Eastern Europe Is In The Crosshairs
A deal in Ukraine seems all but inevitable. That puts Eastern Europe in real danger.
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For much of the past year in Warsaw, the first question I’d be asked by Poles and Ukrainians alike when they learned I’d grown up in the United States was who I thought would win the 2024 election. The follow-up, inevitably, was whether a victorious Trump would really let Ukraine and Eastern Europe fall to the Russians.
In the day or two following Trump’s win, this fear was palpable among Polish friends and loved ones. But, after months of warnings of the apocalyptic consequences of Trump’s return to power for Ukraine and NATO’s East, a new narrative has emerged along Europe’s frontier with Russia—don’t panic, but prepare.
The likely conclusion of the war in Ukraine during Trump’s first year in office will only be the tip of the iceberg of the transformations on the horizon for Eastern Europe. States in the region, most notably Poland and the Baltics, are already looking beyond Ukraine to a scenario in which Russia might soon be ready to unleash its war machine on NATO’s East itself, which, without ironclad American security guarantees, would be more vulnerable than ever. And yet, for Eastern Europe, this tense moment offers surprising opportunities. In the absence of America’s guiding and often constraining hand, they will have the chance to redefine their own defense future, reap the rewards of the post-war economic order in Ukraine, and finally force Western Europe to confront the realities of the multipolar world head-on.
What we are looking at, in other words, is a complete shift of the balance of power in Eastern Europe. In the short term, Poland and the Baltics will have no choice but to pick up slack and assume a stronger position in Europe than they have in memory, as they stare down the barrel of a Russia that will only be further emboldened by a de facto triumph in Ukraine and the weakening of the American security blanket in Europe. Meanwhile, Ukraine is facing its worst-case scenario, with the spigot of U.S. support likely to turn itself off—forcing Europe to take the reins of Ukraine’s, and its own, defense for the first time in generations.
The chances of Trump doing an about-face on aid for Ukraine and continuing to fund its defense are, unfortunately, very slim—and Ukraine is expected to be forced to the negotiating table. European efforts, led by Poland, to continue supporting Ukraine’s military, will at best stave off the inevitable, and the Biden administration knows this. Recent changes in policy like the lifting of prohibitions on Ukraine’s use of long-range ATACMS against Russian territory and shipments of anti-personnel mines are, more than anything else, measures meant to help Ukraine secure as favorable a position as possible prior to negotiations and to give it at least a modicum of deterrence against future Russian aggression.
It goes almost without saying that any peace deal is likely to end in the permanent occupation of the territories Russia currently holds and in forcing Ukraine to abandon its NATO ambitions—in short, a win for Russia. But even then, many questions remain about how such a “peace” would be administered in practice, and how Ukraine could avoid being swallowed up by Russia down the line. The leading proposal of the Trump transition team, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, would compel Ukraine to promise not to join NATO for twenty years, while a continuing flow of U.S. armaments deters future Russian aggression and some kind of European peacekeeping force polices the demilitarized zone where the fighting has frozen.
A proposal along those lines suits Poland well, with Polish president Andrzej Duda last year suggesting that Polish troops could be deployed to Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping effort. Meanwhile, Poland is poised to benefit immensely from post-war reconstruction efforts, with 3,000 Polish companies registering with the Polish Investment and Trade Agency to participate in Ukraine’s reconstruction. Helping to guarantee Ukraine’s security on the ground does of course carry considerable risk—bringing Poland all the closer to a clash with Russia. Nevertheless, this is exactly the sort of role Polish leaders have spent years preparing the country’s military for.
The belief among Eastern Europe’s leaders is that, no matter what they do, they are in Russia’s crosshairs—and the priority must be an active defense. Leaders further west on the continent have tepidly come around to the same conclusion, with recent pledges to invest not only in national defense spending, but also in developing Europe’s military-industrial complex. There is no reason to think that Putin will be placated through a negotiated settlement in Ukraine. Quite the contrary. With, effectively, a win in Ukraine behind him and a U.S. leadership unwilling to engage militarily in Europe beyond the bare minimum, Putin may well decide the time is ripe for further reconstitution of the Soviet sphere of influence. Western Europe has been inching up its readiness, with France for instance on track to bring its defense spending up the 2% GDP mark this year, but Eastern Europeans know that if Russia strikes, it will be up to them to hold the line. Poland at the moment has the third largest military in NATO, and, if Ukraine’s army was able to keep Russian forces at bay for nearly three years, the hope is that Poland’s more robust and technologically advanced military could do the same.
It is hard to overstate just how uncertain the security of Eastern Europe suddenly becomes with Trump’s election. A full-scale American retreat from NATO is less likely than widespread discussion might make it seem—the recent landmark opening of a U.S. base in Poland and efforts to Trump-proof American aid to Ukraine and NATO mean that it will be difficult for Trump to distance himself from the alliance entirely. But, with Russia updating its nuclear doctrine, firing a nuclear-capable ballistic missile at Ukraine, and last week placing the new U.S. base in Poland on its potential target list, Putin clearly believes that he has the upper hand—and that Europe lacks the will or the ability to properly defend its Eastern frontier.
With Trump on track to alter the entire regional paradigm a few short months from now, NATO’s East is scrambling to mitigate the fallout. That puts Poland, in particular, in the hot seat and in need of not only proving its worth as a rising military powerhouse, but also of working with countries like Romania, Sweden, the Baltic states, and besieged Ukraine to collectively keep Moscow at bay. But this moment is, above all, a crucible for Europe. For decades, Western Europeans have been able to bask in the security blanket the United States offered and to indulge in pacifistic visions. That illusion ended first for the states bordering Putin’s Russia, but Europe is now facing the same fork in the road—either make security a priority and forge an independent path forward on defense, or let Putin continue to have his way.
Michal Kranz is a Warsaw-based journalist who covers Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He has reported from the ground during the war in Ukraine, covered politics and society in Lebanon, and regularly reports on regional developments from Poland.
