Earlier this summer, liberal media outlets around Europe hailed the move to raise defense spending to 5 percent of GDP. While this promise, made at June’s NATO summit, conformed to a demand originally made by Donald Trump, it was widely cast as a move toward greater European self-sufficiency. For some, the pledge was even a realization of German chancellor Friedrich Merz’s talk of the continent showing greater independence — and might even signal an end of European deference to Washington.

Outwardly the main aim of the 5 percent target is to harden Europe’s defenses against Russia. Yet this joint commitment by European NATO members (Spain alone dissented) was meant to send a message not just to Moscow but to Washington. For this European move was above all designed as a way to stiffen Trump’s commitment to NATO and US resolve in supporting Ukraine. While Kyiv’s European allies have since 2022 provided more than Washington in military aid (in terms of sheer hardware costs at least), ramping up spending could show the Americans that Europe is serious and keep Trump interested in a long-haul conflict.

Even last month’s US-EU trade agreement — an unbalanced set of tariffs and promises of European investment in the United States, imposed by Trump on European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen — was said to obey this logic: the EU must play nice with the US president in order to keep him invested in Ukraine. Never mind the democratic propriety of such a rushed and even unwritten commercial deal or how committing to buying $750 billion of US liquified natural gas fits into Europe’s previously flagship Green Deal plan: anchoring the United States in European defense comes first.