Ukraine’s Allies Are Gaming Out a World in Which the US Retreats

(Bloomberg) — NATO members now talk privately about a Russian attack on one of them as a danger that demands an urgent response, as they grow to doubt that the US will maintain its traditional role of protecting Europe as part of the alliance.

On Friday President Joe Biden did his best to rule out the word ‘panic,’ but in tip-toeing around it did more than anyone else to describe Europe’s mood.

“My God,” the president told reporters at the White House, condemning Congress for taking a “two-week vacation” without acting on the package for aid to Ukraine, which has been opposed by Republicans.

“This is bizarre, and it’s just reinforcing all the concern, and almost — I won’t say panic — but real concern about the US being a reliable ally.”

Whatever you call it, his European allies’ mounting alarm springs from the realization that they’re at a moment in which Russia has been emboldened by its battlefield successes, the US may scale back support for their region and they themselves have done too little to prepare.

That pessimism dominated conversations this weekend at the Munich Security Conference, where leaders and defense officials gather to take stock of the world’s biggest geopolitical threats.

Senior defense officials in attendance voiced concern about the US’s failure to deliver billions of dollars of funding for Ukraine, and said they were planning for scenarios in which this very public deterioration in support could encourage Russia to make a direct attack on a NATO ally.

Compared to the resolve of previous gatherings, the prevailing sentiment in Munich this year was uncertainty, according to one official, who like others interviewed for this article asked not to be named when discussing private conversations.

“I can’t predict if and when an attack on NATO territory might occur,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told Bloomberg in an interview. “But it could happen in five to eight years.”

The Ukrainian city of Avdiivka fell on the second day of the proceedings in Munich, handing Moscow its most significant battlefield victory in nearly a year. Only the afternoon before Russia had announced the death of opposition activist Alexey Navalny, underscoring the futility of domestic opposition to Vladimir Putin’s increasingly repressive regime.

As Ukraine runs out of military supplies, the backdrop to the discussions was that a $60 billion aid package for Kyiv remains held up in Congress. That was a very public emblem of the prospect of wavering US commitment to Ukraine that dominated conversations behind the scenes.

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