In a recent campaign speech in Las Vegas, US president Joe Biden recalled a meeting with European leaders in 2021. “Right after I was elected, I went to a G7 meeting in southern England,” he told the crowd. “And I sat down and said: America is back! And Mitterrand from Germany, I mean France, looked at me and said ‘how long you back for?’”
The reference to Francois Mitterrand, the former president of France who died in 1996, made headlines as the latest slip of the tongue by Biden, who has an unfortunate tendency to mix up words that has at times raised questions about whether his age may be an issue in the coming US presidential election.
But there was something else worth paying attention to in the anecdote. The substance of the story was that Biden had reassured European leaders that the United States was “back” and could be counted on again after years in which the transatlantic relationship had suffered deeply under his predecessor Donald Trump.
The response had been cautious: “how long for?”
“How long for” is a question that is once again haunting European leaders ahead of the US election in November, in which Trump is aiming to make a return to the White House.
Of foremost concern is that the US may no longer be committed to helping Ukraine defeat Russia’s invasion, with a bank of hardliners aligned with Trump in the Republican Party already letting their dislike for aid for Kyiv be known. Even with Biden still in power this group has managed to deadlock a support package for Ukraine in Washington, with Trump reportedly lobbying hard against the bill in the background.
Without the US Europe does not currently have the manufacturing capacity to supply the ammunition that Kyiv needs to continue effectively opposing Russia’s invasion. A year ago the EU set a goal of supplying Ukraine with one million rounds of artillery ammunition by March 2024. It is not going to meet that pledge.
The consequences for Ukraine are concrete and severe. While Russia has managed to ramp up its defence production and source supplies elsewhere, Ukrainian forces are suffering from an ammunition shortage. The imbalance has been blamed for Russia’s advance in Avdiivka, considered the gateway to the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk.
A former battalion commander, Yevhen Dykyi, told Ukrainian radio that the shortage was limiting what Kyiv’s army could do. The Russians “can still make some insignificant advances during the winter, it is quite possible that they can make a final push on Avdiivka, unfortunately”, he said, according to Ukrainian media. “If it weren’t for the ammunition shortage I would have said that Avdiivka could be held because the garrison is holding up brilliantly.”
Aside from the devastating impact for Ukraine if Russian forces press forward, the knock-on effects of Kyiv losing ground are also serious for the rest of Europe. It would mean lengthening an expensive war, losing credibility as promises to Ukraine come up short, and potentially worsening a refugee crisis that is causing political ructions across the Continent.
Ukraine is not the only issue in which there is growing concern about the impact of a second Trump presidency on Europe. Trump has floated the idea of a blanket 10 per cent tariff increase on imports from overseas, with the idea of raising revenues and incentivising domestic production.
Part of Biden’s rapprochement with Europe has involved reversing the Trump era US-EU trade war, though the two sides have never been able to overcome their differences on steel and aluminium tariffs.
There are indications that a second time around Trump would go further, according to close advisers who spoke to reporters at Bloomberg this week. They mentioned plans for punitive measures for electric vehicles that are assembled in the EU, as well as countermeasures aimed at EU digital service taxes that are seen as targeting US technology giants.
On Wednesday Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg and US national security adviser Jake Sullivan held a joint press conference in which they sought to stress that the transatlantic relationship was strong. “This is not charity. It is in our own security interest,” Stoltenberg said of support for Ukraine.
Sullivan insisted that regardless of recent events support for Ukraine was shared both among Republicans and Democrats. “Standing up and supporting Ukraine is in the fundamental national security interest of the United States and of the transatlantic alliance. We’re going to stay the course.”