European leaders have dealt with President Trump’s return to office by trying to keep him cooperating on Ukraine while pushing to ramp up their own defense spending so they are less reliant on an increasingly fickle America.
But Friday’s meeting in the Oval Office, in which Mr. Trump berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, underscored for European leaders that they might need to come up with more concrete plans — and fast.
Following the heated exchange, a visibly annoyed Mr. Trump canceled a news conference with the Ukrainian leader and posted on social media that Mr. Zelensky was “not ready for peace” so long as he has American backing.
His anger — and his threat that the United States could stop supporting Ukraine if it did not accept any U.S.-brokered peace deal — was just the latest sign that Mr. Trump was pivoting American foreign policy away from traditional allies in Europe and toward Russia.
“The scene at the White House yesterday took my breath away,” Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, told D.P.A., a German news agency, on Saturday. “I would never have believed that we would ever have to defend Ukraine from the United States.”
The stark shift in American strategy has left the continent’s leaders reeling. Many worry that if the war ends with a weak deal for Ukraine, it would embolden Russia, making it a greater threat to the rest of Europe. And the change in tone makes achieving greater self-reliance more urgent than ever, even if the European leaders face the same daunting challenges as before.
It would take years to build the weapons systems and capabilities that Europe would need to be truly independent militarily. And supporting Ukraine while building homegrown defenses could take the type of rapid action and united political will that the European Union often struggles to achieve.
“Everything relies on Europe today: The question is, how do they step up?” said Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, acting president of the German Marshall Fund. “They have no alternative.”
European leaders had already been debating how they could help guarantee security in Ukraine if a peace deal were struck, what terms they would find acceptable, and what they might give Ukraine in their next aid package.
In fact, top officials are poised to meet this week to discuss defense, first in London on Sunday at a gathering organized by Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, then in Brussels on Thursday at a special summit of the European Council, which brings together E.U. leaders.
Representatives from the bloc’s 27 member countries met on Friday afternoon to come up with a draft of ideas for the meeting in Brussels. The plan included calls to beef up E.U. defenses faster than previously expected, and to more clearly define possible security guarantees for Ukraine, according to an E.U. official briefed on the matter.
And that was before Friday’s exchange between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky.
The flare-up spurred an immediate outpouring of public support for Ukraine from many European officials.
“You will never be alone, dear President,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U.’s executive arm, wrote in Ukrainian on X on Friday night, in a joint post with other European leaders.
It also prompted calls for fast action, with some European diplomats and leaders hoping that even countries that have been reluctant to increase spending on defense and support for Ukraine will now get on board with a more ambitious approach.
“A powerful Europe, we need it more than ever,” President Emmanuel Macron of France posted on social media. “The surge is now.”
Kaja Kallas, the E.U.’s top diplomat, was even more emphatic.
“We will step up our support to Ukraine,” she wrote on social media on Friday night. “Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.”
Yet for all of the bracing pronouncements, speeding up Europe’s transition to greater autonomy on defense will be no easy task.
For starters, shouldering a greater part of the financial burden for aiding Ukraine is likely to be expensive. The United States alone has spent about $114 billion on military, financial and humanitarian aid for Ukraine over the past three years, according to one frequently used tracker, compared to Europe’s $132 billion.
Plus, when it comes to European defense more broadly, America provides critical weapons systems and other military equipment that would be near impossible to replace quickly.
“We still do need the U.S.,” said Jeromin Zettelmeyer, director of the Brussels-based research group Bruegel.
E.U. nations have been increasing their military spending in recent years — spending 30 percent more last year than in 2021. But some NATO countries are still short of the goal of members’ spending 2 percent or more of their gross domestic product on defense.
Part of the problem is that spending more on defense typically means spending less on other priorities, like health care and social services. And given economic challenges and budgetary limitations in Germany, France and smaller economies like Belgium, finding the political will to ramp up outlays has been a challenge.
Still, European leaders are trying to find ways to make bloc-wide deficit rules more flexible to enable more military investments.
When it comes to finding more money to support Ukraine, Europeans are not speaking with one voice.
European officials had already been discussing a future aid package for Ukraine, one that could total tens of billions of euros. By Friday night, countries that have been pushing for more ambitious sums were hoping that Mr. Trump’s tone during the Zelensky meeting would help to prod European laggards to open their pocketbooks, according to one diplomat familiar with discussions.
But Hungary is expected to oppose the new aid package for Ukraine, which could force the E.U. into a time-consuming effort of cobbling together contributions from member states, rather than passing a package at the level of the bloc, since the latter would require unanimity.
In a clear sign of the disunity, Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, stood apart from many other European leaders, thanking Mr. Trump for his exchange with Mr. Zelensky. He wrote on social media that the American leader “stood bravely for peace” even if “it was difficult for many to digest.”
European officials have also been considering whether, when and how to put European peacekeeping forces on the ground in Ukraine if a deal is reached to stop the war. Britain has expressed a willingness to send troops to Ukraine, as has France. Discussions on that are expected to continue this week.
But in light of Friday’s exchange, some say the time for slow-moving deliberation may be over. While officials had just begun to talk about what security guarantees for Ukraine might look like, they may need to begin to quickly think about how to implement them, said Ms. de Hoop Scheffer at the German Marshall Fund.
“This is a time for Europe to very, very seriously step up,” she said.
She added that the Oval Office blowup had underscored that European officials will need to put forward their best mediators to try to keep the United States on board, to the extent possible.
Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, is seen as one of the closest leaders to Mr. Trump in Europe. She said in a statement on Friday night that she would try to push for a meeting among all of the allies.
“It is necessary to have an immediate summit between the United States, European states and allies to talk frankly about how we intend to face today’s great challenges,” she said. “Starting with Ukraine.”
And earlier last week, both Mr. Starmer and Mr. Macron traveled to Washington to meet with Mr. Trump, gatherings that seemed to go considerably better than the meeting with Mr. Zelensky — even if they failed to achieve major goals like getting a U.S. security “backstop” for peacekeeping troops.
In fact, Mr. Starmer’s plans to debrief European leaders on his trip during the Sunday summit highlights one side effect of the shift in America’s tone: European Union countries and Britain are coming closer together as they draw up defense plans.
That puts Mr. Starmer in a position to play more of a leadership role in dealings with the United States, as Germany works to put together a new government and the French struggle with domestic political challenges.
But as Europe increasingly recognizes that the United States is “super unreliable,” as Mr. Zettelmeyer at Bruegel put it, the time for placating Mr. Trump and hoping for continuity in relations may be past.
“We’ve had several of these shocking moments — every time there’s a shocking moment, there’s a lot of hand wringing,” he said. “The really interesting question is: Is this time going to be different?”
Emma Bubola contributed reporting.
