Anti-Trump Approach of the European Union

After US President Donald Trump declared in his election campaigns that he will stop the Russia-Ukraine war, many warmongers in Europe feared an adverse impact on their weapon shops and started an all-out smear campaign against Trump and his administration. Duplicity between the words and actions have been glaring among European Union (EU) leaders. While EU nations advocate war against the terrorists of Hamas/Hezbollah to stop, they want to continue it in Ukraine because their shops are selling the war machines like hot cakes. If the Ukrainian war stops, most of the EU leaders will lose their relevance as well as business. Britain trying to take the leadership role of Europe despite having opted out of the EU, seems most desperate. Starmer possesses good command over his language of double speak while trying to be a ‘yes-man’ of Trump but indulging in anti-Trump rants the most. Macron, Scholz and Trudeau are not far behind. It is likely that in the coming days and months, there could be a strong rivalry amongst Britain, France, Canada & Germany and to lesser extent Italy and Poland in this regard.

The Genesis of anti-Trump Campaign

Donald Trump is being perceived as a conservative leader, like a businessman who doesn’t encourage war or war-oriented alliances. That was his approach in his first term too when the NATO members enjoyed the lavish expenditure by USA. In 2019 itself, President Trump was very critical of the EU members of NATO for their far little contribution and had advocated them to increase their expenditure to 3-5% of their GDPs but they didn’t heed. Trump didn’t like it but was soon out of White House. Now when he is re-elected, all EU members of NATO are highly apprehensive of him.

When US Election campaigns were going on, writing was on the walls for Biden to be a sure loser. Under those circumstances, UK prime Minister Kier Starmer had tasked 100-odd left-oriented political echo system of his Labour party to campaign for Biden and Left-leaning Kamala Harris that had not gone well with Trump. EU-led media houses were asked by their respective administrations to down-play the clear lead Trump had over Biden/Kamala during the run-up to the election. Even worse were the EU approach towards Trump-led USA trying to hoodwink the charter of NATO when they tried to push for granting membership to Ukraine before he assumed the office BUT clearly, they couldn’t have their way.

EU’s anti-Trump Approach in 2025

After Donald Trump assumed the White House on 20 Jan 25, EU and its NATO members tried hard to set a narrative against any ceasefire attempt that didn’t meet Ukraine & EU’s expectations, but they couldn’t succeed. Trump was undeterred. Immediately after Ceasefire was signed between Israel & Hamas, the focus shifted to Ukraine. Trump even made a unilateral decision ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine for which some member nations felt sidelined. US Secretary of State Mark Rubio’s speech in Munich Security conference set the cat amongst pigeons. He clearly asked EU to introspect how their own democratic principles were being ignored when they tried to shun away from Citizen’s mandate obtained by Far-Right political parties. He denounced attempts to form political alliances just to deny the far right their due if chosen by the voters. There also laid a message for India too where Chors & Thugs forged an alliance of strange bed-fellows just to deny PM Modi another term in the office (read “I-N-D-I-A of Thugs?”, https://thecounterviews.in/articles/i-n-d-i-a-of-thugs-part-3/). This is a new trend of apartheid by the ‘Left of the Centre’ EU politics shown against the ‘right of center’ nationalist parties whether in India, Italy, France, Germany or most recently, Georgia. 

Surely, utterances of Donald Trump against Ukrainian Prez such as ‘Dictator’ amongst some others, were uncalled for. However, EU nations behaving like a rowdy ‘gang’ against US-led NATO was unprecedented. In Munich Security Conference 2025 itself, EU gave plenty of indications of having a parallel defence & security system for the EU member States thus shunning out the US-led NATO. It was like a tug-of-war in the open, in a way that US and EU had a war of words on Ukraine and Russia. There was a clear cleavage in the so-called EU-US unity. UK PM Starmer, French Prez Macron or German Chancellor Scholz could have dipped each of their words spoken against Trump in honey or sugar syrup, but those statements will clearly perceived as an anti-Trump. Starmer has somehow proven himself as a man with the art of the best double-speak in this regard. The near bankrupt UK is trying to portrait an image of leading the pack of inefficient Europe, but his hollow words clearly show him helpless.

Anti-trump attitude of the many European nations is not only with reference to their differing approach towards Ukraine but some other decisions as well. Trump administration’s new punitive tariffs being imposed; his utterance of Canada being made 51st US province, stoppage of the USAID, Trump’s anti-immigrant stand for their deportation and so on. Similarly, Trump was criticized for his policies against illegal migrants. Elon Musk’s tweet on pseudo-secular approach of the United Kingdom against the Pakistani rapists put the fuel on fire. The differences also referred to the tough stance of Trump against the NATO members asking them for increasing their defence expenditures to near 5% of their GDP. Till now Europe has been fully dependent on US but that will not remain so. The European members of NATO have not been used to such high defence budgets and hence, disenchantment is clearly visible among them. They were unhappy against Trump in his first tenure too (read “Foresight of NATO-Europe wins over NATO-USA”, https://thecounterviews.in/articles/foresight-of-nato-europe-wins-over-nato-us/).

The recently held European gang meeting in Britain on 03 Mar 25 was a strong indication of dessentment against Trump-led USA. Viewed in totality, it was their expression of anger against Trump’s NATO policies. EU members of NATO are at clear discomfiture against Trump’s relative proximity to Russia. EU did indulge in the war of words when Trump administration mentioned their new posture against Ukraine; firstly, that it will not get NATO membership, secondly, that all lost territories to Russia may not come back and lastly, that Zelensky has to commit leasing out his rare mineral fields to USA for hundreds of billion dollars of aid provided in the war. The last nail in the coffin was Trump’s isolated approach to the Ukrainian ceasefire that excluded EU from the talks. EU members were almost up in arms when the US Vice-Prez angered them in his speech on the EU Security Conference in Munich 2025 on the lack of internal democracy while ganging up against the far-right parties in Italy, France, Germany and the EU. He minced no words while criticizing the security challenges posed by the immigrants on their streets and the respective govts playing goody-goody words of pseudo-secularism against the wishes of their own citizens.

EU’s Plans of Ukrainian War Game

It seems that even the EU States want their pounds of flesh for their military assistance given so far to Ukraine. Presently only Trump administration has called Zelensky to sign agreement permitting USA to extract rare minerals from Ukrainian territories amounting to the official value of the provided military aid of $350 Bn. In the coming times, Zelensky should expect calls from other NATO partners too to re-imburse their military assistance. All these may lead to almost all of Ukrainian rare-mineral resources leased out to the nations who have thus far funded this war against Russia. They are the ones who are instigating the comedian President of Ukraine to continue fighting against Russia so that their war equipment sale will continue. There will be a time when the repaying capacity of Ukraine will exhaust, and it will be trapped in NATO/EU debts. Thereafter, Ukraine will lose its independence and will have to dance on the EU or NATO tunes. It seems that Zelensky had not clarified the terms and condition of the war-aids/assistance/supplies with US-led NATO before the war started.

Now when President Trump has clearly told Zelensky that the US doesn’t want to continue providing any more of aid/assistance, it will be foolish for both Zelensky and EU to continue with the war. In a new development, EU members had a meeting in Britain to evolve a further course of actions for Ukraine after Trump had clearly mentioned his intentions. It may be ok for the EU nations to pledge support to Zelensky and Ukraine BUT a very worrying development has taken place. Some of the EU nations want to put their soldiers in Ukraine when British PM Starmer briefed the media after their summit meeting of putting boots on ground and planes in the air. That will be a seed for World War III in which European members of NATO will be without USA. It could bring a total doom for Ukraine as well as some of the European nations. Clearly, anti-Trump lobby of Europe is trying to play with fire. 

Bleak Prospects of Ukraine if War Continues

President Trump knows if the Russia-Ukraine war continues, Ukraine will be staring at overall destruction. By now, Ukraine has already lost nearly 22% of the territories to Russia in Donbass, Zaporrhazia and Kherson regions. As the reports come from the combat fronts, Ukraine is facing acute shortage of troops to put up resistance to gradually advancing Russian troops all along its border with Russia. If the war continues, Ukraine will lose more territories fast. Hence, it will be in Ukrainian interest to sign a ceasefire deal as soon as possible. The only alternative to Ukrainian ceasefire is a full-fledged US-less NATO-Russia conflict in which N Korea has already joined and there will be strong possibility of Chinese troops also joining Russian forces because there is a pact between them signed in this regard in 2021. That will be catastrophic for the world that President Trump had hinted to Zelensky in his meeting on 28 Feb 25.

As on 04 Mar 25, official confirmation from White House has come that USA has put a temporary pause on any more supply of military equipment to Ukraine that also includes the last aid of $5.9 bn committed by Biden just before relinquishing office. These developments doom the prospects of any further continuation of war by Ukraine even if assisted by EU nations. On the other hand, there are contradictory statements by Zelensky of conditional signing of rare mineral agreement with USA or the ceasefire with Russia that may not find favour of the US Administration.

As the war continues, Russia may like to annex the entire territories east of Dnipro River as well as the left-over Black Sea coastal areas extending up to Odessa. That will enable Russia to have a direct border with Moldova, have a vast stretch of Black Sea coastal belt and ports and make Ukraine an entirely land-locked nation ever dependent on Russia for commerce through Black Sea. EU, NATO or the UN will not be able to get those territories back to Ukraine because there is precedence of attacking nations retaining the won-over territories, some mentioned below: -

• Azerbaijan occupied Armenian Syunik, Nagorno-Karabakh.
• Israel occupied Gaza, W Bank & Golan Height.
• UK occupied Falkland, S Georgia & Sandwich Islands of Argentina; Gibraltar of Spain.
• Russia occupied Transnistria, Abkhazia and S Ossetia
• Turkey occupying parts of Syria and N Cyprus
• China occupying Aksai Chin, parts of Ladakh of India, Inner Mongolia and Tibet.

End of Game for Zelensky

Zelensky has doomed the prospects of an erstwhile happy Ukraine by continuing war with Russia. Ukraine has lost the followings and with that its prestige too: -

1. About 22% of territories incl Donbass, Zaporrhazia and Kherson.
2. About 2/3rd of the military personnel and assets it had in Feb 2022. Their Military hardware manufacturing incl Antonov aircraft have been destroyed.
3. About 40% of its high value infrastructures and about 60% of power infra.
4. There are massive damages to the civilian habitats in several cities.
5. Millions of women & children who were shifted to over a dozen of nations in Europe, are reportedly facing exploitations.
6. The left-over natural resources of rare minerals will have to be leased out to the NATO states for repayment of debt for the military equipment received.

It is possible that Ukrainians may force Zelensky out of office or he himself may resign to prevent any further loss of face of Ukraine. Even USA is very annoyed with the behaviour of Zelensky who may be forced out of office. He has very little option. He will have to sign the ceasefire deal at the earliest. The high decibel narrative of the EU nations for Zelensky may remain on papers. It will be largely seen as anti-Trump attitude of European nations. Undoubtedly, Zelensky has also divided the NATO. 

The Bottom lines

The ‘TRUMP’ storm blowing in the world though on predicted lines, is highly unpredictable in its directions but the worse, almost entire world will be affected adversely. European nations are likely to be affected much more because they are not used to seeing the US abandoning their interest. Hence, their adaptive posture is being perceived as anti-Trump and rightly so. It is up to these European NATO nations as to how they adapt. If confrontanist, they will suffer the most. Zelensky has hardly any option but to lease out the precious national resources of rare minerals to the US as well as to some others in NATO. He and his nation will emerge as the worst loser in the NATO war game in European history. His own future remains very bleak.