Turning Europe into an armed camp

Speculation that the United States might withdraw all support for Ukraine, triggered by the remarks yesterday of President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., casts a long shadow over the future trajectory of the war. American assistance since February 2022 has been the backbone of Ukraine’s military endurance: not because Europe has been indifferent, but because the scale, speed and technological sophistication of American contributions have been unrivalled. The suggestion that these might be removed is therefore not merely a political tremor on the banks of the Potomac but a strategic earthquake whose aftershocks would reverberate from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

The United States has provided Ukraine with the bulk of her long-range fires; the essential stocks of artillery ammunition that have kept the front stable; high-quality air-defence systems that have preserved cities such as Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa from destruction; real-time intelligence; and financial guarantees for the functioning of the Ukrainian state. She has also been the convenor of the Ramstein format, which has served as the principal coordinating body for Ukraine’s partners. American withdrawal would therefore mean more than the loss of hardware. It would represent the dislocation of the entire system by which Ukraine’s supporters have organised themselves.

Absent American resourcing, Ukraine’s position on the battlefield would become progressively more precarious. Even with Western support at present levels, her defenders have struggled to maintain sufficient artillery density, and she has relied heavily upon American-funded 155 mm production contracts to replenish her stockpiles. It seems unlikely that existing contracts would be terminated; that would generate massive losses for the US defence industry and colossal political ruptures in Washington, DC, where a bipartisan majority of Congress strongly support Ukraine. Nevertheless the US administration's arbitrary messaging has caused the Europeans to suffer a massive loss of confidence in US support.

Without immediate and fundamental reaction in Europe to such a measure, the Ukrainian state budget, already strained by mobilisation costs and war-damaged infrastructure, would come under intolerable pressure. Most critically, the rate of Russian strikes upon Ukrainian cities would rise significantly were Kyiv’s air defences to diminish. Europe has contributed Patriot systems and their equivalents; but the bulk of interceptor missiles arrives from the United States, and European factories cannot immediately compensate. Even if this is unlikely, Europe now has to face the prospect of planning for American disengagement from military supplies to Ukraine at some point in the middle future.

The prospect of a strategic vacuum created by American retreat raises a fundamental question: is Europe capable of filling that void? The answer must be approached with nuance, for Europe is neither the industrial giant that America represents nor as politically cohesive as she likes to pretend. Nevertheless the situation is more favourable than it was in early 2022.

Since the start of the full-scale war, Europe has begun the painful process of rearming herself. European defence budgets have grown substantially. France is expanding production of CAESAR howitzers and Aster interceptor missiles; Germany is enlarging manufacturing lines for IRIS-T systems and ammunition; Poland is pursuing a sweeping rearmament programme on a scale unseen since the Cold War; Czech and Slovak plants have revived dormant lines for Soviet-calibre shells. The European Union has also undertaken joint procurement for the first time in decades, which is an embryonic step towards the continent’s long-delayed defence integration. Political differences may be overcome by sheer necessity: if Europe is to stand alone against a Russian aggressor, with the Baltic States, Poland, Russia and Moldova in immediate danger if Ukraine falls, then she must find the political will to act as one. Although the United Kingdom has withdrawn from the European Union, her military and political relations with the Union are being forced to become ever closer by common continental perception of the Russian threat.

The difficulty lies not in political will alone but in industrial pacing. Even if Europe wished to replace the approximately seventy billion dollars’ worth of American annual military and financial aid, she could not do so immediately. Defence industries, once allowed to decline, do not expand merely by ministerial decree. Skilled labour must be recruited, tooling re-established, machinery delivered, testing and certification undertaken, and supply chains secured. In the most pressing of circumstances, this takes years. Moreover no European state, even Germany, has the fiscal capacity to become Ukraine’s sole patron on the American scale. Collective effort is therefore essential, Even though collective effort in Europe is notoriously fragile, all member states are ultimately prone to the will of the Union's most powerful members in times of international crisis. They all rely upon NATO and the European Union to defend themselves from the Russians threat, and for all the rhetoric that includes Hungary and Slovakia, who have no greater a desire to be absorbed by a newly resurgent Russia than any of the other former Soviet satellite states in central and eastern Europe.

There exists a plausible path by which Europe could provide Ukraine with enough support to prevent collapse, even if she could not wholly replace the American guarantee. It involves leveraging Europe's massive access to international markets to re-arm within a time scale tolerable in the context of a grinding Russian war of attrition in which Russian advances are agonisingly slow and which come at enormous human cost over several years.

First, Europe can assume responsibility for Ukraine’s macro-financial stability. The European Union, as recently shown by its slow movements towards more comprehensive measures using frozen Russian assets, has the legal and institutional mechanisms to guarantee state functioning in neighbouring countries. A long-term financial facility, modelled upon the assistance programmes used for Greece or Portugal, could sustain Ukraine’s budget over several years.

Secondly, Europe could adopt a division of labour in military resourcing. Air defence, in the short term, is likely to be the most acute vulnerability. Several European states already operate Patriot, Aster, NASAMS and IRIS-T systems. A coordinated transfer of interceptors, combined with accelerated joint procurement and emergency manufacturing licences, could preserve key Ukrainian cities from Russian bombardment. For artillery ammunition, European output is expected to rise substantially by late 2026; emergency contracts, paid jointly, could bring this increase forward.

Thirdly, Europe could intensify her diplomacy with Asian partners to procure interim armaments supplies. South Korea, for example, possesses vast ammunition reserves and an expanding defence industry. Japan, although constitutionally cautious, has shown willingness to revise her export policies for dual-use technologies. A European-Asian partnership of this sort would diversify Ukraine’s military supply beyond the North Atlantic community.

Fourthly, Europe must address the question of security guarantees for Ukraine. American withdrawal would sharpen Kyiv’s interest in formalising European defence commitments. While NATO membership may be delayed by American dissent, European members of NATO and the European Union could craft a multinational security treaty binding themselves to continue resourcing Ukraine’s defence until she regains territorial integrity. Such an instrument might fall short of Article 5 of the Washington Treaty creating NATO, yet would provide political durability in the face of shifting transatlantic winds. In effect, Europe would create its own, second, NATO Treaty that sidelines the United States.

One must also consider the broader political consequences. American withdrawal would not embolden Europe; it would humiliate her. Such humiliation has historically been the most effective catalyst for European strategic awakening. A continent that finds herself alone in the face of Russian expansionism may finally recognise that she must cease treating defence as a discretionary expenditure. The process would doubtless be painful and disorganised, but it might produce the renaissance in European security policy that the last decade has failed to deliver.

For Ukraine the transition would be harsh but not hopeless. She has already demonstrated an extraordinary ability to innovate militarily with meagre resources, particularly in the fields of drone warfare, electronic attack, and asymmetric maritime operations in the Black Sea. A Ukrainian Armed Forces increasingly reliant upon domestic ingenuity and European resourcing might become leaner, more technologically agile, and less beholden to the rhythms of American politics.

The prospect of the United States abandoning Ukraine would represent a strategic rupture of the first order. It would return the USA to the isolationism of a kind not seen since the inter-war period in the twentieth century. No serious observer should dismiss the dangers it poses. Yet the consequences would not be uniform. In the short term, Ukraine would face immediate military and financial strain. In the medium term, Europe would be forced into uncomfortable self-reliance, each country compelled to fortify itself into an armed camp. In the long term, the crisis might even accelerate the emergence of a fully integrated European defence architecture capable of protecting the continent irrespective of transatlantic turbulence.

Should Washington turn away, the burden of defending the European order would fall upon Europe herself. Whether she shoulders it with courage and foresight, or stumbles under its weight, may well determine the fate of Ukraine and the stability of the continent for a generation. The good news is that Europe has time. The warning signals have come from Washington, DC; Russian advances in Ukraine are painfully slow; it would take decades at current rates for Russia to occupy Ukraine; whereas it will take Europe only a few years to rearm itself to the extent seen just before World War One. If this sounds alarming, it is nevertheless necessary; Russian imperialism is a monster that must be stopped and it has been stopped in the mud of eastern Ukraine. Europe not just must, but will, do everything necessary to prevent it from progressing further, because it is in Europe's existential interests to do so.