Europe faces growing strategic loneliness in defending Ukraine's sovereignty and its own security against Russian aggression as US support proves unreliable. A summer of concessions included the EU accepting an unbalanced trade deal and pledging large US investments while European Nato members vowed higher defence spending to appease the US. European leaders joined the Ukrainian president at the White House to reject territorial concessions to Russia and secured a vague US pledge of support for a European-led reassurance force. Yet the US ruled out Nato membership for Kyiv, delayed tougher sanctions on Moscow, offered no guarantee of a European role in peace talks, and imposed a 10% mark-up on US weapons sales for Europe.
The sense of strategic loneliness in an increasingly brutal global power contest follows a summer of submission in which the EU accepted a manifestly unbalanced trade deal imposed by Donald Trump and pledged improbably large investments in the US while European Nato members promised to boost their defence spending to an aspirational 5% of gross domestic product all to appease Trump in hopes of keeping the US engaged in European security.
However, Trump once again ruled out Nato membership for Kyiv and dropped the demand that Russia accept an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine without securing any reciprocal concession from Putin, and he let another self-declared deadline for tougher sanctions against Moscow slip by without any action. Nor did he give any assurance that Europe would have a seat in any future peace negotiations.
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