Navigating the Vortex

European leaders are scrambling to respond to what looks like the end of reliable US protection of the continent. It is unclear what the “main European countries” (including the UK) might be able to agree beyond a hastily convened meeting in Paris on Monday February 17. But individual countries, including the UK and Germany, have come forward to put concrete offers on the table for Ukraine’s security, which could involve putting their troops on the ground to secure a ceasefire.

This unusual circling of the wagons was triggered by the 2025 Munich Security Conference, which ended on Sunday, February 16. It brought to a close a week of remarkable upheaval for Europe, leaving no doubt that two already obvious trends in the deteriorating transatlantic relationship have accelerated further.

What the world saw was unabashed US unilateralism when it comes to the war in Ukraine and unashamed American interference into the domestic political processes of European countries—most notably the upcoming German parliamentary elections on February 23, 2025.

None of that should have come as a surprise. But the full-on, full-force assault by President Trump’s envoys to Europe was still sobering—especially once all its implications are considered. What was, perhaps, more surprising was that European leaders pushed back and did so in an unusually public and unequivocal way.

US unilateralism over Ukraine is leaving Europe out in the cold.

Over the course of just a few days, two of the worst European fears were confirmed. First, the Trump administration is pushing ahead with its idea of a US-Russia deal to end the war in Ukraine, leaving Ukraine and the EU out of any negotiations and to their own devices when it comes to post-ceasefire security arrangements.

On February 12, 2025, Trump announced that he had spoken at length with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, and subsequently informed Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky of the conversation. The same day, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth, confirmed at a press conference after a meeting of Nato defence ministers in Brussels that direct negotiations between Russia and the US would begin immediately and not include any European or Ukrainian officials.

Hegseth also poured cold water on any hopes that there would be robust US security guarantees for Ukraine. He explicitly ruled out that US troops would serve as peacekeepers in Ukraine or that any future Russian attack on forces deployed by other Nato members would be considered an attack on the whole alliance and trigger a collective response as provided under article 5 of the Nato treaty.

For once, the European reaction was swift and, at least on paper, decisive. Right after Hegseth’s comments in Brussels, the Weimar+ group (Germany, France, Poland + Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, the European External Action Service and the European Commission) issued a joint statement reiterating their commitment to enhanced support in defence of Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

On February 14, the EU’s top officials—Antonio Costa and Ursula von der Leyen—met with Zelensky on the margins of the Munich Security Conference. They assured him of the Union’s “continued and stable support to Ukraine until a just, comprehensive and lasting peace is reached”.

The following day, Costa’s speech in Munich reiterated this commitment. Similar to earlier comments by Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte, Costa underlined Europe’s determination to “to act better, stronger and faster in building the Europe of defence”.

But these declarations of the EU’s determination to continue supporting Ukraine do not reflect consensus inside the Union on what to do and, importantly, how to do it. Weimar+ only includes a select number of EU member states, institutions, and the UK, underlining the continuing difficulties in achieving unanimity on critical security and defence issues.

European unity is fragile and under threat, including from the US.

Unsurprisingly, Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán issued a scathing condemnation of the Weimar+ statement as a “sad testament of bad Brusselian leadership”.

Orbán’s comments play right into many Europeans’ fears about another dark side of Trump’s agenda when it comes to transatlantic relations. As foreshadowed in the influential Project 2025 report by a coalition of conservative US thinktanks, the Trump administration is intent on weakening European unity. This will include preventing the UK from slipping “back into the orbit of the EU” and “developing new allies inside the EU—especially the Central European countries”.

Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, used his speech in Munich to claim that the real threat to European security was not coming from Russia or China, but rather “from within”. He went on to chide “EU commissars” and insinuated that Europe’s current leaders had more in common with the “tyrannical forces on this continent” who lost the cold war.

In Romania, where presidential elections were cancelled after evidence of massive Russian election interference came to light, opposition parties revelled in Vance’s comments that the move had been based on the “flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbours”. These inflammatory, and unfounded, allegations by the second-highest elected official in the US have further exacerbated political divisions in a key European and Nato ally right on the border with Ukraine and done little to assuage fears in European capitals about outright election interference—not just from Russia but also from the US.

Vance’s subsequent meeting with Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was widely criticised as yet another American attempt in the wake of Elon Musk’s support for the party to boost its chances at Germany’s upcoming parliamentary elections on February 23.

Strong pushback on that front came, among others, from both the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and his defence minister, Boris Pistorius. Referring Germany’s historical experience with Nazism, Scholz defended the need to hold the line against far-right political parties like the AfD. This so-called firewall, a consensus among Germany’s established political parties to exclude extreme right-wing parties from any coalition government, has drawn particular ire from Vance and Musk. Their efforts to white-wash the AfD and downplay the party’s ideological proximity to the Nazis are well-aligned with similar attempts by Putin in this direction.

Europe must find a role and place for itself in a new multipolar world or it will be crushed by Putin, Trump and Xi.

There have been many watershed moments and wake-up calls for Europe in the past. What is different now is that a new multipolar order is emerging, and Europe is not one of its poles. Equally importantly, given the determination of this US administration to upend the existing international order, Europe is not a part of any pole anymore either.

Simultaneously at stake are European unity and the transatlantic relationship, the two key pillars that have ensured European security, democracy and prosperity since the end of the second world war. Out of necessity, Europe will most likely have to adjust to a much-weakened transatlantic relationship. But the European project will not survive without unity.

This is a critical juncture for Europe where the continent needs to define its future place and role in the dysfunctional love triangle of Trump, Putin and Xi that will shape and dominate the new global order.

An earlier version of this analysis was published by The Conversation on February 17, 2025.

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