How Trump's first month shattered European security assumptions

The rupture did not arrive with a single announcement. It came in a cascade of moments across two weeks in February 2025: a NATO meeting in Brussels where the US defence secretary told allies to abandon hope of a Ukrainian victory; a phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin announced on social media while European ministers were still in the room; a speech in Munich where the American vice president declared that Europe's real enemy was not Moscow but its own voters; and a series of emergency summits in Paris and London that exposed both the desperation and the divisions of a continent suddenly forced to contemplate life without the American security guarantee it had taken for granted since 1945.

Brussels: the first blow

The pattern was set on 12 February at NATO headquarters. Pete Hegseth, newly installed as US defence secretary, addressed his counterparts with a bluntness that stunned the room. Ukraine should give up hope of retaking all territory seized by Russia, he said. A return to pre-2014 borders was "an illusionary goal". NATO membership for Kyiv was off the table for the foreseeable future. Two seats to his left, the UK's John Healey had little time to process what he was hearing before an aide rushed over with a phone displaying Trump's Truth Social post: the president had just spoken to Putin and agreed to "work together, very closely", with negotiations starting immediately.

Behind closed doors, Hegseth attempted reassurance. "Don't worry," he told the Europeans, according to a senior official present. "We know who the goodies are. We know who the baddies are." The line did little to calm nerves. Kaja Kallas, the EU's top diplomat, warned reporters that ruling out options before negotiations even began "plays to Russia's court". That night, Russia launched 140 drones at Ukraine, shelled Kherson, and carried out ten aerial strikes on Zaporizhzhia. The message was clear: the Kremlin heard Hegseth's words as a green light.

Munich: Vance broadens the attack

Three days later, the Munich Security Conference became the stage for an even broader assault. JD Vance, making his international debut, used a 19-minute speech to chastise European governments for ignoring their voters, restricting religious freedom, and failing to stop illegal migration. "The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia," he declared. "It's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within." The audience of diplomats, generals and policy experts sat in stunned silence. "What the fuck was that?" a former House Democratic staffer muttered. "I had my mouth open in a room full of people with their mouth open." A German official watching the speech described it as "all so insane and worrying."

Vance's broadside went far beyond Ukraine. It signalled that the new administration viewed the European project itself, its values, its politics, its demographic choices, as the problem. The intervention in domestic affairs of sovereign allies was unprecedented in modern transatlantic history. It also served a strategic purpose: by framing Europe as the author of its own crisis, Washington could justify disengagement from the continent's security.

Paris: improvisation and exclusion

The shock in Munich galvanised European leaders into frantic improvisation. On 15 February, Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski announced from the conference main stage that Emmanuel Macron had called an emergency leaders' meeting in Paris for 17 February. His French counterpart Jean-Noël Barrot grinned nervously, the plan was not yet public. When the summit convened two days later, the format was revealing: leaders from France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands and Denmark, plus senior EU officials, but no representatives from the Baltic states or other eastern members. The EU's obsession with consensus had been discarded for efficiency, but the efficiency came at the cost of alienating the countries most exposed to Russian aggression.

Latvia's president, Edgars Rinkēvičs, offered a terse verdict from afar: "Never stop panicking." Starmer raised the stakes hours before the meeting, declaring he was "ready and willing" to put British troops on the ground in Ukraine to enforce a peace deal, rallying behind Macron's idea for a European peacekeeping force. A second Paris summit followed on 19 February. Yet the exclusion of eastern voices undermined the show of unity. The Baltic states, Poland and others have spent years warning that Russia's ambitions extend beyond Ukraine. Their absence from the room where European security was being redesigned was noticed in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius.

Washington: two visits, one outcome

While Paris scrambled, Macron and Starmer each prepared separate trips to Washington, hoping to steer Trump back toward something resembling the traditional alliance. Macron arrived first, staying at Blair House, the presidential guesthouse on Pennsylvania Avenue. His advisers spoke of rekindling a "special relationship". The optics were warm, handshakes, pleasantries, even the famous manly hand-holding. But substance broke through when Trump inaccurately described European aid to Ukraine as merely loans. Macron leaned over to interrupt and contradict him. In private, the French president lobbied hard for Trump to receive Zelenskyy.

Starmer's visit followed a week later. He had prepared meticulously, announcing on 25 February what he called the "biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War", funded by slashing the international aid budget, a calculation clearly designed to appeal to Trump's transactional instincts. Defence secretary Healey called Hegseth immediately; the American called it "a great leadership step". Starmer kept the plan so tight that even his humanitarian aid minister, Anneliese Dodds, was told only the day before. She resigned in protest but delayed the announcement until after the Washington meeting.

On the flight over, Starmer told travelling journalists he would press Trump for a security "backstop", aerial intelligence and air cover as a last resort, for European peacekeepers in postwar Ukraine. Around an hour later, Trump pulled the rug away. "I'm not going to make security guarantees beyond very much," he told his Cabinet. "We're going to have Europe do that." Downing Street officials watched the comments appear on their phones mid-Atlantic. Starmer, behind a grey curtain at the front of the plane, did not come back to face the press. "A lot of them [US officials] wake up in the morning just waiting for what [Trump] is going to say today," a senior UK official said later.

The diplomatic freeze

The damage extended beyond leader-level theatrics. A delegation of eight conservative MEPs, led by François-Xavier Bellamy, arrived in Washington for meetings with think tanks, policymakers and defence contacts. Within 24 hours, doors began closing. A Republican House member cancelled with a day's notice. "The general message was, démerdez-vous," Bellamy said, just deal with it. "The line was, 'you can't meet with Europeans. You can meet with French, British or Italian [politicians], but not ones with the EU label.'" The EU as an institution was being deliberately sidelined in favour of bilateral channels with selected capitals.

At the United Nations, the US sided with Moscow in a high-profile vote condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a symbolic break with the western consensus that had held since 2022. In Kyiv, EU leaders and NATO members staged a show of solidarity with Zelenskyy, but the gesture could not mask the reality: the Americans were negotiating over Ukrainian heads, using Kremlin talking points. Trump called Zelenskyy a "dictator without elections" and claimed Ukraine "should have never started it", a direct echo of Russian propaganda.

Berlin's historic shift

Perhaps the most consequential moment came not in Washington or Paris but in Berlin. Friedrich Merz, days after winning Germany's snap election, travelled to Paris for an intimate dinner with Macron. Minutes after his victory, the conservative leader had vowed "independence" from Trump's America, a startling rupture from Germany's postwar Atlanticism. "Never thought [I] would have to say" those words, he admitted. For decades, German foreign policy had treated the US relationship as the anchor of its security and the EU's credibility. Merz's declaration signalled that the calculation had fundamentally changed.

The shift is not merely rhetorical. Germany's constitutional debt brake, long treated as sacrosanct, is now being debated in the context of defence spending. The Bundestag will need to approve a massive rearmament programme. Poland, already spending over 4% of GDP on defence, is pushing neighbours to match its effort. The Baltic states are demanding permanent NATO troop deployments. France and the UK are sketching out a European nuclear deterrent conversation that would have been unthinkable a year ago. The architecture of European security is being rewritten in real time, without a blueprint and without the Americans in the room.