Europe finally has a plan for to end the war in Ukraine and provide for European security. German chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz has found a way to eliminate the German debt brake and unleash hundreds of billions of euros in German money. European leaders have agreed to a €800bn “ReArm Europe” defence fund to increase military spending and jumpstart the defence industry. And British prime minister Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron have proposed a European force of some 30,000 soldiers to deploy to Ukraine after a ceasefire.
By European policymaking standards, this amounts to a revolution. Even by the tougher standard of Europe’s geopolitical needs, it is a good start. US president Donald Trump’s effective abandonment of Ukraine and European security seems to have finally focused European minds.
For the United States under Trump, Europe’s latest actions point in the right direction, but they miss the bottom line. The US will no longer to take responsibility for European security in any way
But Washington remains unimpressed. For the United States under Trump, these developments point in the right direction, but they miss the bottom line. The US will no longer to take responsibility for European security in any way—morally, fiscally or militarily. Europeans can’t just do more; they need to do it all.
A day late and a trillion short
The problem is that most of Europe’s efforts still seem intended to address the old burden-sharing debate. They offer increased European contributions in exchange for continued American commitment to European security.
Take the UK-French proposal to put some 30,000 European troops into Ukraine as some sort of peacekeeping or tripwire force. The headline sounds responsive to American demands. But when announcing the measure, Starmer noted it must have “strong US backing”.
In the usual manner of things, it is not clear what exactly what the prime minister expects from the US. But it’s probably that the US supports the mission with capabilities that Europeans don’t have so-called enablers such as intelligence and the ability to move military forces long distances. More importantly, it likely means a guarantee that the US will defend or evacuate the force in case it gets into trouble.
In essence, this UK-French plan amounts to a US security guarantee once removed: European forces guarantee Ukrainian security, but the US military guarantees the security of the European forces. There may even be some US government officials still left that remember that it was this type of commitment that forced the US to send ground troops to Bosnia in 1995. The UN had deployed a ground force, called UNPROFOR to Bosnia in 1992, in part because the US wanted to share the burden of the Balkan wars more broadly. But the UN wanted “strong US backing” to launch the mission, so the US agreed that it would evacuate UNPROFOR if that became necessary. When it did, the US recognised evacuating UNPROFOR was roughly the same mission as invading the country, so it intervened with massive forces. It turned out the US had guaranteed the security of the Bosnian government without realising it.
Trump probably can’t tell Bosnia from Lesotho. But he seems to intuitively understand the danger of open-ended contracts. When asked about US support for a European force, he noted, “Well, there is a backstop. First, you have European countries, because they’re right there, we’re very far away.” His defence secretary Pete Hegseth was more explicit, “any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission. And they should not be covered under Article 5…To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine.”
Others in Washington might also notice that European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen’s €800bn plan is an aspirational plan to “mobilise” money in the member states that she mostly does not control. In practice, therefore, the billions may be further away than they appear. As for Merz’s plan, he may well end up spending much of the freed-up funds on domestic priorities. In other words, these steps while real, are still not enough.
Grading on a curve
Europe has come a long way in six weeks. But it has much further to go. European security cannot be graded on a curve of its past shortcomings. European security efforts should not be assessed by the bureaucratic and political obstacles they have overcome, but rather by the degree to which they respond to Europe’s geopolitical needs.
On this scale, Europeans have not adequately responded to the end of US protection. They have finally provided a robust answer to the burden-sharing question that American presidents have been asking since the Eisenhower administration. But that is no longer the question. Under Trump, the question is now how will Europeans defend Europe without America? The proposed European force in Ukraine doesn’t purport to do that and the ReArm Europe fund and the German efforts are only a start. Until Europeans answer that question does, Washington will remain unimpressed.
The European Council on Foreign Relations does not take collective positions. ECFR publications only represent the views of their individual authors.