Opinion | Ukraine Has Picked Up the Torch America Dropped

This might be difficult for many readers to grasp — given our nation’s longstanding military supremacy — but the largest and most battle-hardened land force in the western world may well be the Ukrainian Army. While the precise numbers are classified, the Atlantic Council estimated in 2025 that Ukraine had   roughly a million   men and women under arms, the vast majority of whom serve in the ground forces.

America’s total force is larger than Ukraine’s, but to put the size of Ukrainian land forces in perspective, the combined size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps is   around 620,000 . It’s also worth noting that the U.S. forces have much less combat experience than Ukraine forces — especially when it comes to combat with a great power.

No one should minimize Ukraine’s manpower issues (more recent   estimates   place its total number of active troops well below the million-body peak) or the fact that it has no nuclear weapons and Russia has thousands. But its army is still vast, and its military is the only western force that has fully adapted to modern drone warfare. Indeed, Ukraine is arguably the world’s leader in drone warfare.

Rapid change isn’t just occurring in Ukraine. Other developments across the western alliance show that European nations are working with shocking speed to free themselves from dependence on America.

France is   expanding its nuclear arsenal   and increasing its defense spending. It has even changing its nuclear doctrine to allow it to   deploy nuclear-armed aircraft   outside France.

Germany has approved a plan to spend   up to a trillion euros   on defense and infrastructure. It has also set the goal of creating the   strongest military in Europe   by 2039 (ironically enough, the 100-year anniversary of the German invasion of Poland).

Canada is enacting its own defense budget increases — with the added twist that it will be   spending far less money   on American weapons.

This decision mirrors larger European and allied trends. Our allies are increasing their defense budgets and decreasing their dependence on American technology. Just last week, for example, NATO procurement officials decided to replace aging American-made early warning aircraft with   newer designs   from Saab, a Swedish manufacturer, and Bombardier of Canada. Ukraine has signed deals and letters of intent to purchase potentially hundreds of advanced fighters from   Sweden   and   France .

All of this is taking place after news reports that Denmark had been prepared to   blow up airfields   in Greenland if its fellow NATO member, the United States, attempted to invade.

Given these developments, is it any wonder that Zelensky has   proposed a new defense arrangement   for Europe if America keeps stepping back — an alliance between E.U. nations, plus non-E.U. powers like the United Kingdom, Norway, Turkey and Ukraine?

There are   readers who will welcome these developments. Good, you might think. Europe should take primary responsibility for its own defense. But there is an immense difference between allies who step up to contribute their fair share to a cooperative alliance and nations who engage in a military buildup to replace American power, which they no longer trust.

I don’t think Americans fully appreciate the extraordinary cost of Trump’s bluster and blunders. It should go without saying, but once you threaten to invade an allied country, you don’t just place the existence of the alliance in jeopardy; you raise the possibility of allies turning into mortal enemies. You can also trigger the kind of insecurity and scramble for power that contributed to the start of World War I.

In practical terms, it’s hard to see how alienating American allies puts America first.

There’s certainly no military benefit. Americans have spent the last several weeks watching our president dismiss our European allies as irrelevant then rage at them for not helping American forces reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

By launching the war against Iran without seeking the help of (or even consulting) our European allies, we lost potential access to their advanced fighters and frigates, as well as to France’s carrier battle group. In this context, there is no such thing as addition by subtraction. We are not stronger when there are fewer forces that will deploy to our aid.

There’s no fiscal benefit, either. This may sound overly basic, but it needs to be said: If you break faith with your allies, you can’t count on them to come to your defense. And that means you have to spend more money to maintain the same level of deterrence.

That’s exactly what Trump is planning to do; he has submitted a roughly   $1.5 trillion dollar budget request   for the U.S. military, a staggering 40 percent increase from this fiscal year.

And where is the economic benefit? On Friday, Fareed Zakaria published a   piece   in The Washington Post observing that European and other allied governments aren’t just attempting to achieve greater military independence from the United States; they’re also attempting to gain more financial independence. And even though they have serious differences with China, the primary beneficiary of a rift in European and American relations may well be … China.

Zakaria quotes a Chinese businessman who puts Trump’s catastrophic diplomatic blunders in perspective. “For us, Trump’s attack on Iran is less consequential than his threat to attack Greenland,” he said. “When he did that, to America’s oldest allies, I knew that Europe would not follow America’s approach to China.”

History has   its hinge points, and here is one: On Friday night, Feb. 25, 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky   released a brief video   from Kyiv. He told the people of Ukraine that the government has not fled to safety in the west and that it intended to stand and fight.

“We are here,” Zelensky said. “We are in Kyiv. We are protecting Ukraine.”

When I visited Ukraine in 2023, I spoke to Ukrainian soldiers who told me that statement sent a jolt of electricity through Ukrainian lines. From that moment, they knew they would not surrender; they would stand.

In hindsight, that decision hasn’t just changed the course of Ukrainian history. Its ripple effects are extending across the globe.

Here’s another hinge point: the night of Nov. 5, 2024, when the American people returned Donald Trump to the White House. It’s now clear that Trump’s second term will cause generational damage to American alliances.

Given that Americans saw how Trump behaved in his first term and put him back in power anyway, it’s fair for Europeans to conclude that the rift isn’t with Trump alone; its also with a critical mass of Americans.

The European nations don’t have the luxury of blaming Trump’s re-election on inflation and the border — or presuming that the western alliance will be safe once Trump is gone. One of Trump’s most likely heirs, JD Vance, is arguably even more hostile to the western alliance and Ukraine than Trump is. After all, Vance recently said that one of the things he’s “ proudest ” of is the administration’s decision to stop buying weapons for Ukraine. How can we be trusted as an ally if only one political party is committed to fulfilling our commitments?

For the foreseeable future, America’s allies will reasonably fear that they may be one election away from abandonment and betrayal.