In Europe today, an old strategic dilemma has resurfaced with an urgency unseen since the Cold War. Russia’s war in Ukraine is not merely a contest over territory, nor even a struggle for the future of one state. It has become, above all, a laboratory for deterrence itself. Each shipment of weapons and each declaration of “ironclad” support force European capitals to confront a brutal question: Can credible security guarantees be made without the United States?
For seven decades, this question was largely academic. NATO existed as an American project, underwritten by US nuclear weapons and the certainty of US intervention. Today, that certainty has been shaken. Donald Trump’s return to the White House, coupled with Europe’s lackluster defense investments ever since the end of the Cold War, and Putin’s neo-imperial fantasies, have transformed what was once theoretical into an existential problem. Europeans may soon face the prospect of guaranteeing Ukraine’s security — with or without Washington.
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