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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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Ukrainian officials spent months begging their allies, like the U.S., to lift their restrictions on the long-range weapons they donated for Kyiv's war effort.
Now, nations along NATO's eastern flank are wondering whether they could wind up in a similar situation.
NATO-skeptic U.S. President Donald Trump's first 100 days back in office disorientated allies north of America's border and across the Atlantic.
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The U.S. administration, while often mercurial, has been consistent in its demands for the rest of NATO's member states to dramatically boost defense spending—met with agreement by officials across the alliance, albeit with a hint of defensiveness.
Trump's inner circle have called for NATO countries to dedicate 5 percent of GDP on defense, while European officials push for defense spending to focus on filling capability gaps and building up industry, rather than hitting percentage targets.
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Yet the U.S. seems unable to decide whether it wants Europe to stand fully on its own two feet, refilling its stockpiles with equipment made on the continent, or keep the faucet of American weapons exports flowing.
The U.S. is "by far" the largest of the world's arms exporters over the past four years, accounting for 43 percent of global arms exports, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in March.
But a European official from one of the Baltic states, within touching distance of Russian soil, said there was growing concern that the U.S. could curtail sovereign decision making for military operations, should Russia invade and the eastern flank need to defend itself.
The memory of how the U.S. treated Ukraine is still fresh, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Washington under former President Joe Biden held off giving Kyiv the green light to strike deep into Russian soil with certain American weapons until the final weeks of the Democrat administration. Kyiv beseeched its allies to peel away these restrictions while it wielded home-grown drones to land some hits hundreds of miles into Russian territory.
Trump, in an apparent effort to force Kyiv to negotiate over a ceasefire deal, cut off American military aid heading for Ukraine's borders and turned off the tap of Kyiv's access to U.S.-derived intelligence.
The White House has refused to level acerbic criticism at the Kremlin throughout slow-moving ceasefire negotiations, but has berated Ukraine's leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, and insinuated Ukraine started the war in eastern Europe more than three years ago. Although the Trump administration's frustration with Russia is showing, European consternation persists.
NATO's eastern flank "absolutely" must calculate whether the U.S. could try to hamper use of American systems against Russia in a possible conflict, said Gabrielius Landsbergis, who served as Lithuania's foreign minister until November 2024.
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"Because of what we're seeing happening in Ukraine, every single country on the eastern flank is placing itself in Ukraine's position and asking the question: Would it be any different, if we were where Ukraine is currently?" Landsbergis told Newsweek.
It is a "valid concern," a serving U.S. military official who spoke on condition of anonymity told Newsweek, while noting that eastern flank countries have stormed ahead with defense spending far quicker than western and southern European nations, likely courting favor with the Trump administration.
The major lesson the eastern flank should learn from Ukraine is "if you want to survive, you should count only on yourself," said Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of Ukraine's parliamentary foreign affairs committee and a member of Zelensky's party.
The Baltics and Poland "should be worried, of course," he told Newsweek. "They're frontline states."
A central European official involved in defense planning, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was a push underway toward "no strings attached" military systems. This erases the potential for interference in decisions made by individual nations from authorities in the equipment's country of origin, such as the U.S.
It will be up to the U.S. whether it wants to maintain an edge in a more moneyed, but increasingly competitive, European marketplace, the official said.
"For certain European countries, the question of the military dependence on the U.S. and whether or not the U.S. would provide support against Russian threats, is a bit theoretical," said a European industry source, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. "For the Baltics and Poland, it's not."
Officials say European defense procurement has always factored in that buying expensive American systems, even when European manufacturers could provide viable alternatives, would incentivize the U.S. to remain politically invested in the continent.
The State Department has said Washington still intended to furnish NATO countries with "high-quality, American-made defense articles at a competitive price to support their self-defense requirements." NATO Secretary-General, Mark Rutte—who has hailed strong NATO relations with his "good friend" Trump—has said it is vital to involve non-EU NATO members in the continent's looming defense industrial boom.
European governments would pay an "exorbitant price" for U.S. kit in the hope of deepening America's economic ties with Europe, the central European official said, but added this opinion was fading despite Trump's famously transactional diplomatic style.
A European military source said there was more desire to wean Europe off a reliance on the U.S. where possible, but not to broadly cut off access to American imports.
Decisions should be made on a "case-by-case" basis, said the source, who requested anonymity.
Observers say the U.S. sent strong signals to Europe in previous decades, steering the continent away from investing in the often expensive capabilities America could provide to focus instead on how to support U.S. efforts abroad, such as in the Middle East.
After the end of the Cold War, European governments made conscious decisions not to develop certain types of equipment, like fifth-generation combat aircraft and long-range rocket artillery like the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) the U.S. sent to Ukraine, a European industry source said.
"As a result, there are certain technological capability areas where there is today no European offering," they added.
The Lockheed Martin F-35 is the only advanced fifth-generation fighter aircraft available to Western militaries, and many of the 20 nations operating or buying F-35s are NATO members.
Experts and officials hit back at claims circulating earlier this year that the advanced aircraft contained an in-built "kill switch," with Washington capable of disabling aircraft flown by partner countries on a whim.
But the U.S. could still significantly impact F-35 functioning through access to spare parts, supply chains, and the flow of intelligence or the most up-to-date software.
The central European official said F-35 program members in Europe had reassured one another their commitments to the fifth-generation fighters were "ironclad."
There is simply no viable alternative until even more advanced sixth-generation fighter jets start to become available in more than a decade's time, analysts and officials say. This is "inescapable," despite the ongoing European defense push, the central European official said.
French President Emmanuel Macron, pitched a French aircraft as a replacement for the F-35 earlier this year, telling domestic media: "Those who buy the F-35, we must offer them the Rafale."
The fourth-generation Rafale is a twin-engine fighter, made by French aerospace firm Dassault Aviation, and has been in service with Paris' military for roughly two decades.
Some analysts and former officials have floated the idea that countries partway through their F-35 procurement could operate a handful of fifth-generation jets alongside fourth-generation aircraft. Canada, for example, has put its order of 88 F-35s under review.
But this train of thought is typically followed by acknowledgments that it makes little sense to install all the F-35's necessary infrastructure for part of an order, and compromise an air force's ability to quickly take out sophisticated enemy air defenses at the start of a conflict.
Systems like the Raytheon-designed Patriot anti-aircraft system, now proven in combat in Ukraine against next-generation Russian hypersonic weapons, are still appealing in Europe, according to the military source.
The IRIS-T family of missile systems is being looked at as a European air defense solution, the source said, adding: "The future of European air defense will come out of Europe."
"Those who buy Patriots," Macron said in March, "we must offer them the new-generation Franco-Italian SAMP/T."
While the SAMP/T is often considered the only similar non-U.S. system to match up to the Patriot, it struggled to intercept ballistic missile attacks in Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year, citing people familiar with the matter.
The European industry source said the SAMP/T is believed to have performed well in Ukraine, despite being used on a much smaller scale and being less frequently battle-tested than the Patriot.
A new generation of the SAMP/T system, with improved missiles, radar and mobility, is expected to be available soon, and could outperform the Patriot, they added.
But if a country already has a number of Patriot batteries, they might opt to buy more of the same system, rather than a go for a mix, they said.
The U.S. capacity to produce equipment is "overloaded," the source said, with Washington focused on refilling its own stockpiles before exporting to Europe.
In 10 or 15 years' time, there are likely to be many more European-made systems deployed, including for air defense, said the central European official, but noted there would likely be more systems like the Patriot, too, as overall spending grows.
The European Union has been clear it is prioritizing strengthening its own military-industrial base as part of the often significant increases to military budgets on the continent. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled new plans to free up €800 billion ($900 billion) across the bloc for defense spending back in March.
The plan would also mean activating what is known as an "escape clause" for EU countries in a set of rules that currently govern how member states manage their public finances.
EU nations will be able to up their defense spending without falling foul of the bloc's excessive deficit procedure (EDP), which is triggered when a member state could be allowing its deficit to breach a given level, von der Leyen said.
At least 12 EU states have submitted written requests to activate their national escape clauses, the Commission said on Wednesday.
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