Gleb Garanich/Pool Photo via AP
European leaders, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, second from left, attend a press conference after the “Support Ukraine” summit, marking the third anniversary of the Russian invasion, in Kyiv, Ukraine, February 24, 2025.
The consequences of Trump’s ignorant overreaches are beginning to be felt, and nowhere more than in his pathetic poodling to Putin. Trump may finally get his goal of Europe spending more on defense—but in defense against him.
As a supporter of anti-foreign nationalists everywhere, the nationalism that Trump is fomenting is anti-American, at least as long as America is personified by himself. Trump has even kindled nationalism on the part of the docile Canadians.
Yesterday, Friedrich Merz’s mainstream Christian Democrats (CDU) won the German election. To widespread relief, the CDU and the Social Democrats (SPD) will together have enough seats in parliament (328 out of 630) to form a stable two-party coalition, of the sort that has governed Germany for almost half of the postwar era. The biggest surprise of the evening was that Germany’s left party, Die Linke, surged to almost 9 percent of the vote and will have 64 seats.
The CDU and the SPD don’t agree on much, but they agree on containing Putin—and containing Trump. Geopolitically, Europe has every reason to unite against a Putin-Trump entente. Putin has designs not just on Ukraine, but on most of the former Soviet empire, beginning with the Baltics.
In the upending of the traditional postwar balance of power politics, Europe may well end up providing much of the military support that Ukraine needs to defend itself. Economically, Trump’s insane threat of a trade war against the EU is also backfiring. At a time when the EU has been fragmented and demoralized, Trump is an unintended tonic for European unity and solidarity.
Today, on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, European foreign ministers approved a fresh package of sanctions on Russia, targeting energy, trade, transport, infrastructure, and financial services.
“It should be a priority to strengthen Europe as fast as possible so that we gradually achieve independence from the U.S.,” Merz said after declaring victory Sunday. “It’s clear that the Americans, at least this American administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”
TRUMP IS ALREADY HAVING TO BACKPEDAL from the idea of a quick deal with Putin that sells out Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian independence. The Republicans are traditionally the Cold War party. Seven Republican senators have publicly broken with Trump on Ukraine, and others have declined to support him.
The vocal dissenters include Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who has spoken of Russian “aggression” in Ukraine, John Curtis of Utah, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as well as John Kennedy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas. In a speech directed unmistakably at Trump, Thom Tillis of North Carolina took the Senate floor to declare: “Whoever believes that there is any space for Vladimir Putin and the future of a stable globe, better go to Ukraine, they better go to Europe, they better invest the time to understand that this man is a cancer and the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”
Well, maybe the second-greatest threat.
Trump’s own secretary of state, former Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, was one the most anti-Putin senators, and he is no fan of the deal that Trump is pushing. In the past, Rubio has referred to Putin as “bloodthirsty,” “a butcher,” “a monster,” “a war criminal,” and warned that he could not be trusted.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Rubio pressed the Biden administration to support the Ukrainians “as long as they are willing to fight.” He even expressed the hope that Putin might be overthrown or assassinated. “I think the whole world wishes that,” he said.
In the Republican pushback, there is an important spillover effect. The more that Republican legislators step forward and oppose Trump on Ukraine, the more it gives other Republicans permission to oppose him on other unpopular Trump schemes.
The entire strategy of intimidating Republicans into submission begins to crumble. He can’t primary all of them. Dictatorship works only when everyone follows the dictates.
Trump has already had to jettison other screwball ideas. As my colleague David Dayen writes, he quickly walked back the half-baked scheme to make the Postal Service part of the Commerce Department. He meekly retracted his grand scheme for taking over Gaza, after universal global pushback, telling an interviewer on Fox News, “I think that’s the plan that really works. But I’m not forcing it. I’m just going to sit back and recommend it.” And we haven’t heard much about Greenland lately.
On Ukraine, after all the pro-Putin puffery we may well end up with some variant of the broad settlement deal that has been on the table all along. Ukraine gives up the roughly 20 percent of its territory that Russia controls militarily, much of it Russian-speaking. In exchange, Ukraine gets security guarantees—but led by an emboldened Europe, not by an enfeebled United States.
A Putin alliance with the U.S. as junior partner was never going to fly. Trump’s echoing of Putin’s taking points signals pathetic weakness. The two major pieces of collateral damage for Trump are Republican senators and Western allies willing to stand up to him.
