Europe’s Nightmare Is Here: They Have to Fight Putin Without the US

When the US lined up alongside Russia and North Korea earlier this week to oppose a UN motion condemning Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, some European officials knew that the transatlantic relationship was in deep trouble. Then they watched in horror as Donald Trump gave Volodymyr Zelenskiy a public dressing down in the Oval Office and something broke.

In interviews with Bloomberg, more than half a dozen officials who’ve maintained their composure through wars and financial crises reacted with visceral anger. For them, the scene showed the trust and values that have bound Europe and the US together since the end of World War II are no longer shared.

“President Trump and his administration raised a more fundamental challenge to the transatlantic alliance than it has faced in many decades,” said Graham Allison, a professor of government at Harvard University, who studied with Henry Kissinger and served in both the Clinton and Reagan administrations. 

French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have all described this moment as a generational challenge for the continent. They’ll meet with Zelenskiy and other European leaders in London on Sunday to work out what their next move should be. 

The European Union is aiming to follow up with an emergency package of €20 billion ($21 billion) in military aid for Ukraine at an emergency summit in Brussels on Thursday. But that’s just a down payment on the hundreds of billions they will need to mobilize for defense in the coming months if they are to take over responsibility for their own security from the US for the first time in 80 years. 

After years of hand-wringing and debates over the EU’s problems and weaknesses, doing that will require forging a political will that has little precedent in the history of the bloc.

“While I would like to imagine that Europe will step up to fill the gap, and do so in time, I’d bet 3-1 against it,” Allison said, adding that he expects Ukraine will accept a bitter peace settlement by the end of the summer.

The transatlantic relationship, and the US’s broader network of alliances, was arguably unique in the post-war world because common values and trust allowed nations to share secrets and rely on each other at critical moments. The foundations of that relationship were laid down during World War II and deepened when eastern European nations were welcomed into NATO and the EU after the fall of the iron curtain. 

It’s that history that makes the current crisis so painful. 

Many European diplomats grew up during the Cold War — some spent their childhoods in the Soviet bloc or under occupation. When they read of the atrocities perpetrated on Ukraine — the massacres in places like Bucha, thousands of children deported to Russia, the aerial attacks on civilians — they see echoes of their own families’ stories.

For all the cynicism in parts of the West and the Global South, the US really was a symbol of freedom for eastern Europeans and they aspired to the principles running through American politics. 

To be sure, the US has at times persuaded allies to do things they didn’t want to do. But Trump’s Republicans are the party of Ronald Reagan, the president who told the Soviet Union to “tear down” the Berlin Wall in the name of freedom. Now they are lining up with the Russian aggressors’ attempts to deprive the Ukrainians of their lives and liberty. 

What Bloomberg Economics Says…

“For the world, the Trump-Zelenskiy spat is another reminder of the mercurial US foreign policy that could turn from building a coalition around supporting a country ‘as long as it takes’ to rushing it into the settlement it had limited part in shaping.”

—Alex Isakov, Russia and CEE economist. For full research, click here  

After Friday’s quarrel in the Oval Office, EU leaders lined up to voice their support for Zelenskiy and make clear whose side they were on. Trump is putting the Europeans into a position where they have to choose between the US and Ukraine, several officials said, and most, if not all, will pick Ukraine. For Europe, it is existential.

“A new era of barbarity has begun,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Saturday in a statement to reporters in Berlin. “An era of barbarity in which the rules-based international order and the rule of law must defend themselves more than ever before against the power of the mighty.”

@ZelenskyyUa, dear Ukrainian friends, you are not alone.

— Donald Tusk (@donaldtusk)

February 28, 2025

Going it alone would pose an unprecedented challenge to European nations, but it will also likely be damaging to US prosperity and security too.

The trading relationship between the US and the EU is the most important in the world, reaching €1.6 trillion in 2023, according to the European Commission, while EU and US firms have €5.3 trillion worth of investment in each other’s markets. The European Commission is already preparing lists of goods to target if Trump follows through with his threat to impose tariffs on EU exports. 

Beyond that, the alliance between Europe and the US — and by extension much of America’s global power — lasted so long because it was based on trust and the fact allies chose to buy into it. Allies were in a pact that was essentially voluntary and Trump has broken the trust that underpinned it.

Now the EU is working to strengthen ties with like-minded nations such as Canada that have also been targeted by Trump and will seek new trade relations with countries in Asia and Latin America. The bloc could also be less willing to work with the US on China and elsewhere in the far east. Many of America’s other allies will be wondering if they could be next. 

The crisis with the US has also drawn the UK closer to the EU again, after years of bitterness over Brexit. On Tuesday, the British prime minister said the shifting geopolitical landscape means a “new alliance” between the UK and Europe will be necessary. 

Starmer has been in close contact with other European leaders to coordinate their approach on Trump and Ukraine, as well as strengthening the continent’s broader security architecture.

To do that, EU nations should be increasing defense budgets to at least 3% of GDP as soon as next year, a senior European government official told Bloomberg. In extreme scenarios that may have to go as high as 7%, they added.

In the short term, there are holes in Europe’s capabilities that are plugged by the US. And even if they can muster the funds and the manufacturing capacity to supply Ukraine, US capacity in areas such as intelligence, space and battlefield communications would be difficult if not impossible to replicate if Trump shuts down all support.

That’s why some leaders like Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni have been calling for a summit with the US to try to salvage the relationship and experts have been arguing that European officials should do everything they can over the next four years to work with like-minded counterparts to keep the transatlantic alliance alive.

But while it will continue to engage with Trump, Europe’s focus is shifting to what it can do without the US.

With assistance from Ania Nussbaum, Alex Wickham, Iain Rogers and Zoe Schneeweiss.