which boast some of the lowest public debt in Europe – supported it.
Those opinions are partly fueled by economic concerns, but they also have to do with geographic proximity. In a broad sense, Spanish and Italians feel less impacted by the war than Norwegians and Polish, who have Ukraine – and the threat of Russian violence – on their doorstep, says Dr. Kirkegaard. “It [ultimately] has to do with the adjacency to the beast.”
History also plays a role in European willingness to make sacrifices. Germany, which spent much of the 20th century either engaging in or avoiding combat with the Soviet Union, has balked at the idea of sending troops to Ukraine, even in a peacekeeping capacity.
That hesitancy is reflected across German society, where a large plurality (49%) say they would back a peacekeeping mission, according to a February Forsa poll for Stern magazine. Friedrich Merz, the chancellor-in-waiting, will need to walk a tightrope on Germany’s military engagement in Ukraine in order to build trust with the German public.
How much skin in the game?
The issue of putting boots on the ground is a particularly sensitive issue for the rest of Europe. Despite their physical proximity to Russia, Romania and Poland are starkly opposed to sending troops, even in a peacekeeping capacity. Thus far, only France and the United Kingdom (which is part of NATO, if not part of the EU) have publicly committed to developing a “coalition of the willing.”
A majority of French and British support that mission, and more Europeans could be led by a sense of pride to join the ranks, especially after U.S. Vice President JD Vance disparaged a potential peacekeeping force during a Fox News interview on Monday.
Still, how Europeans feel about a peacekeeping mission starkly differs from putting their troops into combat. Sixty-eight percent of French are opposed, even if just as many worry about the Ukraine war spreading to other parts of Europe.
The issue of nuclear protections – which Mr. Macron suggested could be expanded to other European countries – is another sticking point. Germany is uncomfortable with nuclear power in general, having shut down its last three nuclear energy plants in April 2023. In France, the far right has vehemently opposed sharing its nuclear deterrent. If this or other issues flare up, so too could the streets of France.
“For now, the French see the war in Ukraine as a faraway conflict,” says Vincent Tournier, an expert on political participation at Sciences Po Grenoble. “But what will happen if it takes a more concrete turn? The pacifist part of France could wake up and activate.”
The rest of Europe, however, doesn’t necessarily share France’s confrontational protest culture. Countries with multiparty coalition systems – like Spain and Germany – channel their disapproval in different ways, says Dr. Kirkegaard, through business or labor union discussions.
Danish intelligence has said that Russia could extend its attacks to other parts of Europe in the next five years if it senses political divisions or a weakened NATO. If that should happen, only time will tell if the U.S. – in the name of Mr. Trump or his successor – comes to Europe’s aid.
And there already is broad distrust of Mr. Trump across Europe. A YouGov poll published Thursday found that a large majority of the public in the five largest Western European countries – Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain – all consider Mr. Trump to be a threat to peace and security in Europe.
In the meantime, there is a sense across the bloc that Ukraine is Europe’s unique and sole responsibility – even if support for Ukraine varies by country – and that the future of Europe depends on it.
