The Donald Trump administration’s shift in approach to the Russia-Ukraine war devastated many in the US liberal establishment. In Europe, it has provoked near-hysterical responses.
Openly defying Trump’s policy line, European leaders rushed to reiterate their support for Ukraine, promise all assistance and outline grandiose plans to beef up Europe’s defence capabilities.
The US change of direction should not have surprised world leaders. Since mid-2024, most analysts have recognised that the war was going badly for Ukraine and draining the West’s resources. Trump himself made no secret of wanting to end the war, blaming President Joe Biden for letting it happen and President Volodymyr Zelenskys for exploiting him.
Europe’s announcement to immediately support Ukraine militarily and economically needs a reality check. Taking the US security umbrella for granted, Europe has, for decades, under-invested in defence. The fragmentation of their defence industries has hampered military assistance to Ukraine, as French President Emmanuel Macron said: guns of different calibres, missiles that did not match and a lack of interoperability.
Budgetary outlays do not automatically translate into industrial capacity. The pace of implementation of Europe’s “Readiness 2030” to transform it into a military-industrial powerhouse will depend on countries’ commitment to subjugate their defence policies to the goal of an integrated European capability.
Therefore, talk of Europe substituting the US in support of Ukraine in the immediate term seems far-fetched.
The Western narrative sees Russian President Vladimir Putin as a cynical destroyer of the world order. The narrative ignores the US-Russia dialogue that Biden initiated with Putin in 2021. Biden said he was looking for a predictable relationship, enabling cooperation to resolve pressing global issues of convergent interests. The subtext was that the US wanted to focus its foreign policy energies beyond Europe on its principal strategic challenge, China. Putin welcomed this geopolitical rebalancing if it also addressed Russia’s concerns.
Biden described Putin as a sober interlocutor who rationally pursued his country’s national interests. He felt that Russia was being “encircled” by the US and its allies, even as China’s rising power “squeezed” it. A Cold War with the US would thwart Putin’s ambition of reviving Russia’s economy and status as a great power.
Biden concluded that self-interest should nudge Russia towards a modus vivendi with the US.
An intensive US-Russia dialogue followed, and they acknowledged progress in discussions on cybersecurity, Iran, Afghanistan, and “strategic stability.” They shared drafts of Russia-NATO and Russia-US agreements on mutual security.
On Ukraine’s “core issue,” the US reportedly agreed to let the implementation of the 2014-15 Minsk Accords move forward, supporting the Franco-German role in it.
Clearly, some forces in the US and Europe derailed this rapprochement. In November 2021, a US-Ukraine “Charter of Strategic Partnership” was concluded, reaffirming the US commitment to Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic ambitions (NATO) and negating the substance of the US-Russia understandings. A build-up of weapons on the Ukrainian side stoked Russian fears of an imminent Ukrainian attack in the Donbas and led to Putin’s invasion in February 2022.
Since the early 2000s, western powers have encouraged Ukraine to aspire for a role inconsistent with its geographical, political and economic realities. In 2008, the Bush administration nudged NATO to recognise Ukraine’s aspirations to be a member in the face of strong French and German opposition and a warning from Putin that it would be a red line since Crimea was an important strategic outpost housing a naval fleet, which guaranteed Russian access to the Mediterranean. Putin had added that if Ukraine moved closer to NATO, Russia would take the largely Russian-speaking Crimean peninsula under its control. Nevertheless, the US was openly involved in the change of the Ukrainian government in 2014, installing a new leadership and even placing US officials in various positions, including at the Cabinet level. The immediate annexation or accession of Crimea was a foregone conclusion.
Another little-mentioned dimension of Western intervention in Ukraine is significant. A nationalist movement which developed in the inter-war years was focussed on Ukraine for Ukrainians, aiming to cleanse Ukrainian territories from all minorities. Then, it targeted Polish populations in Western Galicia to ensure that Poland would not claim the territory in a post-war dispensation. Succeeding generations of these groups returned to Ukraine after its independence and secured influence, especially in western Ukraine. They raised para-military forces, which now targeted ethnic Russians. NGOs in Europe and the US have documented the brutality of their attacks. Nevertheless, several Western countries armed and trained these groups to further their strategic objectives vis-a-vis Russia. Ultra-nationalists openly threatened to assassinate Zelenskyy if he tried to implement the Minsk Accords.
This background provides context to Trump’s assertions that Biden could have stopped the war or that Ukraine started it. It also illustrates this war is not about Russia and Ukraine as much as between Russia and NATO, which has sought to inflict a comprehensive strategic defeat on Russia.
Trump sees the war as hampering larger US global interests. The Arctic is fast opening up to new commercial opportunities, exploitable natural resources, and geopolitical contestations, and China is inserting itself into these. In West Asia, the US has, over the years, yielded opportunities for Russia and China to create partnerships with US allies and adversaries, which could potentially threaten the US dollar and energy dominance. The intense Russia-China engagement that the Ukraine war has encouraged complicates US efforts to deal with the greater strategic rival. Given these priorities, Trump could be inclined to cut losses in Ukraine and move ahead, particularly as it is a problem his predecessors created.
The US is unlikely to dismantle NATO or allow it to be dismantled, which could lead to a decoupling of Europe from the US. A more likely objective, as the Conservatives’ Project 2025 suggests, is to transform NATO so that European allies field a conventional deterrent against Russia while the US provides the nuclear deterrent. “Readiness 2030” may be nudged towards that goal.
Changing a policy course cemented over decades is a long journey. However, Trump is signalling a recognition that the post-Cold War order needs different templates from the post-war order.
P S Raghavan | Distinguished Fellow, Vivekananda International Foundation, and a former diplomat
(Views are personal)