() – Just hours before the black SUVs carrying dozens of European leaders slid across the gravel of Blenheim Palace on Thursday, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance put the United States’ foreign partners on notice.
“Together we will make our allies share the burden of ensuring world peace,” he said at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer.”
This wasn’t even the most strident rhetoric we’ve heard from Ohio’s junior senator, who voted against the U.S. supplemental aid package for Ukraine that passed in April. In February, he declared at the Munich Security Conference that “the American security blanket has allowed European security to atrophy,” arguing that in a world where munitions manufacturing is limited, Ukraine’s only option is a deal. negotiated.
Vance echoed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has long criticized NATO and accused security alliance partners of not paying their fair share. The former president also hinted at the possibility of reducing military aid to Ukraine and said he could resolve the war through negotiation within 24 hours if he were re-elected.
However, the mood among European leaders arriving in the Oxfordshire countryside is one of resignation and determination.
“I think that whoever wins, the United States will come first,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told . “And I think the only answer to that is that Europe needs to stand on its own two feet… what we see at the Republican convention confirms that.”
Finnish President Alexander Stubb, head of one of NATO’s newest members, read Vance’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” and has described it as “very good.”
Regarding the isolationist tendencies of a Trump-Vance candidacy, he is circumspect. “Am I worried? No. Because the United States wants to continue being a superpower,” he told .
“Is there a rebalancing taking place? Yes. Europe needs to take more care of its defense.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen maintains that Europe’s strengthening its commitment to its own security has nothing to do with the United States. “We have to be more able to defend ourselves, with an increasingly aggressive Russia, not only when it comes to Ukraine,” he told . “Now we see hybrid attacks, cyberattacks, disinformation every day.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, with only two weeks in office, hoped that this Thursday’s summit, in which 42 European heads of State or Government will participate, would be a strong show of unity, “a signal to Russia of our determination.”
However, an EU leader sent Russia a very different signal. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has never supported military aid to Ukraine, chose the first week of his rotating EU presidency this month to visit President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, on what he called a “peace mission.”
The visit was aimed at fulfilling his “Christian duty,” Orban told on Thursday. “I try to do everything I can to convince everyone that peace is better than war… it’s not easy to convince them.” The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, re-elected this Thursday for another five-year term, described the trip as an “appeasement mission.”
In his speech at the Blenheim Palace meeting, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was blunt. Preserving European unity is essential for lasting peace, he said. “But if someone in Europe tries to solve problems behind the backs of others… if someone wants to make some trips to the war capital… then why should we consider that person? The EU and NATO can solve all their problems without this individual.”
Europe managed to show its unity, but faces increasing tests, such as the prospect of a new US administration that could withdraw its support for Ukraine, and an increasingly active Ukrainian skeptic within it.
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