“While recognising the military interests of the Free World, we should consider very hard the narrower interests of the United States,” Kennedy told his National Security Council. No one in Europe can say they hadn’t been warned.
Trump’s threats during his first term in office to withdraw the US from Nato altogether, unless other member states took on a fairer share of the burden of European security, should have been enough of a hint to rebuild European military capability which had been hollowed out during decades of cost-saving cuts since the end of the Cold War.
Now events have sped up. Although the US administration has stated that it wants a lasting settlement between Russia and Ukraine, the breakneck speed at which Trump is moving has left the Europeans, including the UK, suffering from diplomatic whiplash.
Without the usual backchannels, European officials have been reliant on set-piece meetings, making the Munich Security Conference this weekend absolutely crucial to pinning down what the US is really saying.
America’s European military presence won’t last forever
On Friday, along came the more intellectual and considered Vice President JD Vance who told Foreign Secretary David Lammy in Munich the opposite. Ukraine would have a place at the table, Lammy reported from their conversation.
Amid the feast of meetings in Germany and the famine of daily diplomacy as officials struggle to get hold of their US counterparts, European capitals are hoping for enough time with US cover in Ukraine to build up their domestic war chests. That’s before they even contemplate how to pay for increased defence spending.
In the meantime, with the US unilaterally deciding to throw out Ukraine’s entry to Nato, any promises made in the next few months will be dependent on the goodwill of European allies and subject to their own domestic pressures.
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, he said he expects allies to increase defence spending to “north of 3 per cent” of GDP “rather sooner than later”. Good luck, as they say, with that.
An attack on all
PMQs was a disaster for Kemi Badenoch – Labour cannot believe its luck
Read MoreDitto France, churning through prime ministers as president Emmanuel Macron seeks to control his runaway budget deficit. But there could be more positive news for Ukraine from Germany’s upcoming elections. Conservative Friedrich Merz is on track to win and takes a hawkish view on European defence.
Volodymyr Zelensky will be pressing both European leaders and the US to act as guarantors if Russia reneges on any deal. But you can see a scenario where no one would want to risk provoking the Russian bear on their own and waiting for Nato to move as one body. Splitting the defence alliance apart would be a huge win for Moscow.
Capricious Trump
And what happens if the capricious Trump fails in his role as peacemaker, gets bored and washes his hands of the whole business before Europe can get its financial ducks in a row?
In fact, the deal-making has already begun. In Warsaw, Hegseth praised Poland as a “model ally” and said the Polish armed forces would be exempt from Trump’s recent freeze of the US State Department’s foreign military financing programme, which enables eligible partner nations to purchase American kit.
If on Valentine’s Day the usual maxim is that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, there is an alternative approach for the US: the way to Trump’s heart is through his wallet. He’s determined to get the Europeans to pay. One way or another.
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