@vonderleyen : This afternoon, we had a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing. I updated President @ZelenskyyUa and leaders present on two key priorities - support for Ukraine and increasing European defence preparedness. We all know what is at stake and we know we do not have any more time to lose. Securing financial support will help ensure the survival of Ukraine, and it is a crucial act of European defence. In this new era, geoeconomics goes hand in hand with geopolitics. We know the biting impact our sanctions have on Russia’s war economy. Along with our allies, Europe has the means and the will to increase pressure on Russia to come to the negotiation table. Our Reparations Loan proposal is complex but at its core, it increases the cost of war for Russia. The proposal works on the cash balances produced by the immobilised Russian assets. These balances would be used for reparations. So the longer Putin wages his war, spills blood, takes lives, and destroys Ukrainian infrastructure - the higher the costs for Russia will be. We know that Europe’s defence is our responsibility. We continue to forge ahead with urgency – on implementing our readiness roadmap, on military mobility and our pan-European flagships. While we are still examining the SAFE plans received from Member States, Ukraine is included in 15 of the 19 submitted. This is not just about money - Ukraine is learning hard won lessons on the battlefield and we are learning with them. In integrating our defence industrial bases, we are building a strong deterrence - for today and tomorrow. As Ukraine engages in genuine diplomatic efforts for peace, Russia repeatedly deceives and stalls for time. Mocking diplomacy and increasing strikes while pretending to seek peace. Today, that fa莽ade remains firmly in place. But we will not fall for it, we know who is the aggressor and who is the victim in this war. Russia’s brutal war sought to divide us but it has achieved the opposite. Our ties are stronger than ever. We are not only bound by defence interests but by our common values. And this is how we will proceed. United, in supporting Ukraine and in defending Europe.
National Security Strategy of the United States of America / European Union
American officials have become used to thinking about European problems in terms of insufficient military spending and economic stagnation. There is truth to this, but Europe’s real problems are even deeper. Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP—down from 25 percent in 1990 to 14 percent today—partly owing to national and transnational regulations that undermine creativity and industriousness. But this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.
Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation. This lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons. As a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat. Managing European relations with Russia will require significant U.S. diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.
It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.
The Ukraine War has had the perverse effect of increasing Europe’s, especially Germany’s, external dependencies. Today, German chemical companies are building some of the world’s largest processing plants in China, using Russian gas that they cannot obtain at home. The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes. This is strategically important to the United States precisely because European states cannot reform themselves if they are trapped in political crisis. Yet Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States. Transatlantic trade remains one of the pillars of the global economy and of American prosperity. European sectors from manufacturing to technology to energy remain among the world’s most robust. Europe is home to cutting-edge scientific research and world-leading cultural institutions. Not only can we not afford to write Europe off—doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve.
American diplomacy should continue to stand up for genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history. America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism. Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory. We will need a strong Europe to help us successfully compete, and to work in concert with us to prevent any adversary from dominating Europe. America is, understandably, sentimentally attached to the European continent— and, of course, to Britain and Ireland. The character of these countries is also strategically important because we count upon creative, capable, confident, democratic allies to establish conditions of stability and security. We want to work with aligned countries that want to restore their former greatness.
Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European. As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter. Our broad policy for Europe should prioritize: • Reestablishing conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia; • Enabling Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense, without being dominated by any adversarial power; • Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations; • Opening European markets to U.S. goods and services and ensuring fair treatment of U.S. workers and businesses; • Building up the healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe through commercial ties, weapons sales, political collaboration, and cultural and educational exchanges; • Ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance; and • Encouraging Europe to take action to combat mercantilist overcapacity, technological theft, cyber espionage, and other hostile economic practices.
