{"id":267445,"date":"2025-07-16T20:11:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T20:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/267445\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T20:11:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T20:11:16","slug":"how-europe-found-a-workaround-to-get-trump-to-help-ukraine-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/267445\/","title":{"rendered":"How Europe found a workaround to get Trump to help Ukraine \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018One step behind the Europeans\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Despite Trump\u2019s increasing disillusionment with Putin for his lack of interest in a peace deal, the U.S. president has dithered on taking concrete steps to drastically step up military aid to Ukraine. So the Europeans, led largely by Merz along with Rutte, found a workaround.<\/p>\n<p>European leaders knew it would be much easier for Trump \u2014 who sees global politics, from trade to NATO, largely as zero-sum financial transactions \u2014 to agree to supply arms for Ukraine if the Europeans bought them, allowing the U.S. to swing a profit.<\/p>\n<p>But they were also aware of Trump\u2019s reluctance to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/07\/14\/trumps-ukraine-aid-fits-america-first-00452809\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">abandon the isolationist wing of his MAGA<\/a> movement by taking a more active role in defending Ukraine and directly confronting Putin. By providing American weapons themselves, the Europeans are providing Trump with cover to act.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/13193508-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6915954\"  \/>\u201cMr. President, dear Donald, this is really big. This is really big,\u201d said Mark Rutte, sitting alongside Donald Trump in the Oval Office. | Pool photo by Yuri Gripas\/EPA<\/p>\n<p>The strategy \u201cwould enable the U.S. administration to increase the pressure on Russia and strengthen its support for Ukraine, while at the same time allowing it to remain one step behind the Europeans,\u201d a German government official who advises Merz said in Berlin just ahead of Trump\u2019s announcement. <\/p>\n<p>The approach also allows Trump to maintain what the official called some of the \u201cequidistance that may have characterized the first months of the Trump administration from an American perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>European divisions remain<\/p>\n<p>Not all European countries are on board with the approach, however. In the Oval Office, Rutte listed four Nordic countries in addition to the U.K. and the Netherlands as backing the plan to send U.S. weapons to Ukraine. France, whose President Emmanuel Macron has long pushed for Europeans to build up their own defense industrial base by buying locally, was a notable omission from the list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018One step behind the Europeans\u2019 Despite Trump\u2019s increasing disillusionment with Putin for his lack of interest in a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2594,1194,473,32,34,2000,299,36,1945,1824,5167,2992,2597,1115,46,332,811,3053,657,15,49,333,2601,1116],"class_list":{"0":"post-267445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-air-defense","9":"tag-budget","10":"tag-defense","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-emmanuel-macron","13":"tag-eu","14":"tag-europe","15":"tag-france","16":"tag-friedrich-merz","17":"tag-germany","18":"tag-manufacturing","19":"tag-mark-rutte","20":"tag-military","21":"tag-norway","22":"tag-policy","23":"tag-russia","24":"tag-security","25":"tag-the-netherlands","26":"tag-ukraine","27":"tag-united-kingdom","28":"tag-united-states","29":"tag-vladimir-putin","30":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","31":"tag-weapons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114864736612114711","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}