MUNICH — Many critical issues were left uncertain — including the fate of Ukraine — at the end of Europe’s first encounter with an angry and impatient Trump administration. But one thing was clear: An epochal breach appears to be opening in the Western alliance.
After three years of war that forged a new unity within NATO, the Trump administration has made clear it is planning to focus its attention elsewhere: in Asia, Latin America, the Arctic and anywhere President Donald Trump believes the United States can obtain critical mineral rights.
European officials who emerged from a meeting with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said they now expect that tens of thousands of U.S. troops will be pulled out of Europe — the only question is how many, and how fast.
And they fear that in one-on-one negotiations with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Trump is on his way to agreeing to terms that could ultimately put Moscow in a position to own a fifth of Ukraine and to prepare to take the rest in a few years’ time. Putin’s ultimate goal, they believe, is to break up the NATO alliance.
Those fears spilled out on the stage of the Munich Security Conference on Saturday morning, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared that “Ukraine will never accept deals made behind our backs.” He then called optimistically for the creation of an “army of Europe,” one that includes his now battle-hardened Ukrainian forces. He was advocating, in essence, a military alternative to NATO, a force that would make its own decisions without the influence — or the military control — of the United States.
Zelenskyy predicted that Putin would soon seek to manipulate Trump, speculating that the Russian leader would invite the new American president to the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. “Putin will try to get the U.S. president standing on Red Square on May 9 this year,” he told a jammed hall of European diplomats and defense and intelligence officials, “not as a respected leader but as a prop in his own performance.”
Behind closed doors, Zelenskyy had a different kind of confrontation with the Trump administration officials this past week: After meetings with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, he rejected an extraordinary proposal that the United States be granted a 50% interest in all of Ukraine’s mineral resources, including graphite, lithium and uranium, as compensation for past and future support of the war, according to two European officials.
Zelenskyy himself referred to the tense negotiation in Munich, after he met Vance, complaining that the administration’s proposal included no security guarantees for the country should Russia attempt another invasion. “We can consider how to distribute profits when security guarantees are clear,” he said.
The security guarantee is key because Ukrainians believe the United States and Britain failed to live up to obligations to protect the country under an agreement signed at the end of the Cold War, when Ukraine gave up the Russian nuclear weapons on its territory. But European diplomats complained that the negotiation reeked of colonialism, an era of exploitation when Western countries held up smaller nations for commodities, in return for protection.
Listening to the open debate at the Munich Security Conference over the past three days, and the more blunt conversations over dinners and in hallways, was to witness a relationship in crisis and confusion.
It was only July that the NATO allies gathered in Washington for the 75th anniversary of the world’s largest and most successful military alliance. While officials knew that the reelection of Trump would strain the system, they have been stunned by both the ferocity and the velocity of the effort.
“Compare the speeches that Gen. Mattis and Mike Pence gave here in their first appearances in 2017,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., referring to Trump’s first defense secretary and vice president. “They were full of reassurance and discussion of what allies can do together. Then listen to Pete Hegseth and JD Vance this week,” she said. “It feels that it’s their goal to create division.”
In fact, when Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, spoke in Munich on Saturday, he made clear that Europe would not be at the negotiating table. He envisioned a negotiation between Russia and Ukraine in which the United States plays “mediator.”
It is the uncertainty of how that negotiation will play out — and whether Europeans can count on the United States to come to their defense should Russia try to pick off a smaller NATO nation next — that is driving European anxiety. But it is also clear that the Trump administration has no clear plan for Ukraine, at least not yet.
“For those in search of Trump’s strategy on Ukraine: Relax,” said Douglas Lute, who served both Democratic and Republican presidents in senior national security positions. “There is no strategy.”
Still, President Emmanuel Macron of France has asked “the main European countries” to come to Paris on Monday to discuss the war in Ukraine and European security, Jean-Noël Barrot, the foreign minister, said Sunday in an interview on France Inter radio.
The Élysée Palace said Sunday in a statement that the meeting would be informal and involve the heads of government from Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark. The presidents of the European Council and the European Commission, as well as the NATO chief, would also attend.
“Their work will continue in different formats, with the objective of bringing together partners interested in peace and security in Europe,” the statement said.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain is expected to go, saying Saturday that this was a “once-in-a-generation moment for our national security” and that it was clear that Europe must take a greater role in NATO.
The Western alliance has gone through many crises before, including in the 1950s, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected with a promise to lower the price of waging the Cold War and pulled back on U.S. troops in Europe, replacing them with nuclear weapons to keep the Soviet Union at bay. Some predict a similar move by Trump in coming months — sharply reducing manpower, but keeping an arsenal of nuclear weapons on the continent.
To many in Munich, the past few weeks have already alienated Europeans and destroyed much of the unity created over the past three years in providing arms, aid and intelligence to Ukraine.
It is hard to know how lasting the breach will be, but for some like Norbert Röttgen, a member of Germany’s parliament for the Christian Democratic Union, the party expected to run the next government after elections next week, it is time for Europeans to recognize the world has changed.
“This is a new reality, a break with traditional European American policy that security in Europe is a genuine U.S. national interest,” he said. “But this administration does not consider it a primary U.S. interest, and this is a fundamental shift.”
He pointed in particular to Vance’s speech Friday. There was no talk of common bonds, or a plan for Ukraine, or the goals of a peace negotiation. Instead, Vance delivered a blistering attack on European democracy for restricting the power of the far right. Vance then met with the leader of the far-right German political party that Elon Musk has backed and which is running second in the opinion polls.
“The spirit of the Vance speech was hostility,” Röttgen said.
The speed of the embrace of Putin also shocked those in Munich. In the Biden years, the strategy was to isolate the Russian leader. Trump broke with that approach when he engaged in a 90-minute phone call with Putin, without prior consultation with his allies.
Vance added to the suspicions. The parties he embraced during his visit here are the same far-right parties that Putin embraces, and that buy into his narrative of an aggressive NATO infringing on a broader Russian sphere of influence. Among those who embraced that view was Tulsi Gabbard, the new director of national intelligence.
Europeans are now afraid that they may find themselves as pawns in a negotiation conducted without their active participation, even if their own borders are in question and they are expected to take up the largest burden of defending them. That is reminiscent of a Europe and a world of a previous age, of regional empires and the rule of the strong with little concern for the rest.
Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief and former prime minister of Estonia, said in an interview that she remained worried about “appeasement” of Putin by Trump over Ukraine, which she defined as “giving the aggressor what he wants” even before negotiations begin. “That’s why we shouldn’t give Putin what he wants because that will only invite more aggression,” she said.
Trump officials had sent mixed signals, she said. “When we meet these people inside the rooms, we are discussing that we are great allies,” Kallas said. But then, “we see also the public statements, which are a bit confusing.”
Given the war in Europe, she said, the stakes are high. “It’s not only the question of the sovereignty of Ukraine, or the freedom of Europe,” she said. “It’s actually a question of trans-Atlantic but also global security.”
As for U.S. troops, which were increased in Europe after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she said that there were no detailed discussions about removing them, but that there was a clear trend that worried her. The United States is “turning inward,” she said.
Boris Pistorius, the defense minister of Germany, said troop withdrawals were discussed with Hegseth in Brussels. “We would have to compensate for what the Americans are doing less of in Europe,” Pistorius said. “But that can’t happen overnight.”
Pistorius said he had proposed a “road map” to Hegseth that included “a change in burden sharing, in such a way that it is orchestrated” and “no dangerous capability gaps arise over time.”
Other NATO defense and foreign ministers have said that personnel was less of a problem than the kind of arms and equipment only the United States has in Europe in large numbers, from attack helicopters to satellite intelligence. To replace all of that, even if ordered tomorrow, would take close to a decade, one minister said.
As for Ukraine, Kallas said, there was not yet a real plan from Washington, and no plan could be imposed by Washington because for any plan to function, “you need the Europeans and you need the Ukrainians.”
And if the Ukrainians do not accept a deal and decide to continue to resist, “then Europe will support them.”
António Costa, the president of the European Council, said in an interview that it was important “to keep calm” and “prepare for all scenarios, but not to react to each declaration, each tweet, each speech.”
More important, Costa said, was Europe’s lasting support for Ukraine. “There can be no lasting peace without Ukraine and without the European Union,” he said.
Europe must pay attention to the realities, not the rhetoric, he said. “We are prepared on tariffs, on security, on defense, on Ukraine,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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