It’s possible European NATO members could convince a Trump White House to leave Kyiv’s military backing to them — with some strings attached.

Donald Trump has previously boasted he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. | Patrick Fallon/Getty Images

OPINION

JULY 29, 2024 4:00 AM CET

BY DERRICK WYATT

Derrick Wyatt is an emeritus professor of law at the University of Oxford.

Since surviving an assassination attempt, former U.S. President Donald Trump has secured his nomination as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. Meanwhile, latest polling shows Vice President Kamala Harris — the favorite to become the Democratic nominee — is neck and neck with Trump.

For U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, however, there’s little choice but to stay close to the U.S. president, whoever they turn out to be — hence the charm offensive he launched in Trump’s direction months ago.

The tricky thing is Starmer’s a strong backer of Ukraine. Sitting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy directly to his right at last week’s European Political Community summit hosted by the U.K., the prime minister pledged support to Kyiv “for as long as it takes.”

But Trump allies like Elbridge Colby, who is tipped as a possible national security advisor to Trump, see China as the main threat to U.S. security — not Russia — and they view Ukraine as diverting resources needed to confront China and defend Taiwan.

Trump has previously boasted he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours — though he did qualify this after a recent phone call with Zelenskyy, saying that “both sides will be able to come together and negotiate a deal that ends the violence and paves a path forward to prosperity.”

But a big concern is that Trump’s idea of a peace settlement could simply mean Russia keeping the areas of Ukraine it currently holds. He recently appointed Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate, a man who has said he doesn’t really care what happens to Ukraine. Similarly, Richard Grenell — a possible secretary of state under Trump — has advocated a peace deal for Ukraine that would preserve Ukrainian territory but allow for “autonomous zones.” A term that may well be code for Ukraine just accepting its losses and moving on.

Given all this, if Trump were to return to the White House, the U.K. and other European NATO members could be faced with a hard choice: Either accept a forced settlement favoring Russia, or back Zelenskyy in rejecting such a deal and continuing to resist Russian aggression. In the latter scenario, Trump may even discourage dissent by withdrawing U.S. defense guarantees from allies he regarded as “escalating” the war by supplying arms to Ukraine.

A crisis along these lines would divide and weaken NATO — to the point where some allies might back down from a confrontation with Russian President Vladimir Putin and withdraw support from Ukraine.

Question is, would the U.K. be one of those countries, or would it join a coalition of European NATO allies backing Ukraine?

For Starmer, defying Trump would likely stretch the “special relationship” between the U.K. and the U.S. to breaking point. For example, since part of the special relationship is U.S. management of the joint U.S./U.K. pool of D5 Trident missiles, Trump could easily pile pressure on Starmer if he wanted to.

Perhaps there’s a chance this could be avoided if European NATO members started talking with potential Trump advisers like Colby and Grenell about a possible deal that would let them carry on supplying arms to Ukraine. But even that’s not a given.

Truth is, even if a Democrat wins the White House in November, the threat from China could well squeeze out further U.S. funding for Ukraine anyway. And in that case, Zelenskyy would have to rely on European allies, along with G7 loans backed by the proceeds of frozen Russian assets, to support Ukraine’s war effort.

However, if Trump wins in November, his advisers will likely say the Ukraine war simply needs to end in order to stop the U.S. from being drawn in if Russia were to retaliate against NATO members supplying Ukraine. And as Zelenskyy continues to press allies for permission to use the long-range weapons they supplied on targets deep inside Russia — something Starmer refused when Zelenskyy recently visited him in Downing Street — this risk isn’t completely fanciful.

Colby, for his part, accepts the U.S. has a strategic interest in Ukraine being defended — but not if it means a direct confrontation with Russia.

This means that part of the price of Trump accepting European alliance members continuing to supply Ukraine might be a pledge to not allow the use of those weapons on targets inside Russia. Though perhaps, like now, there could be exceptions made for targets in Russia close to Ukraine’s borders — it hasn’t drawn the U.S. into direct conflict with Russia under President Joe Biden, so it need not do so under Trump either.

But the fact remains that in the face of threats from a nuclear-armed Putin, European allies would only feel safe supplying Ukraine if Trump maintained the U.S.’s commitment to NATO.

And this brings us to another problem: Trump thinks European countries should do more to defend themselves, famously saying he’d encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO members that don’t pay their fair share to the alliance.

So, with Trump in office, credible pledges of increased defense expenditure would have to be part of any sort of deal to carry on backing Ukraine. And while potential Trump advisers might be receptive to such arguments in principle, it’s questionable whether NATO members could realistically deliver what his advisers would expect to see.

Colby has made it clear he thinks European allies should be spending 3 to 4 percent of GDP on defense. Yet, there’s little prospect of some of Ukraine’s most important suppliers of military hardware — like Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. — spending 3 percent of GDP on defense in the foreseeable future.

That said, defense spending by European NATO members has been rising, with a further increase to 2.5 percent of GDP indicated by the U.K., and an increasingly militarily muscular Poland on course for 5 percent in 2025. So, it’s possible allies could come up with a formula that would convince Trump’s advisers he shouldn’t force a peace deal on Ukraine, and instead leave the country’s military backing to European allies — with some targeting strings attached.

Those strings wouldn’t please Zelenksyy, of course. But at the very least, a bad deal with Trump could postpone a worse deal with Putin.