If frontline states cannot cope with the strains and stresses of peacetime, how will they manage in a war? That is the conclusion the Kremlin will be drawing from the past week’s news. The decision—still only preliminary—to cut some US military assistance to the Baltic states has prompted not national unity, but political rows in Lithuania, for example. When did the government know about this? Why did they not stop it? Meanwhile, Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki traded combative tweets with the foreign minister Radek Sikorski. Both men had been on rival missions to Washington, DC, trying to bolster US military support for their country.
It would be a mistake to focus too hard on the specifics here. The Baltic program is not yet canceled. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are lobbying the White House hard. Congress will have its say, too. As Estonia’s defense minister Hanno Pevkur pointed out, in the context of his country’s €10 billion ($11.7 billion) defense budget for 2026-29, the US funding of around $70 million is hardly decisive. The US military presence in the region matters a lot more (though cuts are looming there, too).
These moves “are not personal,” says a senior decision-maker in the region. They reflect the dynamics of US politics. Elbridge Colby, the senior Pentagon official responsible, wants to signal that the Indo-Pacific region matters more than Europe, and that European allies should do more for their own defence. Both policies have been well-heralded and should be no surprise. They do not signal specific displeasure with countries that are, on every measure, model US allies.
Yet even in symbolic terms, all this matters a lot. The mooted moves show a lack of focus and a lack of resolve. This money was not charity: it was spent on American weapons. It was voted by Congress, reflecting what used to be a bipartisan consensus on transatlantic security. That now looks fragile. If the US cannot maintain modest support for the Baltic states even for a few years, how seriously can Ukraine take promises of continued US support for allied military efforts to protect the country after a possible ceasefire?
The real problem is not in the United States, though. It is in Europe. Decision-makers in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and elsewhere enjoyed their summer holidays. They should have been hard at work. Their strategy is in tatters. Trying to persuade President Trump to bring pressure to bear on Vladimir Putin has not worked. Deadlines have come and gone, amid blurry rhetoric and gusts of moral equivalence. Nor is Putin in the least deterred by European promises of more support for Ukraine, and threats of more sanctions. Russia’s war machine is not running out of money or people; indeed, a new offensive seems to be looming in Ukraine.
Europe should be able to cope with this. The eight Nordic-Baltic countries plus Poland alone have a bigger GDP than Russia. If they wanted to, they could plug any financial gaps left by the US and buy whatever American weapons they need. Add Germany and other countries into the mix, and the European camp looks even bigger, and its failure to deal with the security challenge still more pitiful.
Europe’s divisions, both those between countries and inside them, are its greatest national security vulnerability. The temptation for Russia will be to crank up the pressure on the most politically polarised countries, in the expectation that the rest of Europe (let alone the United States) will be too distracted or disengaged to respond. The greatest weapons in the Kremlin’s arsenal are the weaknesses of those it plans to attack.
Edward Lucas is a Senior Fellow and Senior Advisor at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He was formerly a senior editor at The Economist. Lucas has covered Central and Eastern European affairs since 1986, writing, broadcasting, and speaking on the politics, economics, and security of the region.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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