The European Union needs to scale back its dependence on U.S. military equipment as it digests the impact of President Donald Trump’s decision to hit trade partners with punishing tariffs, the bloc’s top foreign policy official said.
“We are buying a lot from the Americans right now,” Kaja Kallas told reporters ahead of a meeting of EU defense ministers in Warsaw on Thursday. “But we need to diversify our portfolio so that we would have capabilities to produce here — the ammunition and things we need here.”
Her call reinforces a message a day earlier from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who said European militaries should “step up” as the US tilts away from the region to focus more on threats from Asia. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s foreign ministers were to gather in Brussels for a two-day meeting to sound out US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as they chart a path forward.
The comments underscore Trump’s break with transatlantic allies as the US administration seeks to dismantle the global trading system while threatening to pull military support from Ukraine. The EU has vowed to retaliate against Trump’s sweeping tariffs if negotiations fail.
EU defense ministers are meeting in Warsaw to discuss how to ramp up their military capabilities amid growing threats from Moscow and to bolster support for Kyiv in its thee-year war against Russia.
So far, the bloc has struggled to move quickly to fill the void that the US would leave in supporting Kyiv after Trump briefly halted all the military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine following his spat with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Kallas has sought to rally support for her initiative for the EU to deliver 2 million of artillery rounds to Ukraine this year. So far there were commitments for “over 50% of what is needed,” she said. The support is required to strengthen Kyiv’s hand in peace talks, Kallas added.
“I’m glad to see we already have different proposals or different countries are coming with their input to this,” she said. “The stronger they are on the battlefield, the stronger they are behind the negotiation table.”
But Kallas’s call to wean Europe off its military dependence on the US may still sit uneasily with some members, such as Poland, who are already increasing their military spending with most contracts going to American firms.
Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds said the US was indispensable as a partner despite the tensions.
“Sometimes we see some contradictory signals,” he said. “But it does not mean we are not partners. We are strategic partners, we are strategic allies.”
--With assistance from Katharina Rosskopf and Thomas Hall.
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