US President Donald Trump appears bent on halting the financing, training, and equipping of the armies of European states bordering Russia. The move could lead to cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from their budgets, especially those of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
US defence and security policies have undergone sweeping transformations since Trump’s return to the White House at the beginning of this year. The overhaul is driven by a desire to reshape the strategy regarding US involvement in regional conflicts, most notably the war in Ukraine.
Trump has implemented a sharp reversal in US policy towards this conflict, leading to reductions in US military support for Kyiv in parallel with efforts to rebuild bridges with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump was swept back into power on a populist “America First” campaign. In terms of foreign policy, this entailed slashing millions in US spending abroad, epitomised in one of his first acts upon re-entering the Oval Office on 20 January when Executive Order 14169 suspended most US foreign aid for 90 days.
Trump also notched up pressures on European states to shoulder a greater share in their defence spending. Washington’s NATO allies recently agreed to increase their defence allocations to five per cent of GDP.
The Trump administration’s reported plans to halt some security assistance to countries bordering Russia are in line with this policy. According to various news outlets last week, the White House intends to cut Pentagon funding for certain “security assistance” programmes, such as “funding under Section 333 and the Baltic Security Initiative, which helps finance weapons purchases by countries on NATO’s eastern flank, including of US systems, as well as ammunition, special forces training, and intelligence support.”
Such decisions cannot be viewed in isolation from the widening gap between US and European positions on how to manage the Ukraine conflict. The news of the potential cuts or pauses in US military and security support for the Baltic states and other countries bordering Russia emerged after the meeting of the “Coalition of the Willing” led by Britain and France in Paris on 4 September.
In that meeting, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that 26 of Ukraine’s allies had pledged to deploy troops as a “reassurance force” for the country once the fighting ends. The concept, which originated from the US under former president Joe Biden, is supported by the Baltic states but runs counter to the outlook of the current US administration, which wants to end the war in Ukraine.
Washington has also made it clear that it has no intention of committing US boots on the ground in Ukraine as part of any security arrangement in a ceasefire stage. Trump believes that he can obtain more concessions from Russia through direct pressure on Moscow than European powers through their proposed guarantees for Kyiv.
Trump clearly intends to leave his imprint on US foreign policy towards Europe, demonstrating Washington’s ability to manage the situation in Ukraine and tensions with Russia on American terms.
At the same time, he is more cautious than his European counterparts when it comes to risking escalation with Moscow. This may also help to explain the possible cutback in military assistance to NATO members like the Baltic states, which are more hawkish on the Ukrainian conflict, referred to by Trump as “Biden’s war.”
It is noteworthy that since the last major package of US military aid to Ukraine, approved by Congress under Biden on 20 April 2024 and amounting to $60.8 billion, no new American aid has been approved for Kyiv, or at least nothing remotely approaching that scale.
Moreover, Trump insists on recovering what he claims is $350 billion in US assistance previously given to Ukraine. Currently, European states are purchasing US-made defence systems, such as Patriot missiles, and transferring them to Kyiv, although the US continues to provide previously committed arms.
All of this effectively means that direct US military support to Kyiv has nearly ground to a halt.
At the same time, US-Russian relations have undergone a qualitative shift, manifested in the recent Trump-Putin Summit in Alaska. If subsequent developments did not pan out as Trump had hoped, in a direct meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for example, it opened direct channels of communication between Moscow and Kyiv and gave a boost to Russia’s international standing.
This new development helps to contextualise the European announcement in early September of a plan to send a delegation to Washington in order to forge a common vision on the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. The visit will probably take place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly’s 80th session, which opens on 9 September in New York.
This also may explain the timing of the news regarding cuts in US military support for the Baltic and other Eastern European states. It signals Washington’s determination to encourage the European powers to come around to Trump’s approach to resolving the conflict in Ukraine.
However, the move is also in part informed by Trump’s desire to counter the closer alignment between Russia, China, and India that was manifested in the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in China, in which these three countries stressed the need to forge a collective strategy to counter Washington’s domineering practices.
They reaffirmed the need to advance equitable multipolarity, reform the global economy to make it more inclusive, and promote a more just system of global governance. The summit also called for solidarity among the nations of the Global South in the face of US and Western hegemony.
As part of efforts to build a broader alliance to manifest this solidarity, the SCO members adopted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of “One Earth, One Family, One Future.” They also approved new economic and trade initiatives to serve as a foundation for a new global security and economic order, one that would directly challenge the post-World War II order dominated by the US and the West.
This helps to explain Washington’s sudden about-face in its more aggressive stance towards its rivals. The shift was reflected in Trump’s change of tone towards Modi, whom he is now praising for his efforts to overcome disputes with China.
Some analysts have suggested that the US decision regarding the states bordering Russia may be intended to put Russia in an awkward position. A freeze or sharp reduction in US support for its European allies would generate political pressures that could compel Russia to reassess its strategy and resolve to negotiate a speedy end to the war.
The analysts stress that this approach would necessitate close coordination between the US and its European allies.
The possible actions that Trump might now take regarding military assistance could either deepen divisions between Washington and its Western allies or, paradoxically, bring them closer together, albeit on Trump’s terms.
In either case, Trump would win, at least by compelling the NATO partners to increase their defence spending.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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