Kyiv’s military progress against Russia is changing a global political calculus, and Europe will never be the same. America needs to deal with it.
Something significant is happening in Ukraine, and it might have far-reaching implications not only in Europe but also in Asia.
After more than three years of grinding war, Ukraine is gaining ground against Russia — not dramatically, not with the thunderclap of a decisive breakthrough, but steadily and with increasing momentum. European military and financial support have filled much of the gap left by American hesitation, and the results on the battlefield are beginning to show. The equation is shifting in ways that carry consequences far beyond the front lines.
The first and perhaps most underappreciated consequence is strategic: Europe is demonstrating that it can carry the load. Not fully, not without strain, but sufficiently. And this changes the political geometry of the relationship. An America that withdraws from active engagement in Ukraine’s defense does not thereby gain leverage — it loses it. The less indispensable Washington becomes to Kyiv’s survival, the less say it has over Kyiv’s choices. US President Donald Trump, in seeking to pressure Ukraine into negotiations on American terms, may have inadvertently accelerated Ukraine’s — and Europe’s — journey toward a degree of strategic autonomy that neither would have chosen voluntarily.
A New Kind of Country
Ukraine itself is being transformed by the war in ways that will outlast the conflict. What is emerging is something the region has not seen before: a hardened, battle-tested state with a professional military culture, a population steeled by adversity, and a national identity forged under fire. It could be like Israel after 1948. The Jews fled there from Europe, after a war with the Arabs proved their mettle, and laid the foundation of a regional protagonist. The Ukrainians are not the same in ideology, not in geopolitics, but in the essential quality of a country that has learned to exist under permanent military pressure and has built its institutions, economy, and society around that reality.
The long-term consequences of this transformation are difficult to assess fully. A Ukraine that survives this war — even without recovering all its territory — will be a different kind of actor in European security for decades to come. It will be armed, experienced, motivated, and not easily coerced. For its neighbors, that is both a reassurance and a new variable to factor into their calculations.
The Intelligence Reckoning
British intelligence has distinguished itself — both in its early and accurate warnings before the Russian invasion in February 2022 and in its ongoing assessments of the battlefield situation in Ukraine. The contrast with the intelligence record on Iran is striking. Israeli intelligence, for all its vaunted reputation, apparently was caught off guard by the character and resilience of the Iranian response during the recent confrontation.
This divergence matters beyond the immediate military context. Intelligence credibility is the currency of the special relationship with the US. An intelligence service that proves consistently accurate earns a privileged seat at the table in Washington; one that fails on a major call loses influence. If British intelligence has demonstrated greater reliability than its Israeli counterpart on a defining security question of the moment — Russia— that will register in the quiet calculus of transatlantic relationships. London may find itself back in American graces in ways it has not been since the Iraq War severely damaged that credibility. Tel Aviv, whose influence in Washington has rested partly on its intelligence prestige, may face a cooler reception.
Trump’s Missed Window
There is a strong case that President Trump misread the situation in Ukraine from the beginning of his second term. He arrived in office convinced that a deal was within reach — that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could be pressured into concessions and that Putin was ready to settle. Neither proved to be true. Zelensky would not capitulate, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, sensing opportunity, had no incentive to accept less than he believed he could take by force. The moment for the settlement Trump envisaged may have already passed, if it ever existed. What looked like a winning hand — the leverage of withheld American support — turned out to be a losing one, because Ukraine found other patrons, adapted its strategy, and kept fighting.
The result is that Trump finds himself in an awkward position: having invested political capital in a peace initiative that failed to produce peace, watching a battlefield that is moving against the country he sought to appease, and facing European allies who have drawn their own conclusions about American reliability.
The Nuclear Shadow
All of the above carries one enormous caveat, and it cannot be stated too softly. Russia retains its nuclear arsenal, and the pathway from conventional military setback to nuclear signaling is not off the charts. But a Russian recourse to nuclear solutions would bring the world into a totally different ball game, where a whole different calculus has to take place.
Moscow is in deeper trouble than at any point since the end of the USSR. Its military has been exposed, its economy distorted by wartime spending, its demographic losses severe, and its international isolation broader than its leadership anticipated. The narrative of Russian resurgence that animated Putin’s foreign policy for two decades is struggling to survive contact with the realities of this war. Putin’s legacy is worse than Gorbachev’s, the man whom he cast as the ultimate villain of Russia, having surrendered to Western lies, according to some Russian lore. It could be a very important story for China, where many came to believe that the USSR gave up when it shouldn’t have.
Washington may not always be watching closely enough. The outcome in Ukraine will set the terms — political, military, and psychological — for European security for a generation. Europe seems to understand this. The question is whether America will rediscover the same understanding before the opportunity to shape that outcome has passed. Trump likes a winner, and yes, now Zelensky is the winner.
