Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage
President Donald Trump is fond of flexibility. Unperturbed by changing course, he prefers not to be pinned down by past precedent or by his own promises. Although he has pledged to end the war in Ukraine quickly, and although Washington has just signed a deal with Kyiv granting the United States a share of future revenues from Ukraine’s minerals reserves, Trump could decide to walk away from the country entirely if he does not get the peace settlement he craves. A final text of the minerals deal has not yet been made public, but there is no indication that it includes security guarantees for Ukraine. As commander in chief, Trump can minimize U.S. support for Ukraine abruptly and dramatically.
But a Ukraine shunted aside by the United States would not be a Ukraine abandoned. After three years of war, dozens of countries now support Ukraine’s increasingly capable military. No ally can replace the United States, but all of them make a difference: it is not within the power of the United States to end the war by pulling out. Although Ukraine will struggle to hold the line without U.S. support, Russia has no easy path to victory. The real risk of a precipitous American withdrawal of support is not that Ukraine will immediately collapse, but that individual European countries might lose the political will to stand up to Russia.
Should the United States forsake Ukraine, Europe would suffer multiple misfortunes. European leaders would conclude that Washington, having devoted itself to normalizing ties with Moscow, is no longer interested in providing the credible deterrence it had supplied for decades. They would perceive the Trump administration’s abandonment of Ukraine as the first step toward a post-American Europe, if not a post-American world. Against this backdrop, Moscow may be tempted to scare Europe into submission, and some Europeans might choose appeasement rather than risk Russia’s wrath.
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