We cannot dither and depend on the US any longer. Our security is ours to defend

 How should Europe work with Trump? European leaders have slipped into a dangerous playbook on how to “manage” the volatile and unpredictable President. Stroke the ego, flatter the man, praise his leadership – and hopefully avoid vilification and an avalanche of tariffs. 

Reality check: it’s not working. The more we bow to Trump, the more we are taken for granted and the more he wields American power to divide us. Yet so normalised has our behaviour become, state visits to the Oval Office now resemble scenes from The Godfather. Leaders shuffling in, offering praise, taking a knee, desperately hoping any live press questions don’t send the President off-script. By indulging one man’s impulses, we’ve allowed our collective voice to shrink, our strategic clarity to fade, and Western resolve to erode. 

It’s time to end the subservience – tiptoeing around Trump not out of admiration but out of fear: fear he’ll walk away from NATO, fear of retaliation, fear of being blamed should the US disengage from Europe altogether. In this climate of hesitation, the transatlantic relationship has become dangerously one-sided. 

Last week’s release of Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) sadly confirms how pointless and indeed humiliating our collective kowtowing has been. The 33-page document reads like an isolationist’s manifesto, presenting a seismic ideological shift in global engagement. New priority: power, interest, and control. Economic nationalism. No global leadership for its own sake. Primacy of nations over international institutions. And a deliberate disengagement from Europe while seeking improved relations with Russia. 

This foreign policy upheaval, upending decades of American commitment to defending global order, comes at a time when the world has not been this dangerous since World War II. Yet it’s not entirely unexpected. Reflect on Trump’s approach to ending the war in Ukraine and it’s clear that the ‘Trump doctrine’, now formally published, has been driving Washington’s thinking since he came into office. 

He returned to the White House promising fresh resolve in bringing peace to Ukraine. Europe showed extraordinary patience, giving him space to wield American clout to end the war. What’s clear today, confirmed in the NSS, is how Washington and Europe differ in interpreting Moscow and its imperialist ambitions in Europe. Driven by his transactional, nationalist worldview, old alliances are questioned, commitments diluted, and statecraft replaced with deals. Ending the war in Ukraine is not about standing up to tyranny but about bringing fast peace to secure post-war resource deals with Russia. 

It’s now official: European security is not a priority. We can no longer remain blind to Trump’s increasingly pro-Moscow pattern of behaviour. From the very public belittling of President Zelensky in the Oval Office back in February to the regular pauses in delivery of American military kit and the insistence that Europe now foot the bill – not forgetting the optics of that Alaska summit, bringing Putin back in from the diplomatic cold even as Ukraine fights for survival. 

This all places in perspective just how amateurish and crass the US-Russia 28-point plan for peace turned out to be. Written without Ukrainian or European input, it read more like a Russian wish list than a credible attempt at peace: sweeping territorial concessions, a halved Ukrainian military, and a commitment never to join Nato – proposals unacceptable to Kyiv and to Europe alike. So why even promote the plan - unless it was part of a higher strategy to re-engage with Russia. 

Meanwhile, each month of delay has given Putin strategic space to evolve his faltering 2022 invasion into a sustained war machine. Slow Western decision-making (by Biden and Trump) has allowed the Kremlin to adapt, mobilise and escalate in ways that would have been impossible had we acted earlier. Russia now runs a full wartime economy, a 40 per cent surge in defence spending, round-the-clock weapons production, and sanction-busting supply lines from China, Iran and North Korea. It produces more ammunition each month than the US and Europe combined. It continues to seize territory, at enormous human cost, while we debate peace terms. 

And Ukraine is not the only alarm flashing red on the global dashboard. The world has changed more in five years than in the previous thirty. The next five will determine the direction of the international order for decades. 

Beyond Ukraine, Russia has escalated grey-zone attacks, including against the UK: cyber operations targeting institutions and parliamentarians; maritime probing near undersea cables and North Sea infrastructure; disinformation and political interference designed to weaken Britain’s resolve. Left unchecked, these will escalate further – likely culminating in a major deniable attack on critical UK infrastructure. 

America is stepping back from global leadership and aligning with Europe’s chief adversary. No longer can we outsource our security to Washington, leaving us vulnerable. In short, the world has entered a new era on security, and we have been dithering to Washington’s tune for too long. 

It is time to break from this flawed approach and re-write our own security strategy. It’s time to give Ukraine the full capability required to reclaim its territory. And to prevent an emboldened Russia from dragging Europe into a wider conflict. Anything less is abdication.