This suggests what really matters among all the noise about peace talks is Ukraine’s military strength.

A strong Ukrainian military, which cannot be defeated on the battlefield, is the only realistic impediment to Russia’s crude but effective attempts to dominate its near abroad using military force. President Trump’s attempts at coercion and accommodation might be worth a shot, but diplomacy is no match for “brute force” when it comes to warlike leaders.

This wisdom was famously applied by the U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan in his 1946 long telegram, assessing Soviet power under Joseph Stalin as “impervious to logic of reason, and . . . highly sensitive to logic of force.” Kennan’s prescription was “a policy of firm containment” based on political, economic, and military strength.

The same words also describe Russian power under Vladimir Putin today. Zelensky echoed Kennan’s diagnosis when he addressed Ukraine’s parliament in October: “The Russian leadership acts aggressively only when it is convinced that it will not receive an adequate destructive response.”

In his address, Zelensky also channeled Kennan in his own prescription to secure Ukraine’s security via “peace through strength.” This phrase echoed one used by another U.S. official: Keith Kellogg. In a report published months before he was appointed as President Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Lt. General (Ret.) Kellogg describes Trump’s approach as promoting “deterrence and peace through strength.”

NATO and EU leaders have also identified peace through Ukrainian strength as the best solution for keeping their own citizens safe. As NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte declared after allied defense ministers met this month, NATO’s task is to “help Ukraine in its fight today and to build up Ukraine’s armed forces in the long-term.” And as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated in the commission’s political guidelines last year: “The best investment in European security is investing in the security of Ukraine.”
 

Europe Unable, America Unwilling

Since the war began, peace through strength in Ukraine has been pursued through a combination of Western-funded equipment and Ukrainian grit. As Trump put it last week: “They’re very brave,” but “without the United States and its money and its military equipment, this war would have been over in a very short period of time.”

But this formula is now in doubt because Ukraine’s main backers are reaching the political and economic limits of what they can provide. Europe, Ukraine’s largest backer to date, has plenty of political will but is hitting the limit of its fiscal and industrial capacity. Meanwhile, the United States has the opposite problem: It can afford and produce much more, but the political desire to do so has disappeared under the new administration. (Compare the administration’s stance on Ukraine to the $4 billion in military assistance and $12 billion in military sales expedited to Israel since January, for example.)

Europe and the United States have been Ukraine’s largest backers since 2022. Europe has been the most generous, providing $138 billion (and committing another $120 billion), compared to $119 billion (and $4 billion) from the United States. When measured proportionately, the United States lags much further behind—19 European nations have given more to Ukraine than the U.S. total of 0.53 percent of GDP since 2022, with some European nations even exceeding 2 percent.

These are large sums of money, but they are not enough to meet Ukraine’s needs. Russian forces continue to grind out small victories on the battlefield and attack civilian areas with hundreds of cost-effective drone and missile strikes. Zelensky has already warned that Ukraine is now running out of Patriot air defense missiles. Moreover, as the authors of a Kiel Institute report point out, for most nations this level of funding is “like a minor political ‘pet project’ rather than a major fiscal effort,” comparable to domestic subsidies for diesel fuel and company cars.

Yet even at these relatively low and inadequate levels, both Europe and the United States have significant constraints on their ability to maintain aid to Ukraine.

Europe has a plentiful supply of political goodwill toward Ukraine but lacks the fiscal and industrial capacity to make good on it.

Although overall European defense spending has risen sharply since 2022, spending levels vary widely. Nations closer to Moscow spend much more than others. But some of the leaders in spending measured by percentage of GDP are laggards in absolute investment, due to the size of their economies. (For example, in 2024, Latvia’s 3.15 percent of GDP equated to just $1.4 billion, while Poland and Italy both spend just under $35 billion even though Poland spent 4 percent of its GDP compared to Italy’s 1.5 percent.) Neither does the GDP measure indicate the quality or nature of investment.

Meanwhile, the European Union is limited by its 2023 Stability and Growth Pact on borrowing large amounts to fund higher defense spending—like it did after Covid-19 through a recovery fund of $840 billion. EU member states have equivocated over removing borrowing limits on defense spending since the war began but have yet to pull the trigger.

Even if they do, increased spending might not solve the problem of Europe’s limited defense industrial capacity. Ukraine now depends on the defense industry in Europe and elsewhere for two-thirds of its military aid. But current capacity is either low or nonexistent in key areas such as guided weapons, tanks, and aircraft. “Europeans and the Ukrainians have nothing in their depots,” according to the CEO of Rheinmetall. Meanwhile, the Russian defense industry is now outproducing the whole of Europe (when measured by purchasing power parity). Hence the Kiel Institute’s assessment that the war has become “a battle of procurement and military production.”

The United States also has industrial capacity issues. However, Washington’s limits on providing support to Ukraine are primarily political.

A good shorthand for President Trump’s policies is to assume he will do the exact opposite of the Biden administration. This is true for Ukraine. While Biden committed to support Kyiv “for as long as it takes,” Trump campaigned on removing support for Ukraine. Where Biden aimed to force Russia to negotiate (or capitulate) by putting Ukraine in a position of strength, Trump aims to compel Ukraine to accept compromises for the sake of a deal and use the potential for Ukrainian weakness to incentivize Moscow. As he said when asked if the United States would keep providing Ukraine with weapons: “Maybe until we have a deal with Russia . . . We need to have a deal, otherwise it’s going to continue.”

This dramatic reversal in Washington’s policy leaves the burden of “peace through Ukrainian strength” resting on Europe’s shoulders. This may have been the whole point.

Washington’s shift in Ukraine policy was accompanied by a broader shift in its policy toward Europe. The last three weeks have cemented the new reality that transatlantic security is no longer Washington’s foreign policy priority.

This stance is not new—the United States has been pivoting to Asia since at least 2011. Neither does it mean Washington will abandon Europe. As U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told NATO defense ministers on February 13: “We must make NATO great again . . . suggestions of abandonment otherwise continue to be disingenuous and we are—we are proud to be part of this alliance and stand by it.”

Even so, Europe must now assume responsibility for its own security to an extent it has not done since before 1941. This will take decisive action and sustained investment to strengthen Ukraine’s hand and defend the continent from Russian aggression.

Europe’s Trillion Dollar “Big Bang” Moment

Insofar as they face an acute threat from Russia and an increasingly disinterested—or at least distracted—United States, Ukraine and Europe are in the same boat. If Europe is going to shoulder the burden of strengthening Ukraine and its own defenses, it is going to need a bigger boat. This means spending more on defense—a lot more.

The good news is that European defense is on the verge of a “big bang” moment that could transform its ability to do just that.

European defense was slow to rouse from its post–Cold War slumber. By 2022, EU defense spending was only 1.3 percent of GDP. This changed after Russia’s full-scale invasion, when European NATO allies raised defense investment to 2 percent of their collective GDP. Meanwhile, the European Union’s Versailles Declaration, adopted three weeks after the war began, led to several new initiatives designed to strengthen European defense and support Ukraine. These have provided tens of billions of euros for both European procurement and Ukrainian defense and reconstruction—including from the revenue of frozen Russian assets.

However, the true potential of European defense remains largely untapped.

The next NATO summit will take place in June in The Hague, the Netherlands. If every European member of NATO took that opportunity to raise defense spending from their current average of 2 percent to 3 percent—as at least four allies already did last year—it would raise nearly $200 billion. Germany alone could add $220 billion if it agrees on a new “whatever it takes” special fund for defense.

If EU leaders agreed to exempt defense spending from the current budget constraints, they could jointly borrow hundreds of billions toward their own target of investing over $500 billion in defense over the next decade.

If negotiations this year over the European Union’s next budget cycle (2028–2034) meet the target set by the bloc’s new defence commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, that could add $110 billion to EU defense spending (defense spending in the current cycle was only around $11 billion).

If Europe agreed to liquidate Russia’s frozen assets, it could provide another $300 billion. As Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has urged: “Enough talking, it’s time to act! Let’s finance our aid for Ukraine from the Russian frozen assets.”

If the European Commission is able to repurpose untapped Covid-19 recovery funds, it would make available up to $100 billion, while redirecting portions of the $50 billion EU “Cohesion Fund”—designed to help lower income member states through investment in environment and transport—could make several billion available for defense and security.

The original purpose of the London summit was to discuss the United Kingdom’s idea for a European “rearmament bank,” a joint fund to issue AAA-rated debt to finance increased defense spending across Europe. If agreed, this might raise up to $25 billion in government “seed funding,” which could underpin up to $250 billion of private capital.