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This is the part that seems like the lynchpin to me. Suppose that the Europeans reasonably believe, as they have for 50 years now, that they can call America's bluff here and either not pony up, or only pony up for things that are not useful to the war effort like expanded benefits for servicemembers? Are we willing to back that up by writing off Europe? Is Europe able to hold us hostage by putting a knife to their own throats?
The whole point of my argument is that very visibly phasing out free support for Ukraine (while continuing to offer paid-for support) unambiguously forces the decision, under circumstances where Europe has more to lose than the US if support for Ukraine ceases. If the US was following my approach and Europe didn't pay up*, then US support for Ukraine would cease at the end of the phase-out period and Europe would be faced with the even more visible choice between ponying up and watching Ukraine lose.
* Note that Europe has, in fact, been paying about 60% of the financial cost of supporting Ukraine, although this is arguably less than our "fair share" given that it is our backyard and not yours.
Now the US has forced Europe to put up or shut up, the bond market thinks that Germany is going to borrow a lot of money to pay for rearmament, and the usual suspects on the British left are freaking out about Rachael Reeves looking for welfare cuts to pay for rearmament. So Europe acting collectively to defend Ukraine is likely - but in our timeline it is going to be implicitly anti-American in a way which could have been avoided by smarter US policy.
It's possible that, since the start of the war, the EU has supported Russia more than Ukraine via its imports of natural gas and oil.
I ran this by AI, and it seems eminently plausible. Here's what Grok says about EU purchases from Russia since the start of the war, although I wouldn't take it as gospel:
The comparison is a bit unfair because Russia doesn't produce natural gas for free, so it's not all profit. But still, it's fair to say that the EU is funding both sides of the war. Kinda like the US funding both sides of the Israel/Hamas conflict.
I am struggling to determine if this is correct. It appears to be true insofar as it considers financial aid (not military or humanitarian aid) from EU institutions. If you include all types of aid, and include European countries themselves as donors (rather than EU bodies), it is not true, from what I can tell.
(1) https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/28489/ukrainian-military-humanitarian-and-financial-aid-donors/ (2) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/24/eu-spends-more-russian-oil-gas-than-financial-aid-ukraine-report
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