A Reordered West: Europe Steps in as America Steps Back

After the December 5 White House release of the new National Security Strategy, the Trump administration’s renewed estrangement from the west surprised little to no one. European leaders knew, after Trump’s repeated messaging against Europe and NATO in his 2024 re-election campaign, that a shift from the US’ previously long-held support for Ukraine was going to be called into question. Pre-emptive efforts at messaging the scale and gravity of the war in Ukraine had previously failed and even more concerning to Europe’s leaders than Trump was Vice-President frontrunner J.D. Vance and his rhetoric as early as 2022 concerning Putin and the joint effort to stop the war.

While J.D. was nevertheless an outspoken critic of Trump for much of his political career, a distinct focus on isolationism and withdrawing from American participation in a wide degree of conflicts had been a consistent message in his platform as a member of the populist (widely described as ‘postliberal’) section of the Republican Party and the United States Senate. And while his antagonism to American support to troops on Ukrainian soil was no unexpected comeback, the degree to which he effectively posed that antagonism to voters was widely considered unprecedented and a shock to many parts of the western world, even including members of the Trump administration cabinet such as Marco Rubio, who represented the last remnants of the neo-conservative Republican voice that had backed many of the Biden administration’s efforts to provide assistance packages to Ukraine.

Trump’s incessant flip-flopping on the Ukraine issue after his re-election in 2024, along with the much-publicized February 2025 Oval Office fiasco which saw both Trump and Vance belittle and mock the Ukrainian leader’s efforts to combat the Russian invasion played a big hand in the Coalition of the Willing, a collective effort by 16 member-nations of NATO and the EU to re-affirm western commitment to Ukrainian support. It was a key moment which assured several security guarantees and enabled negotiations to address the conflict with Russia. Defined as a "once-in-a-generation moment" for European security by host Keir Starmer, this moment once again redefined the role that the U.S. and Europe share in the context of the wide-running resistance against the Russian invasion in Ukraine the largest land-war in Europe, which reached the death toll of one million and counting nearly half a year ago.

But how did we get here?

Putting aside simplistic explanations of populist emergence in American politics, and Russia’s role in the social disinformation campaigns that led to heavily scrutinized questions over elections the European shift to fill the post-Cold War vacuum of organisational leadership in the west comes from a far more significant context than American disinterest alone. For example, Petr Pavel, the Czech president who originally called for the Coalition of the Willing a day before its establishment in the London Summit, was advocating for discussions on enhancing the nation’s contributions to NATO as early as 2023, far before outspoken Ukraine critic J.D. Vance’s selection as nominee for Vice President. In fact, several European leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron and British Tory leader Boris Johnson had previously commented on similar terms about greater European participation in the alliance. NATO’s non-US members, including Canada, have long underspent in military contributions compared to the United States. The vast majority of Europe’s states instead focused on building their economies for much of the last few decades, stemming from the view that the US was a trustworthy and dependable ally.

With Ukraine and the subsequent unpredictability of American support following the Trump era, much of that attitude has changed.

Europe’s states now contribute more than ever to NATO, with all but one non-US member-country (Iceland, having no military) now meeting the 2% goal for defence contributions as part of their GDP. That means 30 out of the 31 non-US member states a stark comparison to the measly three in 2016. What this means for the broader geopolitical theatre of the west is that states are increasingly participative and vocal about their ideas concerning the broader conflict with Russia, which has, since the nation’s founding in 1991, initiated interferences with Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Georgia and Moldova, unlike Ukraine, are now significantly closer to NATO and the west than ever before, with the process of security guarantees remaining more solid than ever, considering Russia’s position of testing the military defenses of nations in its western and southern borders.

Another significant benchmark for European progress in the changing trans-Atlantic landscape has been Israel and the war in Gaza. Ireland, Spain and Norway in May 2024 took steps to recognize the statehood of Palestine as part of a coordinated strategy to pressure Israel diplomatically. In the 80th session of the UN General Assembly, France accompanied this change and followed suit, prompting others like Canada and the United Kingdom to recognize Palestine the first time for states from the G7 to do so. France additionally led the organising efforts for the July 2025 conference on the implementation of the two-state solution alongside Saudi Arabia. This was much to the ridicule of the Trump administration’s Department of State, which called it “unproductive” and “ill-timed” as part of a strangely harsh-worded statement that condemned the event as a “stage-managed conference designed to manufacture the appearance of relevance.” Israeli Speaker of the Senate, Amir Ohana, further participated in the ridicule by commenting, “If you want a Palestinian state, build it in London or Paris,” in front of an inter-parliamentary union in Geneva.

The United States’ withdrawal from key moral and strategic issues in the west seems to have had the effect of establishing a new precedent for states considered key allies in the past. Whether this shift in foreign policy will remain contained to European states like France and the UK or expand to the increasingly participatory members of alliances like the Quad, remains an open question posed to the future. What is increasingly certain, however, is that the United States no longer retains the legitimacy of being front of the line in addressing war and conflict throughout the world in the western-led world order. And Washington’s newly renamed ‘Department of War’ seems to welcome this change as it targets domestic issues such as the immigrant crises and the presence of activity by cartels as priority number one over regional safety and alliance-building in Europe and beyond.

About the Author

Atulya Mishra is a third-year undergraduate student studying Political Science (Hons.) at the Jindal School for international affairs. He has a varying series of interests, including but not limited to foreign policy and international relations, critical theory, critical Kashmir studies, political philosophy and political history.

Atulya is currently working on a long-term research project on teleological perspectives on political identity and the global order to critically examine the structures behind the state narratives that define conflict across the globe. He is also an avid reader and fascinated by interdisciplinary studies in various fields to broaden the efforts in answering the increasingly complicated problems faced by the modern world.