https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/25/opinion/europe-nato-ukraine-trump-vance/
How Europe can go it alone
European countries are unprepared for being abandoned by the United States. But they do have options for ensuring their security.
By Stephen Kinzer – Boston Globe - February 25, 2025
How do you react when your longtime partner dumps you? Stunned European leaders are suddenly facing that question. Their countries and the United States have long been locked in intimate embrace. Suddenly the United States has announced that the affair is over. Europe is on its own. It faces a highly uncertain future for which it is unprepared.
Since the establishment of NATO in 1949, European countries have had little incentive to build up their own armies or plan for their continent’s security. They left that to Washington. Now they are scrambling for ideas. The era of Atlanticism, when Europe looked across the ocean for its security, has abruptly ended.
Despite a series of wake-up calls in past years, European countries did not anticipate this. They violated a cardinal rule of geopolitics: Always prepare for worst-case scenarios. For 75 years the United States, through NATO, lulled them into a comfortable sense of safety. Now it has cast them out to fend for themselves.
This sudden crisis was set off in Brussels, where a decade ago NATO built a mammoth headquarters that cost more than a billion dollars. The building itself was seen as a symbol that NATO would last forever. It was shaken to its foundations this month when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced there that the United States would begin negotiating directly with Russia to end the Ukraine war.
Hegseth said the United States would no longer pursue “illusory goals” in Ukraine. He declared that Ukraine would not join NATO and should abandon hope of recovering territories that Russia has annexed. European leaders protested that he was accepting conditions laid down by President Vladimir Putin of Russia. He insisted that he was only accepting “the hard power realities on the ground.” That shattered the Western consensus on Ukraine, which was that the war there should continue for “as long as it takes” to defeat Russia.
Then Hegseth took direct aim at the Old Continent. He said that “new strategic realities” mean the United States “can no longer be focused on the security of Europe.” He even suggested that the United States might close some of the 80 military bases it maintains there.
This speech, along with one by Vice President JD Vance and a series of astonishing comments from President Trump suggesting that he is not concerned with the security of either Ukraine or Europe, shattered a marriage that Europeans had considered eternal.
European countries joined the United States in sending billions of dollars in weaponry to Ukraine. That might have earned them a seat at the table when American and Russian negotiators meet to decide Ukraine’s fate. Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, laughed off that idea. He said Europe’s failure to prevent the war shows that it “couldn’t participate effectively in the peace process.”
In this new world, Europe can defend itself and its interests only by acting boldly. Boldness, however, is not part of its toolkit. Europe is flabby and out of shape after three generations of sleepwalking. Now its security blanket is gone. What should it do?
The boldest step imaginable would be for European countries to quit NATO and replace it with an army of their own.
But without the strict American schoolmaster to keep them in line, who would be in command? It’s difficult to imagine France putting its troops under a German general, or vice versa. It’s just as unlikely that Russia’s battle-hardened military would be intimidated by regiments from those countries, much less if they’re from other NATO countries like Albania, Portugal, or North Macedonia.
Without American backing, it’s hard to see how Europe’s armies, as they are now constituted, could deter a future Russian attack on Ukraine or defend against it. That leaves Europe the option of making its own deal with Russia. Anti-Russia passion is so high in Europe, however, that such a deal is difficult to imagine. President Emmanuel Macron of France has called Russia “an existential threat to Europe.” Many other European leaders agree.
This could change with the rise of populist, right-wing, or anti-establishment political parties in Europe. Hungary and Slovakia are already flirting with Russia. France could join them if Marine Le Pen wins the 2027 presidential election. So could other countries where politics has become volatile in recent years.
Building a European army and strengthening Ukraine’s ability to defend itself is a promising short-term strategy. That, however, would address only the immediate Russia-Ukraine crisis, not the root causes of the war. The main dispute is over Ukraine’s status in Europe. If Ukraine and the rest of Europe accept that Ukraine will be a genuinely neutral state, that might guarantee its safety more than any European army could.
The United States has made clear that henceforth it will defend only itself, not its former partners. Europe should do the same. Once it recovers from its shock, it should do what wise rejected lovers do. Its message to the United States should be: We can thrive without you, find new partners, and maybe even surprise you with our resilience.
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.