Leading From Behind

By Nick Catoggio

Tuesday, August 19, 2025

 

As a soft autocracy, the United States no longer has values, it has interests. And by definition those interests reflect the autocrat’s personal interests, including his interest in being flattered by fellow heads of state.

 

That’s why Monday’s summit with Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders was so hard to predict. As ominous as our very fickle president’s rhetoric about Ukraine became after last week’s meeting with Vladimir Putin, “no one, including me, will be surprised if he turns around following this afternoon’s mega-summit with European leaders and calls for $100 billion in new weapons for Kyiv,” I wrote yesterday.

 

And that’s basically what happened.

 

We’ll come back to that. For the moment, let’s pause to appreciate that the outcome of the deadliest conflict in Europe since 1945 now depends in part on which side is more clever about flagrantly pandering to Donald Trump’s ego.

 

Putin pandered shrewdly in Alaska when he affirmed the president’s belief that Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine had Trump been in office in 2022. That was his way of reminding his counterpart that this is Joe Biden’s “stupid war” and thus one that he shouldn’t feel obliged to involve himself in.

 

But the European delegation outdid Putin. They traveled en masse to Trump’s home, meeting him literally where he is, in what the president surely saw as a show of supplication. Zelensky wore a suit to show respect for His Majesty, resolving a preposterous point of contention from when he visited the White House earlier this year. He presented Trump with a letter from his wife addressed to the first lady to thank her for lobbying Putin on behalf of Ukraine’s kidnapped children. And then the attendees held a big roundtable meeting in front of the cameras where the leaders of Europe laid it on thick.

 

The only blip came when Friedrich Merz, chancellor of ever-serious Germany, pressed the president forcefully to demand a ceasefire during what was supposed to be the singing-Trump’s-praises portion of the remarks. But that was quickly smoothed over, and by the end of the afternoon the commander in chief was showing off his collection of “Four More Years” caps to Zelensky and Emmanuel Macron like an 8-year-old showing grown-ups his baseball card collection.

 

Don’t feel bad for the Europeans, though, even if you found the spectacle grubby, embarrassing, and unbecoming of Western leadership at a moment of mass death. (And you should.) This is what they get for having foolishly outsourced their security to idiotic American voters.

 

It was a pitiful scene. But it worked. The mission was accomplished.

 

Mission accomplished.

 

The mission was to convince Trump not to withdraw from the war.

 

Putin tempted the president to do so during their Alaska meeting by making demands that he knew the Ukrainians would reject, like ceding control of the unoccupied parts of the Donbas. He understands that Trump favors peace at any cost, including an outright surrender by Kyiv if need be, because proving his prowess at ending wars is more important to him than Ukrainian sovereignty. By asking for the impossible, Putin created a win-win for Russia: Either the White House would browbeat Zelensky into accepting his terms, or Zelensky would say no and an angry Trump would punish him by washing his hands of Ukraine.

 

Russia offered the president an exit strategy from the war, in other words. The fact that every major European leader instantly hopped on a plane to Washington to lobby Trump against it shows how worried they were that he might take advantage.

 

Yesterday’s meeting was all about reminding him that Ukraine’s survival depends on continued American logistical support. Naturally, that was packaged in the language of “deals” and filthy lucre for the United States: The $100 billion in weapons I mentioned earlier will be purchased by Europe from Washington, not donated by the U.S. to the Ukrainians as happened repeatedly during the Biden era. “We’re not giving anything. We’re selling weapons,” the president said on Monday, reminding observers that, for him, Ukraine’s fate is ultimately just business.

 

But the Ukrainians will take it. If Trump needs to imagine himself as a war profiteer to get excited about containing Russian expansionism, so be it. Since the minerals deal we signed with Ukraine a few months ago evidently wasn’t enough to keep him invested in the country’s existence, maybe a mountain of cash for armaments will do so. When in doubt, buy the man off.

 

The new weapons deal would have made Monday’s meeting a qualified success even if that were the extent of its accomplishments. The Europeans came bearing smiles, praise, and a huge check, and kept Trump nominally in Ukraine’s corner for the time being. Far more surprising, though, was that they also hoped to convince him that there won’t be long-term peace unless the U.S. agrees to help protect Ukraine from future Russian invasions after the current war ends—and the president … agreed.

 

I think?

 

“During the meeting we discussed Security Guarantees for Ukraine, which Guarantees would be provided by the various European Countries, with a coordination with the United States of America,” he wrote afterward, awkwardly, on Truth Social. When a reporter asked him what that meant specifically, he answered, “There’s going to be a lot of help. They are the first line of defense because they’re there. They’re Europe. But we’re going to help them out also. We’ll be involved.”

 

Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of NATO, told Fox News that details about America’s role in protecting Ukraine would be worked out in the days to come, but he couldn’t contain his enthusiasm about Trump’s commitment in principle during Monday’s roundtable meeting. “I’m really excited,” Rutte said to Trump. “The fact that you have said I’m willing to participate in security guarantees is a big step. It’s really a breakthrough.”

 

As recently as Friday, the president was sternly reminding Ukraine that it’s a small power at war with a large one and should keep that in mind when deciding whether to accept Putin’s terms. Some 72 hours later, he sounded poised to commit the U.S. military to Ukraine’s defense the next time Russia comes banging on the door. Now that’s a successful summit.

 

Unless we’ve misunderstood what Trump meant when he said America will “be involved” in Ukraine’s security, that is. And many of us have.

 

‘NATO-lite’?

 

Blame Stupefied Steve Witkoff for that.

 

Trump’s bumbling liaison to Putin told CNN this past Sunday that while the Russians oppose NATO membership for Ukraine, they’ve allegedly agreed to the next best thing. “We were able to win the following concession, that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO,” Witkoff claimed. “We sort of were able to bypass that and get an agreement that the United States could offer Article 5 protection, which was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that.”

 

Article 5 is the section of the NATO treaty that treats an attack on one member as an attack on all. It’s the legal mechanism that obliges the U.S. military to defend NATO partners in battle. According to Witkoff, both Trump and Putin have now accepted something along those lines for postwar Ukraine.

 

Uh, what?

 

It’s hard to read Witkoff’s quote any other way. ​​”Would Ukrainians prefer to have all their conquered territory back? Sure,” wrote National Review’s Jim Geraghty, taking him at his word. “But when it comes to consolation prizes, a serious military alliance with the United States and knowing the 82nd Airborne would parachute in if Russian forces ever tried to invade again is pretty sweet.”

 

Prominent “America First” nationalists were as dismayed as Geraghty was upbeat. “I’m just lost … at [how] the United States offering an Article 5 commitment, for a security guarantee to Ukraine, is a win for the United States,” Steve Bannon complained in the course of blaming Russia’s war of conquest on the “globalists” at the European Union and NATO.

 

No one was more surprised than the Russians, though. “We reiterate the position that we have voiced on multiple occasions that we categorically reject any scenarios, envisaging the arrival of a military contingent in Ukraine, involving NATO states,” a spokeswoman for the country’s foreign ministry said.

 

I don’t know what sort of head injury Witkoff might be afflicted with that would lead him to believe Putin will tolerate a “NATO-lite” postwar arrangement for Ukraine. The entire point of this conflict from the Kremlin’s perspective is to subjugate the country, ideally by absorbing it but alternatively by demilitarizing it and replacing its leadership with obedient toadies in the mold of Viktor Yanukovych.

 

An “Article 5-like” security guarantee for Kyiv by the United States would make that impossible, defeating the purpose of the war. The only way Putin might agree to it would be if Trump assured him privately that the U.S. won’t follow through on it if Russia invades again.

 

The president isn’t being that cagey, though. He’s already begun promising publicly that American troops won’t fight for Ukraine.

 

He was asked point-blank on Fox News this morning how confident Americans should be that U.S. boots won’t end up on the ground there in the future. “You have my assurance,” Trump said. As if to underline the point, he faulted the Ukrainians elsewhere in the interview for their hubris in resisting invasion by a nation that’s “10 times your size.” (Russia’s population is roughly three and a half times larger than Ukraine’s.) Even in a cause he believed in, like disabling Iran’s nuclear program, he wasn’t willing to risk American lives until Israel had softened up Iranian air defenses.

 

Donald Trump is not sending the 82^nd Airborne into Ukraine, risking heavy U.S. casualties and potentially a world war to help a “friend” he doesn’t think is a friend defeat an “enemy” he doesn’t think is an enemy. Whatever he means when he talks about security guarantees for Ukraine—and I doubt very much that he has a firm idea—it ain’t “Article 5-like” protection.

 

To borrow a phrase from the Obama era: Insofar as he and America end up leading the defense of postwar Ukraine, we’ll be leading from behind.

 

Above it all.

 

The phrasing the president chose in his Truth Social post after Monday’s meeting reflects the subordinate supporting role he has in mind. “Guarantees would be provided by the various European Countries, with a coordination with the United States of America,” he said. Europe will provide security for Ukraine and the U.S. will “coordinate” with it.

 

You can read as much or as little into that as you like.

 

At a minimum, one would hope, it means America will agree to supply the European coalition with arms in a new war against Russia. At most, it might mean that U.S. air power joins an effort to impose a no-fly zone over the country—although that’s unlikely, as it would place American airmen in Russia’s crosshairs.

 

Another possibility is the U.S. agreeing to fill security vacuums created across wider Europe if the European coalition ends up sucked into conflict in Ukraine. A former U.S. ambassador told the New York Times that the Ukrainians might endorse an arrangement in which “European nations agreed to provide military assets inside Ukraine in the case of a future attack, while Mr. Trump agreed to back them up with defense assets stationed in neighboring countries.”

 

There are also scenarios in which the Europeans deploy small numbers of troops to Ukraine as peacekeepers, military trainers, and/or a “tripwire” force, gambling that Putin won’t dare attack the country again if there’s a chance that troops from NATO nations will end up killed in the crossfire.

 

For an obvious reason, though, none of these options are great: They all depend to greater or lesser extents on European powers being willing to fight Russia if forced, a development they’ve dodged for 80 years. (Mainly thanks to effective deterrence by NATO, of course.) Even if they’re willing to do that without Americans alongside them on the battlefield, their chances would depend on a Trumpified U.S. agreeing to keep weapons flowing to them for as long as the conflict rages.

 

Having seen what we’ve seen this year, and knowing how reluctant populist Republicans are to align America with the liberal West against the authoritarian East, how confident would you feel as a European leader with troops fighting in Ukraine that you won’t wake up one day to news that Uncle Sam no longer wants to be the arsenal of democracy? The “TACO” problem may be manageable on Wall Street, but it isn’t on the battlefield. You can’t commit to a war whose success depends on Donald Trump’s friendship and resolve.

 

Ultimately, the only people the Ukrainians can rely on are themselves. So instead of asking the U.S. and Europe to pledge men to fight in a future conflict, Zelensky might ask for security guarantees in the form of a massive postwar military buildup supplied by Ukraine’s allies. That leads to another problem, though: How will Putin be convinced to accept that buildup as a condition for peace?

 

“The only credible guarantee for Ukraine in current circumstances is a national one: that the West would help Ukraine build a force capable of defending the country and deterring a future attack,” defense expert Thomas Wright wrote in The Atlantic on Monday. “But there is no sign that Moscow has moved off of its demands for Ukrainian demilitarization.” Nor is there reason to think that it will. A heavily armed Ukraine threatens Putin’s goal of subjugation even more than foreign troop commitments do: Trump and Europe might be unwilling to fight a power as menacing as Russia if their respective bluffs are called, after all, but the Ukrainians obviously are not.

 

Russia wants a Ukraine it can dominate and Ukraine won’t agree to be dominated. Every potential peace deal starts, and seemingly ends, with that fact. Unless and until Putin agrees to concessions that will make future Russian domination impossible, there’s nothing to talk about.