Yahoo News How ready are Europe, Nato and the UK for a second Trump presidency?
With Donald Trump, a Nato sceptic, about to begin a second term in office, European leaders have suggested their militaries must be more self-sufficient.
Donald Trump's transitional team has distanced itself from comments made by an ally who said a US-backed peace plan for Ukraine would involve ceding lost territory to Russia.
Bryan Lanza, a long-time Republican strategist and a contractor on Trump's 2024 campaign, told the BBC that Trump's administration would be asking Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a "realistic vision for peace", rather than focusing on restoring land taken by Vladimir Putin's forces.
"And if President Zelenskyy comes to the table and says, well we can only have peace if we have Crimea, he shows to us that he's not serious. Crimea is gone," said Lanza. Since then, a spokesperson for the transition said Lanza "does not work for President Trump and does not speak for him".
However, concerns over the security of Europe as a whole against Russian aggression have been raised since Trump won the presidential election this week, having repeatedly threatened to withdraw from Nato during his last term in the White House, although he has since said the US will stay in the military alliance - as long as members pay their "fair share".
Nonetheless, Trump's unpredictable nature has led to a sense of disquiet over the future of Ukraine, and longer-term implications for the rest of the continent, although a sense that the US can no longer be relied upon may push European nations to become more self-sufficient.
Here, Yahoo News takes a look at how Trump could approach Russia's war in Ukraine, and how prepared Europe is for future military threats.
What has Donald Trump said about Russia and Ukraine?
Having run both his presidential campaigns on a broadly isolationist "America first" platform, a big bone of contention for Trump has been a perception that Nato is not paying enough for US military support.
During his first term, Trump caused a stir at a 2018 North Atlantic Council meeting, where he warned of "grave consequences" if Nato allies didn't ramp up their military spending, adding that the US could "go our own way".
He caused even more alarm in February this year after claiming at a rally that as president, he told an undisclosed Nato member that he "would encourage" Russia "to do whatever the hell they want" to countries that are "delinquent".
Watch: Former US brigadier general John Teichert says Russia should negotiate a peace deal with Trump
On Ukraine, which is not a Nato member but has ambitions to join the alliance, Trump has described Zelenskyy as the "greatest salesman in history", claiming that every time he comes to the US, he "walks away with $100bn" (the US has provided around $64.1bn since Russia's full-scale invasion of 2022 and $66.9bn since the 2014 invasion of Ukraine).
Trump has long been critical of the scale of US military aid to Ukraine. During the election campaign, Trump said he would find a solution to end the war "within a day," but did not explain how he would do so.
He has declined to rule out the possibility that Ukraine may have to cede land to Russia and has been notably vague when discussing the conflict.
Some high-profile allies have put forth peace proposals that would in practice result in long-term Russian rule over areas that are internationally recognised as Ukrainian territory.
How have other countries responded?
Some have questioned how serious Trump really is when he makes bombastic remarks about withdrawing from Nato.
UK foreign secretary David Lammy claimed in May that Trump's approach to Nato is "misunderstood", and that rather than wanting to pull the US out of the alliance, he "wants Europeans to do more to ensure a better-defended Europe".
"US spending on defence actually grew under President Trump, as did the defence spending of the wider alliance during his tenure," Lammy said, claiming that only four European countries were meeting the Nato target of spending 2% of GDP on defence in 2016, compared to 10 in 2021 and an expected 18 this year.
In an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche, France's defence minister Sébastien Lecornu referenced French general and statesman Charles de Gaulle, claiming "Europe was naive to delegate its security to the United States" and that European countries should be strengthening their military capabilities.
At a gathering of European leaders in Budapest, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni said: "Don't ask what the US can do for you, ask what Europe should do for itself. Europe must find a balance. We know what we have to do."
At a European Council meeting in March, president Zelenskyy said: "I hope we can all agree that our Europe needs real defence self-sufficiency. This can only be achieved by increasing the production of weapons and ammunition on the continent.
"Ukraine demonstrates that it can be done quite quickly. Please do not waste the time needed to activate defence production. The technological side of warfare is being updated, and we need to keep up with these changes for the security of each and every European country."
How much is the UK spending on defence?
The UK spent £52.8bn on defence in 2022/23, rising to £54.2bn in 2023/24, according to the Ministry of Defence.
Its core budget for 2024/25 was set at £51.7bn, combined with assumed additional funding from the Treasury Reserve, including for support to Ukraine, putting the total defence budget for the year at £55.6bn.
As a Nato member, the UK commits to spending at least 2% of its GDP on defence every year under the alliance's terms, with latest figures showing it spent about 2.3%. The UK is aiming to increase this figure to 2.5%, although the government has not committed to a deadline on this.
The government is currently undergoing a strategic defence review, led by former Nato secretary general Lord Robertson, with reviewers due to submit a final report to the prime minister in the first half of 2025.
Which Nato countries spend the most on their military?
As previously reported by Yahoo News, the US spent $916 billion on defence in 2023, accounting for 68% of total NATO military spending.
The UK was actually the second biggest spender last year followed by Germany ($67bn), France ($61bn) and Italy ($36bn).
Poland, which shares a border with Ukraine, clearly takes its defence seriously, spending $31.6bn on defence, marking a 75% rise between 2022 and 2023 - by far the largest annual increase by any European country – making it the world's 14th biggest military spender.
Writing for the Intereconomics journal, economist Florian Dorn says there are several reasons for pushing Nato's 2% spending target higher, pointing out that Europe's defence spending was well above 3% in the Cold War era - when "US geopolitical interests were more concentrated on defending Europe" than they are now.
"This means a call on European countries to do more, not less, compared to the Cold War years, in order to quickly build up sufficient defence capabilities," he adds.
How could a Trump-backed peace deal for Ukraine look?
Trump has been president-elect for less than a week, and as mentioned, he has been somewhat vague on the conflict in Ukraine.
However, German political scientist Stefan Wolff, a Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham, has said that "in all probability", any peace deal "would be more on Russia's terms". Wolff suggests a deal is likely to include "Ukrainian acceptance of Russia's territorial gains, including the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the territories occupied since then".
Wolff says Trump is "likely to accept" demands by Putin to "prevent a future Ukrainian membership of Nato," adding that the US leader could "threaten to abandon the alliance" to get Europeans to agree.
For a deal to work, Trump "will also need Putin to sign it", adds Wolff, who says the Russian president is "not under any particular pressure" to accept "just any deal", as his forces are still making gains in Donbas and pushing Ukrainian troops back in Kursk, aided by North Korean soldiers.
As well as threatening to cut support for Kyiv to force Zelenskyy's hand, Wolff said Trump could put pressure on Moscow by boosting military support for Ukraine and "removing all constraints on the use of US and allied weapons, including against targets deep inside Russia," which would "make a Russian one impossible for the foreseeable future".
"Given Trump’s unpredictability, this may not be a bluff that Putin would dare to call," he adds.
Former NATO boss Anders Fogh Rasmussen suggested that Trump's "unpredictability" could be a useful tool, suggesting this, along with his desire to be a winner, could be taken advantage of by those seeking peace in Ukraine.
"If you force the Ukrainians to the negotiating table, you have a very, very weak hand when you start those negotiations," he told Politico.
