No disinterested observer, after all, can avoid the impression that the administration’s preferred policy is — well — to do nothing. “I’m very disappointed in Russia,” Trump said at a press conference earlier this month, before adding that he was also “disappointed in Ukraine” and appearing to give credit to Vladimir Putin for Russia’s sacrifices in World War II. The same day, June 12, Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated Russia on its National Day — a step not taken by a U.S. administration since 2022. Meanwhile, Hegseth assiduously dodged answering the question of whether Russia is the aggressor in the war.
The Trump administration might be constrained by the fact that many of the sanctions against Russia are mandated by Congress and thus hard to reverse. The Russian rhetoric indicates the direction of travel is toward normalizing the U.S.-Russian relationship, not toward Senator Lindsey Graham’s punitive bill penalizing countries buying Russian oil with a de-facto trade embargo.
All of these facts are unpleasant — but they are part of the reality that the U.K. and Europeans have to deal with. The best way to do so is with stoicism and determination — and with a European version of Teddy Roosevelt’s dictum about being quiet and carrying a big stick.
The EU is a $20-trillion economy. The U.K. adds another $4 billion, give or take. With a leadership that understands what is at stake — and it appears that Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, Poland’s Donald Tusk, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen do, among others, do — it can re-arm itself and bankroll Ukraine to eventual membership in the European bloc.
Both the U.K. and the EU should be also pursuing, jointly, an ambitious agenda of trade liberalization, working around America’s arbitrary protectionism rather than trying to accommodate Trump’s every whim. Talk of “special relationship” notwithstanding, Trump’s commitment to protectionism should provide a straightforward impetus for likeminded and geographically close economies to huddle.
On all of those fronts, the British and the Europeans need action – and definitely fewer high-stake summits at which Trump tries to épater les bourgeois. The current moment in transatlantic relations shall pass and we will see a day when the United States will be ready to be a constructive partner again, one hopes. Until then, however, both the U.K. and the EU are committing an act of self-harm by letting the parameters of the American political debate frame the conversations on security, Ukraine, and trade that the old continent needs to have.