Donald Trump has long told the world who he is. In 2022 he hailed Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as “genius” and later declared that he would “encourage” Russia to attack any Nato member that did not spend 2 per cent of GDP on defence. During the US presidential election campaign, he described “tariff” as “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” and vowed to upend the global trade order.
And yet some persisted in deluding themselves about his true intentions. “I simply cannot believe that Trump will ditch the Ukrainians,” wrote Boris Johnson in his fawning endorsement of Mr Trump ahead of the US election in 2024. “On the contrary, having worked out, as he surely has, that there is no deal to be done with Putin, I reckon there is a good chance that he will double down and finish what he started – by giving them what they need to win.”
It did not take long for the folly of such assumptions to become clear. Rather than giving Ukraine what it needs to win, Mr Trump is gifting Mr Putin the presidency of his dreams. It took little more than a month for the new administration to suspend all US military aid to Ukraine (with no notice given to European counterparts). The haste with which Mr Trump acted supports the theory that he and his graceless vice-president JD Vance consciously laid a trap for Volodymyr Zelensky during their Oval Office meeting on 28 February. It was one into which the Ukrainian leader helplessly fell.
The Trump administration’s disregard for an imperilled democracy and the postwar order is shocking but not surprising. Rather it is the product of a world-view in which, as Thucydides put it, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Under this doctrine, rival power blocs – the US, Russia, China – should be free to redraw borders with ease and disregard international law at will. To see Mr Trump’s America side with the likes of Russia, Belarus and North Korea on a United Nations resolution condemning Russian aggression and supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity was to glimpse this new order in action.
The New Statesman has long warned Europe to prepare for the chill winds of US isolationism. In a leader published on 14 February 2024, we wrote that “Europe should have no illusions about the darker future that awaits it” and that countries would need to spend closer to 3 per cent of GDP on defence than 2 per cent. So it has proved.
By announcing that the UK will raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent by 2027, Keir Starmer has shown that he grasps the nature of this new era. The Prime Minister has demonstrated decisive leadership at a time when it is needed most. Rather than condemning Mr Trump – as some have urged him to do – Mr Starmer is right to strive to act as “a bridge” between the US and Europe. By welcoming Mr Zelensky to London and summoning European leaders in his hour of need, the Prime Minister exhibited statecraft of a kind not seen since Gordon Brown’s leadership during the 2008 financial crisis.
But we must have no illusions. It was Mr Vance who offered a lesson in US indifference when he declared that a minerals agreement with Ukraine would provide “a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that has not fought a war in 30 or 40 years”. The vice-president later insisted that it was “absurdly dishonest” to suggest that he was referring to the UK or France – countries whose soldiers gave their lives in US-led wars. But the comment was revealing. Here was the unveiled face of Trumpism.
Is Europe ready for this new era? It was back in 2019 that the French president Emmanuel Macron described Nato as “brain-dead”, warning that member states could no longer rely on the US to come to their aid. Yet in the years since – modest increases in defence spending aside – lethargy and complacency have prevailed.
That may finally be changing. Friedrich Merz, Germany’s likely next chancellor and a lifelong Atlanticist, has declared that his “absolute priority” is to “achieve independence” from the US. For Europe, there is now no alternative. As Mr Trump has made abundantly clear, to remain dependent on the US is to sign one’s own death warrant.
[See also: Volodymr Zelensky’s war of wills]
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This article appears in the 05 Mar 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Fall Out