Michael Birnbaum

MUNICH: When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, the United States helped whip Europe into a staunchly unified response. Now US leaders may be splitting Europe into pieces as President Donald Trump seeks to end the war, European leaders and policymakers say.

Vice President JD Vance and other top administration officials made their European debut last week, slashing their way through a continent of allies as they embraced far-right leaders, demanded access to mineral wealth and offered sympathy to the views of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

By the end of the week, European leaders found themselves potentially cut out of peace talks with Russia, facing down a trade war with Washington and scrambling to answer U.S. requests about how many troops they can marshal to Ukraine to guarantee a truce negotiated without their input.

Europeans already had four years of a Trump presidency. But many policymakers say that this time feels different, with four head-snapping weeks of Trump already recasting the attitudes of leaders who had vowed to make the best of his new term in office.

“The view was a little bit more optimistic” just four weeks ago as Trump entered office, Finnish President Alexander Stubb told reporters Saturday.

“Of course, the developments that we’ve seen in the past few days give us a little bit more pause for pessimism. But as I’ve always said, pessimism is usually inaction. Optimism is action, and realism is a solution,” he continued. “So let’s be realistic and try to look at a good pathway forward.”

Many Europeans are looking at the situation “with nervousness, frustration and even alarm,” said Jeffrey Rathke, the president of the American-German Institute at Johns Hopkins University and a former U.S. diplomat.

European foreign ministers who were in Munich this weekend for an annual gathering of the transatlantic security elite sat for an impromptu breakfast on Sunday to discuss what to do. French President Emmanuel Macron invited some of Europe’s leaders to Paris on Monday to discuss European security and Ukraine.

Advocates of Washington’s generations-long partnership with European democracies say that Trump’s team has quickly become a force for chaos. The United States helped rebuild Europe after World War II and fostered the economic cooperation of the European Union to try to put an end to nationalist clashes on the continent. Critics say Trump is trying to pull Europe apart, emboldening the Kremlin and raising the risk of borders being redrawn again by force.

“We had a century of American leadership where we’ve been able to be seen as a force toward stability. And that is not just vanishing, but it’s actually moving in the opposite direction,” said Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey), who worked for the State Department before going into politics and spent the weekend talking to European policymakers in Munich.

“We are becoming a source of instability and a source of concern, even among our own allies,” he said. “What’s the value of the American handshake? And right now here in Munich, it doesn’t have value. People don’t think they can count on it, even if they get an agreement.”

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‘Whiplash’

Europeans have been shocked by the speed with which Trump and his lieutenants have taken aim at pillars of their continent’s security and moved to cut a deal with Russia. Many NATO allies left a meeting of defence ministers last week convinced that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth planned to pull tens of thousands of troops from Europe in the coming years, three officials said, though they cautioned the effort still appears nascent.

Trump also spoke for nearly 90 minutes on Wednesday to Putin without consulting with Ukraine or Europeans beforehand, then emerged from the conversation appearing to embrace the Kremlin’s viewpoint that NATO expansion justified Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Until now, it has been a tenet of U.S. policy that European countries have the right to seek their own alliances free from Russian military pushback.

Some on Trump’s team dismiss the idea that he is trying to sow divisions inside Europe. Tough, frank talk between friends is the best way to spark European defence spending and rebuild a partnership, they say.

“You look at triage as a medic, what’s the first thing you do? Stop the bleeding, then you treat for shock. And what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to stop the bleeding,” said Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.

“You cannot restrict this conflict intellectually to just Europe,” he said. “This is a global fight. And if you don’t think it’s a global fight, you’re wrong.”

But Europeans say that Trump’s policies are unravelling efforts to cooperate against common foes. Even good-faith attempts to build ties to his administration have been undercut by his shifting decisions, some of them said, noting that they were told to talk to Kellogg about Ukraine and Russia when he was appointed the envoy and have invested months in the relationship.

Trump last week appeared to cut Kellogg out of the key dialogue with Russia, announcing that his Mideast envoy and personal friend, Steve Witkoff, would handle talks with the Kremlin instead. Kellogg won’t be in Riyadh this week when the Trump administration sits down with Russian counterparts for the highest-level dialogue since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“We need to work together against dictators and not fight among each other about democracy,” Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans said. “And we should project unity and strength.”

One former U.S. official in Munich summed up attitudes succinctly: “Whiplash,” the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

‘The old days are over’

Many policymakers were especially taken aback by Vance’s Friday speech in Munich, where he blasted “fire walls” that Germany’s centrist parties have built against including the anti-immigrant, nationalist Alternative for Germany party in coalitions. Some of the party’s leaders have embraced Nazi-era slogans and declared that new generations should be freed from apologizing for the sins of their grandparents. Vance also met party leader Alice Weidel, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to do so.

Vance was trying “to pick a fight with us, and we don’t want to a pick a fight with our friends,” European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Friday after the speech.

Some leaders noted that Vance delivered the speech a day after laying a wreath for the victims of the Dachau concentration camp - a physical embodiment of what can happen when nationalism steers toward extremes.

The threat is not just theoretical, they said: Russia has designs on full control of Ukraine and potentially biting into other neighbors too.

“I’m not saying that we are at war, but we cannot claim that we are in peacetime anymore, and a hybrid car is still a car, right? Hybrid war,” said Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who has already clashed with Trump over his demands to take over Greenland.

“For me, I mean, there is a big risk that something that will look nice on the paper will give Russia the possibility to mobilize, to rearm and to continue, maybe in Ukraine or somewhere else,” she said.

Ukraine’s leader also noted the new attitude from Trump, pushing Europe to unite in the face of the challenge and build the strongest possible relationship with Washington.

“A few days ago, President Trump told me about his conversation with Putin. Not once did he mention that America needs Europe at the table,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday. “That says a lot. The old days are over when America supported Europe just because it always had.”

Elements of the common U.S. and European effort to help Ukraine have fallen victim to Trump’s targeting of the United States Agency for International Development and freeze on foreign aid. Key parts of the challenging work to keep Ukraine’s lights on were paid by USAID, freezing the production of key replacement parts for the power grid and generation, one Ukrainian energy official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security topic.

With no clarity about when or if U.S. funding might be restored, Ukrainians likely will shiver in the dark next winter for more hours every day than if USAID were paying the contracts it signed, the official said.

“If there’s not any kind of underlying trust and alliance, and everything is [a] jump ball because it’s a negotiating tactic,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), “will people then rightfully feel everything with America is now transactional, rather than based upon the normal rule of shared values and shared history, shared defence against authoritarians in the past?”

Ellen Francis contributed to this report.