US intel halt to Ukraine reshapes global defence

As Donald Trump and Kamala Harris faced off in the 2024 US presidential race, Estonian and Taiwanese troops were training together at Fort Sill in Oklahoma to use US-made HIMARS long-range rocket systems their governments had purchased.

- Peter Apps

As Donald Trump and Kamala Harris faced off in the 2024 US presidential race, Estonian and Taiwanese troops were training together at Fort Sill in Oklahoma to use US-made HIMARS long-range rocket systems their governments had purchased.

Those military sales and the associated training were part of a worldwide effort by the then-Biden administration to tie together the US and its allies, something Mr Biden’s defence secretary Lloyd Austin termed a global “convergence” when it came to planning and technology to confront a growing autocratic axis of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

This week, those authorities and military commanders will be looking at those weapons systems — and a host of others — with much greater nervousness after Mr Trump’s administration shut down intelligence sharing with Ukraine for several days in a way that rendered HIMARS rockets there temporarily ineffective.

Allied states are still digesting the scale of those implications. But in Europe, both the European Union and its constituent member states are pledging a massive rearmament effort explicitly aimed not just at deterring Russia but ending decades of dependence on the United States.

Europe’s apparently unprecedented rearmament initiative including a €150-billion (5.5 trillion baht) EU defence package, a move with profound implications for the bloc, its member nations and European arms manufacturers.

That represents a massive change. Ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European nations have been working through Nato with the US military to devise sophisticated defence plans in case Moscow subsequently acts to attack an alliance member in eastern or northern Europe.

Part of those plans, defence sources say, involve demonstrating an ability to hit back at Russia hard — but these are heavily reliant on US-made rockets and F-35 jet fighters.