Of all the shocks to have hit Europe over the past three months, none is more devastating than the realisation that the continent may no longer be able to count on a US security guarantee. Even if Donald Trump’s disdain for Europe had been telegraphed well in advance, few could have imagined a world in which a US president would publicly humiliate the head of state of a European ally in the Oval Office, cut off intelligence sharing in the middle of a war, or cook up a one-sided peace deal with Russia over the heads of Kyiv and its European allies.
What has made the shock worse is the brutal revelation of Europe’s inability to defend its own interests. Even as European leaders plead with Trump that a peace without robust security guarantees for Ukraine is no peace at all, their position is fatally weakened by the fact that they are in no position to provide those security guarantees themselves. When JD Vance and Pete Hegseth accused Europeans of being pathetic freeloaders in a leaked chat, the barb was all the more hurtful because it was partly true. Britain and France have struggled even to put together a “coalition of the willing” that can provide a bare-bones peacekeeping force, let alone make up for the loss of critical US air defence and battlefield intelligence should America withdraw entirely.
