‘One step behind the Europeans’
Despite Trump’s increasing disillusionment with Putin for his lack of interest in a peace deal, the U.S. president has dithered on taking concrete steps to drastically step up military aid to Ukraine. So the Europeans, led largely by Merz along with Rutte, found a workaround.
European leaders knew it would be much easier for Trump — who sees global politics, from trade to NATO, largely as zero-sum financial transactions — to agree to supply arms for Ukraine if the Europeans bought them, allowing the U.S. to swing a profit.
But they were also aware of Trump’s reluctance to abandon the isolationist wing of his MAGA movement by taking a more active role in defending Ukraine and directly confronting Putin. By providing American weapons themselves, the Europeans are providing Trump with cover to act.
The strategy “would enable the U.S. administration to increase the pressure on Russia and strengthen its support for Ukraine, while at the same time allowing it to remain one step behind the Europeans,” a German government official who advises Merz said in Berlin just ahead of Trump’s announcement.
The approach also allows Trump to maintain what the official called some of the “equidistance that may have characterized the first months of the Trump administration from an American perspective.”
European divisions remain
Not all European countries are on board with the approach, however. In the Oval Office, Rutte listed four Nordic countries in addition to the U.K. and the Netherlands as backing the plan to send U.S. weapons to Ukraine. France, whose President Emmanuel Macron has long pushed for Europeans to build up their own defense industrial base by buying locally, was a notable omission from the list.