The Trump administration’s decision to suspend military aid and intelligence support for Kyiv on March 4 is having consequences that reach far beyond Russia’s war against Ukraine.
While aid has since been restored, the sudden termination underscored not just the way that the Trump administration’s transactional thinking is hurting US interests, but the speed and depth of the split within NATO.
The White House’s cutoff was an unprecedented move against a state regarded as a partner before January, one whose sovereignty and territorial integrity successive US administrations have pledged to support since 2014.
The decision to use aid as a coercive instrument has implications that go well beyond this single instance, particularly given the multiple signals that Washington is more interested in a US-Russia alignment than it is in Ukraine or in its European allies.
One obvious implication is that if the Trump administration is willing to do this to Ukraine once, it can certainly do so again — this was, after all, the second time a Trump administration has cut off military aid in order to pressure Zelenskyy.
That may happen if Kyiv refuses to sign up to the conditional ceasefire plan agreed between Putin and Trump, a plan which would benefit Russia by halting successful Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure without limiting Russia’s ability to terrorize Ukrainian cities (as it did on March 18, 19 and 20 following the Trump-Putin call). It also seems likely that aid would be cut if Ukraine failed to agree to a more permanent arrangement the US and Russia have decided on — for example, if it refused to recognize some of its territory as Russian or to accept its own neutral status.
All of which means that everything has changed. Ukraine now has very strong incentives to move as far and as fast as possible towards other security partners. Kyiv cannot rely on Washington for as long as the current president or any like-minded successor is in office; nor can it bet its long-term security on the possibility that this administration is an exception. For now, Ukraine needs US assistance but has to start planning for its future security without it.
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What’s true for Ukraine is also true for its allies in European NATO. The recent actions of the Trump administration, including not just the suspension of aid to Ukraine but the threats to Canada and Denmark’s territorial integrity, as well as the signals about disinterest in and contempt for NATO, are forcing Europe to do the previously unthinkable: plan for a future without the US as an ally — and perhaps even a nightmare future in which the US is a threat.
The discussions about a “coalition of the willing” to act as peacekeepers, or peace enforcers, in Ukraine is one sign of this. Even though the idea is currently understood to rely on the idea of a US backstop, it’s visibly the product of European planning and coordination, where Washington is a problem to address rather than a partner. Beyond assistance to Ukraine, a more fundamental disengagement from the security alliance with the US is now acknowledged as a possibility, however unwelcome, in governments, think tanks, and inter-state forums around the continent.
This is extremely bad news for the US, even if the White House doesn’t see it that way. The importance of decades of US support for its European allies is obvious to everyone; what is apparently less obvious to the Trump administration is the contribution the NATO alliance has made to the US’s own global power. The Trump administration may be betting on Europe’s unwillingness to detach itself, but the costs of a divorce from NATO allies would be significant.
One cost already starting to be felt is the effect on the credibility of the US as the world’s major arms exporter. Both the White House’s wider realignment of the US and the specific decision to target Ukraine’s ability to fight have implications for arms manufacturers.
Questions are now being asked in Europe — the US arms industry’s number one customer — about the reliability of US weapons. Several states have indicated that they are rethinking the purchase of F-35 fighters. The European Commission position is now that the EU should move towards collective purchases and, crucially, should “buy more European.”
Its views echo those of the French government, which points to US behavior towards Ukraine as evidence of the need for European autonomy and for major investment in the continent’s arms industry. This may be a predictable argument from the government of the world’s second-largest arms exporter, but it is one that has increasing traction, as the sharp increase in European defense company share prices indicates. It also underlines the extent to which the Trump administration is either complacent about or oblivious to the damage its actions are inflicting on its economy and influence.
The US decision to suspend aid to Ukraine doesn’t just matter because of the effects on Ukraine, appalling though they were, but because it reinforces the rapidly emerging view that the US is an unreliable security partner and encourages even reluctant states to start to think of a world without it.
The White House doesn’t currently appear to recognize the economic and security costs of this misstep, but it will not be able to avoid facing them in the longer term. The failure to grasp this leaves both the US and its allies vulnerable, and their adversaries emboldened.
Dr Ruth Deyermondis Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Post-Soviet Security in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London; she previously worked in the UK Treasury. Her research focuses on Russian foreign and security policy in relation to Europe, the US, and the states of the former Soviet Union, and in US foreign policy. Her current research focuses on post-Cold War US policy towards Russia. She has been a frequent contributor on the issue of the current war in Ukraine to UK and international media.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
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Europe's Edge
CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America.
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