Europe prepares for a severance with America that may come much sooner than anticipated

With a mixture of regret laced with incredulity, European leaders gathered in Brussels yesterday to marshal their forces for a power struggle not with Russia but the US.

- Patrick Wintour

Even now, at the 11th hour, most of Europe hopes this coming battle of wills can be averted and the Trump administration can still be persuaded that forcing Ukraine to the negotiating table, disarmed and blinded, will not be in the long-term strategic interest of America.

It has fallen to John Healey, the defence secretary, and the chief of the defence staff, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, meeting their opposite numbers in Washington, to see if there are any conditions in which the US will provide the backstop Europe insists it needs to send a reassurance force into Ukraine to protect a ceasefire.

"We will know very soon if the US has set its face against helping Europe, and what its explanation is," said one European diplomat.

As the French president, Emmanuel Macron, put it in his highly patriotic address on Wednesday night: "I want to believe that the United States will remain at our side. But we must be ready if that is not the case." In saying this, he caught the spirit of the Brussels summit, and the new mood in Germany being led by the chancellor-elect, Friedrich Merz.

It is, so far as relations with Washington are concerned, a mood of optimism of the will combined with pessimism of the intellect. It requires Europe to prepare for a severance with America, and one that may come much sooner than Nato planners had envisaged.