BRUSSELS — When it comes to support for Ukraine, a split has emerged between the European Union and its English-speaking allies. In France and Germany, the EU’s two biggest democracies, new polling shows that more respondents want their governments to scale back financial aid to Kyiv than to increase it or keep it the same. In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, meanwhile, respondents tilt the other way and favor maintaining material support, according to The POLITICO Poll, which surveyed more than 10,000 people across the five countries earlier this month. The findings land as European leaders prepare to meet in Brussels on Thursday for a high-stakes summit where providing financial support to Ukraine is expected to dominate the agenda. They also come as Washington seeks to mediate a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv — with German leader Friedrich Merz taking the lead among European nations on negotiating in Kyiv’s favor. Across all five countries, the most frequently cited reason for supporting continued aid to Ukraine was the belief that nations should not be allowed to seize territory by force. The most frequently cited argument against additional assistance was concerns about the cost and the pressure on the national economy.  “Much of our research has shown that the public in Europe feels the current era demands policy trade-offs, and financial support for Ukraine is no exception,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London that carried out the survey for POLITICO.  “In a time where public finances are seen as finite resources, people’s interests are increasingly domestic,” he added.  WESTERN DIVIDE Germans were the most reluctant to ramp up financial assistance, with nearly half of respondents (45 percent) in favor of cutting financial aid to Kyiv while only 20 percent wanted to increase it. In France 37 percent wanted to give less and 24 percent preferred giving more. In contrast to the growing opposition to Ukrainian aid from Europe, support remains strikingly firm in North America. In the U.S., President Donald Trump has expressed skepticism toward Kyiv’s chances of defeating Moscow and has sent interlocutors to bargain with the Russians for peace. And yet the U.S. had the largest share of respondents (37 percent) in favor of increasing financial support, with Canada just behind at 35 percent. Support for Ukraine was driven primarily by those who backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election in the U.S. Some 29 percent of Harris voters said one of the top three reasons the U.S. should support Ukraine was to protect democracy, compared with 17 percent of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump. “The partisan split in the U.S. is now quite extreme,” Wride said. In Germany and France, opposition to assistance was especially pronounced among supporters of far-right parties — such as the Alternative for Germany and France’s National Rally — while centrists were less skeptical. “How Ukraine financing plays out in Germany in particular, as a number of European governments face populist challenges, should be a particular warning sign to other leaders,” Wride said. REFUGEE FATIGUE Support for military assistance tracked a similar divide. Nearly 40 percent of respondents in the U.S., U.K. and Canada backed higher levels of military aid, with about 20 percent opposed. In Germany 26 percent supported increased military aid to Ukraine while 39 percent opposed it. In France opinions were evenly split, with 31 percent favoring an increase and 30 percent favoring cuts. Germany was also the only country where a majority of respondents said their government should accept fewer Ukrainians displaced by the war.  In a country that has taken in more than a million Ukrainian refugees since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, 50 percent of Germans said Berlin should admit fewer.  Half of respondents also said Germany should reduce support for Ukrainians already settled in the country — a sign that public fatigue is extending beyond weapons and budgets to the broader social and political pressures of the conflict. The softer support for Ukraine in France and Germany does not appear to reflect warmer feelings toward Moscow, however. Voters in all five countries backed sanctions against Russia, suggesting that even where publics want to pare back aid they remain broadly aligned around punishing the aggressor and limiting Russia’s ability to finance the war. This edition of The POLITICO Poll was conducted from Dec. 5 to Dec. 9 and surveyed 10,510 adults online, with at least 2,000 respondents each from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France and Germany. The results for each country were weighted to be representative in terms of age, gender and geography, and have an overall margin of sampling error of ±2 percentage points for each country. Smaller subgroups have higher margins of error. The survey is an ongoing project from POLITICO and Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London, to measure public opinion across a broad range of policy areas. You can find new surveys and analysis each month at politico.com/poll. Have questions or comments? Ideas for future surveys? Email us at poll@politico.com.

LONDON — The Council of Europe’s most senior human rights official warned European leaders not to create a “hierarchy of people” as they pursue reforms to migration policy. Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, said “middle-of-the-road politicians” are playing into the hands of the populist right. His comments, in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, come after 27 countries in the Council of Europe issued a statement Wednesday setting out how they want the European Convention on Human Rights to be applied by courts, including on familial ties and the risk of degrading treatment. The nations hope to reach a political declaration in spring 2026. O’Flaherty warned against any approach that would downgrade human rights, echoing calls he made in a speech to European ministers Wednesday morning. “The idea that we would create or foster the impression of a hierarchy of people, some more deserving than others, is a very, very worrying one indeed,” he said. He added: “For every inch yielded, there’s going to be another inch demanded,” telling the paper: “Where does it stop? For example, the focus right now is on migrants, in large part. But who is it going to be about next time around?” He also hit out at the “lazy correlation” of migration and crime which he said “doesn’t correspond with reality.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer and fellow center-left Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen wrote in the Guardian Tuesday the best way of “fighting against the forces of hate and division” was showing “mainstream, progressive politics” could deal with the challenge. Britain’s chief interior minister Shabana Mahmood has proposed tougher policies for irregular migrants including a 20 year wait for permanent settlement and assessing refugee status every 30 months.

Wies De Graeve is the executive director of Amnesty International Belgium’s Flemish branch. Tomorrow, Seán Binder will stand trial before the Mytilene Court of Appeals in Lesvos, Greece for his work as a volunteer rescuer, helping those in distress and at risk of drowning at sea. Alongside 23 other defendants, he faces criminal charges including membership in a criminal organization, money laundering and smuggling, with the risk of up to 20 years in prison if convicted. I first met Seán in 2019. A bright, articulate Irish activist in his twenties, he was our guest at the Belgian launch of Amnesty International’s annual end-of-year campaign. And there, he shared his equally inspiring yet shocking story of blatant injustice, as he and others were being prosecuted for saving lives. Two years earlier, Seán had traveled to Lesvos as a volunteer, joining a local search-and-rescue NGO to patrol the coastline for small boats in distress and provide first aid to those crossing from Turkey to Greece. Since 2015, the war in Syria has forced countless individuals to flee their homes and seek safety in Europe via dangerous routes — including the perilous journey across the Aegean Sea. In 2017 alone, more than 3,000 people were reported dead or missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean, and when authorities failed to step in, many volunteers from across Europe did so instead. Seán was one of them. He did what any of us would hope to do in his position: save lives and help people. Yet, in 2018, he was arrested by Greek authorities and held in pretrial detention for over 100 days before being charged with a range of crimes alongside other humanitarian workers. These charges aim to portray those who help people on the move as criminals. And it’s part of a trend sweeping across Europe that’s criminalizing solidarity. In Malta, three teenagers from West Africa stand accused of helping to bring more than 100 people rescued at sea to safety, and are facing charges that carry a lifelong sentence. In Italy, ships operated by search-and-rescue organizations are being impounded. And in France, mountain guides have faced prosecution for assisting people at the border with Italy. European governments are not only failing people seeking protection, they’re also punishing those who try to fill that dangerous gap. I met Seán again in 2021 and 2023, both times outside the courthouse in Mytilene on Lesvos. In 2023, the lesser misdemeanor charges against him and the other foreign defendants — forgery, espionage and the unlawful use of radio frequencies — were dropped. Then, in 2024, the rest of the defendants were acquitted of those same charges. While leaving the courthouse that day, still facing the more serious felony charges along with the other 23 aid workers, Seán said: “We want justice. Today, there has been less injustice, but no justice.” As Amnesty International, we’ve been consistently calling for these charges to be dropped. The U.N. and many human rights organizations have also expressed serious concerns about the case, while thousands across Europe and around the world have stood by Seán’s side in defense of solidarity with migrants and refugees, signing petitions and writing letters. This trial should set off alarms not only for Europe’s civil society but for any person’s ability to act according to their conscience. It isn’t just Seán who is on trial here, it’s solidarity itself. The criminalization of people showing compassion for those compelled to leave their homes because of war, violence or other hardships must stop. This trial should set off alarms not only for Europe’s civil society but for any person’s ability to act according to their conscience. | Manolis Lagoutaris/AFP via Getty Images Meanwhile, a full decade after Syrians fleeing war began arriving on Europe’s shores in search of safety and protection, Europe’s leaders need to reflect. They need to learn from people like Seán instead of prosecuting them. And instead of focusing on deterrence, they need to ensure the word “asylum,” from the Greek “asylon,” still means a place of refuge or sanctuary for those seeking safety in our region. People who save lives should be supported, not criminalized. This week, six years after our first encounter, Seán and I will once again meet in front of the Mytilene courthouse as his trial resumes. I will be there in solidarity, representing the thousands who have been demanding that these charges be dropped. I hope, with all my heart, to see him finally receive the justice he is entitled to. Humanity must win.

DUBLIN — Ukraine cannot accept any U.S.-Russian ceasefire formula that would allow Russia to “come back with a third invasion,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday. During his first visit to Ireland as president, Zelenskyy received fulsome backing from Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin, who stood shoulder to shoulder with him and condemned Russian leader Vladimir Putin. “Putin has shown a complete indifference to the value of human life and to international laws and norms,” Martin told their joint press conference. “He must never be allowed to succeed.” Zelenskyy’s whirlwind visit to Dublin — where he also received a standing ovation from the joint houses of parliament and met Ireland’s newly elected and NATO-critical President Catherine Connolly — coincided with resumed Moscow talks between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff. Zelenskyy said he spoke Monday with Witkoff and expected a post-talks update call Tuesday night — but downplayed hopes of reaching a speedy accord that would permanently end Russia’s attacks on his nation. He dismissed as unrealistic any proposed agreement that fails to include clear-cut security guarantees from both the U.S. and European allies, a commitment that Trump appears loath to give. “We have to stop the war in such a manner that in one year Russia would not come back with a third invasion,” he said, referring to Russia’s initial 2014 seizure of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine as well as its full-scale assault on Ukraine launched in 2022. Martin said making any ceasefire permanent would require, in part, that Russia pays a punitive price for the costs of Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction. That would mean, he said, approving the European Commission’s plan to tap frozen Russian funds largely banked in Belgium. Martin expressed hopes that Belgium would drop its objections at the next European Council this month. “When the U.N. charter is violated in such a brutal manner,” Martin said, referring to Russia’s ongoing invasion, “there has to be a deterrence of such behavior. There has to be some responsibility on the aggressor who has wreaked such devastation.” “There’s a very practical issue of the enormity of the reconstruction of Ukraine and the cost of that, and who’s going to pay for that,” Martin said. “It cannot only be the European taxpayer. Europe did not start this war.” But Ireland — a militarily neutral nation that will hold the EU’s rotating presidency in the second half of 2026 — did use Zelenskyy’s visit to boost its own financial support to Ukraine. Martin signed an agreement with Ukraine pledging a further €100 million in nonlethal military equipment, including for minefield clearance, and €25 million to help rebuild Ukraine’s besieged energy utilities. Ireland, a non-NATO member with virtually no defense industries of its own, has declined to provide any finance for acquiring weapons. Ireland, a country of 5.4 million people, also hosts more than 80,000 Ukrainian refugees — but, against a wider tide of anti-immigrant sentiment, is trimming the housing and welfare supports it has provided since 2022 to the Ukrainians. Zelenskyy said he couldn’t concern himself with the level of Irish support, and was grateful it keeps being provided at all. “The question is not about the size of assistance. It’s about the choice,” he said.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music When Europe’s biggest political family crosses the aisle to vote with the far right, something fundamental shifts in Brussels. In this episode, host Sarah Wheaton unpacks the vote that cracked the European Parliament’s cordon sanitaire — and what a newly disciplined, image-polished far right means for Ursula von der Leyen’s shaky centrist alliance. POLITICO’s Marianne Gros and Max Griera take us inside the omnibus showdown; Tim Ross demonstrates how the same forces are reshaping politics across Europe — from the English seaside town of Jaywick to Paris, Berlin and beyond. Plus — Aitor Hernández-Morales brings us a surprising counterpoint from Denmark, where voters pushed back against a left-wing government they felt had leaned too far toward the right.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Endlich Gold für Deutschland? Das Bundeskabinett beschließt heute die Unterstützung für eine deutsche Olympia-Bewerbung für 2036, 2040 oder 2044. Gordon Repinski analysiert den anstehenden Wettstreit der Regionen zwischen München, Rhein-Ruhr, Hamburg und Kiel sowie Berlin und erklärt, warum Kanzler Friedrich Merz jetzt sechs Millionen Euro für den Bewerbungsprozess zusagt.  Im 200-Sekunden-Interview: Christiane Schenderlein. Die für Sport zuständige Staatsministerin im Kanzleramt verteidigt erklärt, was in der möglichen  Bewerbung steckt, warum auch ein Olympia in Berlin 100 Jahre nach 1936 eine Chance sein kann und wie die Spiele als Motor für Infrastruktur und Bürokratieabbau dienen sollen. Außerdem: Die Zahl der ukrainischen Geflüchteten in Berlin steigt so stark wie seit 2023 nicht mehr. Jasper Bennink berichtet über die zeitgleiche Maßnahme der Koalition Ukrainern, die künftig kein Bürgergeld, sondern Leistungen aus dem Asylbewerberleistungsgesetz zu geben und so Geld zu sparen. Und: Rasmus Buchsteiner meldet sich aus Peking. Er begleitet Vizekanzler und Finanzminister Lars Klingbeil, der dort an über Elektrobusse staunt, aber gleichzeitig überraschend deutlich davor warnt, nach Russland nun in eine Abhängigkeit von China zu geraten Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

LONDON — It’s a decade since Britain’s Labour Party caused uproar simply by printing “controls on immigration” on a mug. Ten years, it turns out, are a long time in politics. Shabana Mahmood, Labour’s new interior minister, unveiled hardline plans Monday to shake up Britain’s immigration system that make the 2015 mantra look positively tame. Under her proposed reforms, refugees in Britain who arrived on small boats will have to wait up to 20 years for permanent settlement and could be deported if the situation in their home country improves. Those with valuables will be forced to fund the cost of their own accommodation. The tribunal appeals system, which features judges prominently, will be replaced with a streamlined system staffed by “professionally trained adjudicators.” And ministers are promising to ramp up the forcible removal of entire families to their countries of origin, if they do not accept “financial support” to go voluntarily. The home secretary is “beginning to sound as though” she is applying to join Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK, his gleeful deputy Richard Tice told a Westminster press conference Monday. With Mahmood clearly spoiling for a fight with her own ranks, some colleagues to her left flank are making the same comparison. Yet despite the backlash, many other Labour MPs now believe measures like this necessary to confront a rising public backlash over immigration in many European nations. Mahmood, said one official, is concerned that public anger is turning into hate. Labour aides also argue they could be running out of time, as opinion polls project a victory in 2029 for Reform — whose immigration plans would go far further. One government frontbencher (granted anonymity, like others in this piece, to speak frankly) argued the change had been driven by the “the visibility and tangibility of policy failures” on small boats, and the growing use of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers. They added: “We may be in a world where we have to deliver a system we’re not quite comfortable with — or surrender the right to deliver a system to people who don’t think the system should exist. That’s a really uncomfortable place to be.” ‘LIKE A DROWNING MAN’ None of this eliminates the very real anger from Labour’s left-wing MPs — who were already concerned about votes bleeding away to the Green Party — and the likely uproar from its left-leaning grassroots. “The Starmer administration is like a drowning man,” a discontented Labour MP said Monday. “It just doesn’t have the ability to be able to make the argument that it is doing this from a progressive perspective. Where they’ve landed themselves politically, it’s not a place where you can bring people with you.” “The party won’t wear this — not just MPs, the wider party,” a second MP on the party’s soft left said. “The rhetoric around these reforms encourages the same culture of divisiveness that sees racism and abuse growing in our communities,” backbench Labour MP Tony Vaughan, who was only elected in 2024, argued on X. On one highly emotive point, officials were forced to clarify Monday that the Home Office would not seize migrants’ sentimental jewelery. That came overnight news stories suggested such items could be taken to contribute to migrant accommodation costs. The clarification did not come before MPs took to social media to speak out. “Taking jewellery from refugees” is “akin to painting over murals for refugee children,” another backbench MP, Sarah Owen, said, referencing a controversial order under the Conservatives to cover up cartoons at an accommodation centre for unaccompanied child migrants. The first Labour MP quoted above said that while many of his colleagues were seeing voters switch to Reform UK, a “hell of a lot of people” are going to the center-left Liberal Democrats and the Greens. “The tone that we’ve taken on immigration and asylum will hurt us as well,” the MP added.  ‘MORAL DUTY’ Government figures strongly disagree with the criticism — and think they have the public in their corner on this one. They sought to highlight More in Common polling that suggested even Green voters would support some individual measures that are used in Denmark — such as only granting asylum seekers temporary residence (50 percent support, 25 percent oppose.) A third, supportive MP on the right of the party pointed out there were “no surprise names” among those who had broken ranks to criticize the government’s plans. Mahmood insisted Monday the government has a “moral duty” to fix Britain’s “broken” asylum system. “Unless we can persuade people we can control our borders, we’re not going to get a hearing on anything else,” former Minister Justin Madders told Times Radio. It is an “existential test of whether we deserve to govern this country,” a serving minister said. They warned that if Starmer fails, the outcome in policy terms could be “a whole lot more drastic.” Noah Keate contributed reporting

LONDON — The British government will impose visa bans on countries that refuse to take back migrants who enter the U.K. without authorization, as part of widespread reforms to the immigration system. Shabana Mahmood, Britain’s chief interior minister, will announce Monday afternoon sweeping changes to the asylum system, including making refugee status temporary and requiring claimants to wait 20 years before applying for permanent settlement. She will also bar the entry of people from Angola, Namibia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo if their governments do not improve cooperation on removing people who are judged not to have a right to remain in the U.K. The three countries have collectively refused to take back more than 4,000 unauthorized immigrants and foreign criminals from Britain. They will have a month to start cooperating before a sliding scale of penalties is introduced. These would include the removal of fast-track visa services for diplomats and VIPs, and end with a ban on all citizens getting visas. Mahmood said: “In Britain, we play by the rules. When I said there would be penalties for countries that do not take back criminals and illegal immigrants, I meant it. “My message to foreign governments today is clear: Accept the return of your citizens or lose the privilege of entering our country.” The visa bans mirror similar measures introduced by U.S. President Donald Trump in his first term, when he imposed tough measures on some African and Asian nations. British Border Security Minister Alex Norris refused Monday to rule out India being subject to similar penalties despite the free-trade agreement struck between the two nations earlier this year. “We are looking at all of our agreements with every country,” Norris told Times Radio. “If we do not think we’re getting that right engagement, that right commitment, then of course, we reserve all opportunities to escalate that.”

THE WEST’S NEW ARMS RACE: SELLING PEACE TO BUY WAR Military spending is rising faster than at any time since the Cold War, but the retreat from diplomacy and foreign aid will come with a price. By TIM ROSS in London Illustrations by Nicolás Ortega for POLITICO In 1958, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan observed that “jaw, jaw is better than war, war.” Talking, he meant, is preferable to fighting.  Macmillan knew the realities of both diplomacy and military action: He was seriously wounded as a soldier in World War I, and as prime minister, he had to grapple with the nuclear threats of the Cold War, including most critically the Cuban missile crisis. John F. Kennedy, the U.S. president during that near-catastrophic episode of atomic brinkmanship, also understood the value of diplomatic channels, as well as the brutality of conflict: He severely injured his back serving in the U.S. Navy in 1943. Andrew Mitchell, a former Cabinet minister in the British government, worries that the wisdom of leaders like Kennedy and Macmillan gained from war has faded from memory just when it is most needed.  Advertisement “The world has forgotten the lessons of the first World War, when millions of people were slaughtered and our grandfathers’ generation said we can’t allow this to happen again,” he said. One school of academic theory holds that era-defining wars recur roughly every 85 years, as generations lose sight of their forebears’ hard-won experience. That would mean we should expect another one anytime now. And yet, as Mitchell sees it, even as evidence mounts that the world is headed in the wrong direction, governments have lost sight of the value of “jaw-jaw.” The erosion of diplomatic instinct is showing up not just in rhetoric but in budgets. The industrialized West is rapidly scaling back investment in soft power — slashing foreign aid and shrinking diplomatic networks — even as it diverts resources to defense.  U.S. aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest warship, makes its way into Oslo’s fjord in September. | Lise Åserud/NTB via AFP/Getty Images At no point since the end of the Cold War has military spending surged as fast as it did in 2024, when it rose 9.4 percent to reach the highest global total ever recorded by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. By contrast, a separate report from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found a 9 percent drop in official development assistance that same year among the world’s richest donors. The OECD forecast cuts of at least another 9 percent and potentially as much as 17 percent this year.  “For the first time in nearly 30 years, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States all cut their ODA in 2024,” the OECD said in its study. “If they proceed with announced cuts in 2025, it will be the first time in history that all four have cut ODA simultaneously for two consecutive years.”  Diplomatic corps are also shrinking, with U.S. President Donald Trump setting the tone by slashing jobs in the U.S. State Department.  Advertisement Global figures are hard to come by, and anyway go out of date quickly; one of the most extensive surveys is based on data from 2023. But authorities in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the European Union’s headquarters are among those who have warned that their diplomatic staff face cuts.  Analysts fear that as industrialized economies turn their backs on aid and diplomacy to build up their armies, hostile and unreliable states like Russia, China and Turkey will step in to fill the gaps in these influence networks, turning once friendly nations in Africa and Asia against the West.  And that, they warn, risks making the world a far more dangerous place. If the geopolitical priorities of governments operate like a market, the trend is clear: Many leaders have decided it’s time to sell peace and buy war.  SELLING PEACE, BUYING WAR Military spending is climbing worldwide. The Chinese defense budget, second only to that of the U.S., grew 7 percent between 2023 and 2024, according to SIPRI. Russia’s military expenditure ballooned by 38 percent. Spurred in part by fears among European countries that Trump might abandon their alliance, NATO members agreed in June to a new target of spending 5 percent of gross domestic product on defense and security infrastructure by 2035. The U.S. president — cast in the role of “daddy” — was happy enough that his junior partners across the Atlantic would be paying their way.  In reality, the race to rearm pre-dates Trump’s return to the White House. The war in Ukraine made military buildup an urgent priority for anxious Northern and Eastern European states living in the shadow of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia. According to SIPRI, military spending in Europe rocketed 17 percent in 2024, reaching $693 billion — before Trump returned to office and demanded that NATO up its game. Since 2015, defense budgets in Europe have expanded by 83 percent. One argument for prioritizing defense over funding aid or diplomacy is that military muscle is a powerful deterrent against would-be attackers. As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it when she announced her plan to rearm Europe in March: “This is the moment for peace through strength.” Some of von der Leyen’s critics argue that an arms race inevitably leads to war — but history does not bear that out, according to Greg Kennedy, professor of strategic foreign policy at King’s College London. “Arms don’t kill. Governments kill,” he said. “The problem is there are governments out there that are willing to use military power and to kill people to get their objective.”  Ideally a strong military would go hand in hand with so-called soft power in the form of robust diplomatic and foreign aid networks, Kennedy added. But if Europe has to choose, it should rebuild its depleted hard power first, he said. The risk to peace lies in how the West’s adversaries — like China — might respond to a new arms race.  Advertisement Few serious politicians in Europe, the U.K. or the U.S. dispute the need for military investment in today’s era of instability and conflict. The question, when government budgets are squeezed, is how to pay for it.  Here, again, Trump’s second term has set the tone. Within days of taking office, the U.S. president froze billions of dollars in foreign aid. And in February he announced he would be cutting 90 percent of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s contracts. The move — billed as part of Trump’s war on “woke” — devastated humanitarian nongovernmental organizations, many of which relied on American funding to carry out work in some of the poorest parts of the world. According to one estimate, Trump’s aid cuts alone could cause 14 million premature deaths over the next five years, one-third of them children. That’s a decision that Trump’s critics say won’t be forgotten in places like sub-Saharan Africa, even before cuts from other major donors like Germany and the U.K. take effect. Diplomatic corps are also shrinking, with U.S. President Donald Trump setting the tone by slashing jobs in the U.S. State Department. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images In London, British leader Keir Starmer and his team had prepared for the whirlwind of Trump’s return by devising a strategy aimed at appealing to the American leader’s self-interest, rather than values they weren’t sure he shared.  As Starmer got ready to visit the White House, he and his team came up with a plan to flatter Trump with the unprecedented honor of a second state visit to the U.K. Looking to head off a sharp break between the U.S. and Ukraine, Starmer also sought to show the U.K. was taking Trump seriously on the need for Europe (including Britain) to pay for its own defenses.  On the eve of his trip to Washington in February, Starmer announced he would raise defense spending — as Trump had demanded allies must — and that he would pay for it in part by cutting the U.K.’s budget for foreign aid from 0.5 percent of gross national income to 0.3 percent.  For a center-left leader like Starmer, whose Labour predecessors Gordon Brown and Tony Blair had championed the moral obligation to spend big on foreign development, it was a wrenching shift of gear.  Advertisement “That is not an announcement that I am happy to make,” he explained. “However, the realities of our dangerous new era mean that the defense and national security of our country must always come first.” The U.S. government welcomed Starmer’s move as “a strong step from an enduring partner.” But Starmer returned home to political revolt. His international aid minister Anneliese Dodds quit, warning Starmer his decision would “remove food and health care from desperate people — deeply harming the U.K.’s reputation.”  She lamented that Britain appeared to be “following in President Trump’s slipstream of cuts to USAID.”  EASY TARGETS  In the months that followed, other major European governments made similar calculations, some citing the U.K. as a sign that times had changed. For cash-poor governments in the era of Trumpian nationalism, foreign aid is an easy target for savings. The U.K. was once a world leader in foreign aid and a beacon for humanitarian agencies, enshrining in law its commitment to spend 0.7 percent of gross national income on ODA, according to Mitchell, the former Cabinet minister responsible for the policy. “But now Britain is being cited in Germany as, ‘Well, the Brits are cutting their development money, we can do the same.’”  In Sweden, the defense budget is due to rise by 18 percent between 2025 and 2026, in what the government hailed as a “historic” investment plan. “The prevailing security situation is more serious than it has been in several decades,” Sweden’s ministry of defense said, “and Russia constitutes a multi-dimensional threat.”  But Sweden’s international development cooperation budget, which was worth around €4.5 billion last year, will fall to €4 billion by 2026.  In debt-ridden France, plans were announced earlier this year to slash the ODA budget by around one-third, though its spending decisions have been derailed by a spiraling political crisis that has so far prevented it from passing a budget. Money for defense was due to rise dramatically, despite the overall squeeze on France’s public finances.  In Finland, which shares an 800-mile border with Putin’s Russia, the development budget also fell, while defense spending escaped cuts.  The country’s Development Minister Ville Tavio, from the far-right populist Finns Party, says the cuts provided a chance to rethink aid altogether. Instead of funding humanitarian programs, he wants to give private businesses opportunities to invest to create jobs in poorer countries. That, he believes, will help prevent young people from heading to Europe as illegal migrants.  Advertisement “If they don’t have jobs, the countries will become unstable, and the young people will radicalize. Some of them will start trying to get to Europe,” he said. “It’s a complete win-win if we can help the developing countries to industrialize and create those jobs they need.” Not all countries are cutting back. Ireland plans to increase its ODA budget, while Denmark has pledged to keep spending 0.7 percent of its gross national income on foreign aid even as it boosts investment in defense. But Ireland has enjoyed enviable economic growth in recent years and Denmark will pay for its spending priorities by raising the retirement age to 70. In any case, these are not giant economies that can sustain Europe’s reputation as a soft power superpower on their own.  STAFF CUTS The retreat from foreign aid is only part of a broader withdrawal from diplomacy itself. Some wealthy Western nations have trimmed their diplomatic corps, even closing embassies and bureaus.  Again, Trump’s America provides the most dramatic example. In July, the U.S. State Department fired more than 1,300 employees, among them foreign service officers and civil servants. In the eyes of European officials watching from afar, Trump’s administration just doesn’t seem to care about nurturing established relations with the rest of the world.  According to the American Foreign Service Association’s ambassador tracker, 85 out of 195 American ambassador roles were vacant as of Oct. 23. Part of this reflects confirmation delays in the U.S. Senate, but nine months in office, the administration had not even nominated candidates for more than 60 of the empty posts.  The result is a system stretched to the breaking point, with some of the most senior officials doing more than one job. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, is still doubling up as Trump’s national security adviser (and he’s also been tapped to head the national archives). With key posts left open, Trump has turned to loyalists. Instead of drawing on America’s once-deep pool of diplomatic expertise, the president sent his friend Steve Witkoff, a lawyer and real estate investor, to negotiate personally with Putin and to act as his envoy to the Middle East.  In Brussels, EU officials have been aghast at Witkoff’s lack of understanding of the complexities of the Russia-Ukraine war. One senior European official who requested anonymity to speak candidly about diplomatic matters said they have zero confidence that Witkoff can even relay messages between Moscow and Washington reliably and accurately.  That’s partly why European leaders are so keen to speak directly to Trump, as often and with as many of them present as they can, the senior European official said. And while Washington’s diplomatic corps is hollowed out in plain sight, other governments in the West follow Trump’s lead, only more quietly. Advertisement British diplomats face staff cuts of 15 percent to 25 percent. The Netherlands is reducing its foreign missions budget by 10 percent (while boosting defense) and plans to close at least five embassies and consulates, with more likely to follow.  Even the EU’s flagship foreign department — the European External Action Service, led by the former Prime Minister of Estonia Kaja Kallas, a Russia hawk — is reducing its network of overseas offices. The changes, which POLITICO revealed in May, are expected to result in 10 EU delegations being downsized and 100 to 150 local staff losing their jobs.  “European diplomacy is taking a back seat to priorities such as border control and defense, which are getting increased budget allocations,” one EU official said. The person insisted the EU is not “cutting diplomacy” — but “the resources are going elsewhere.” Privately, diplomats and other officials in Europe confess they are deeply concerned by the trend of reducing diplomatic capacity while military budgets soar.  “We should all be worried about this,” one said.  JAW-JAW OR WAR-WAR? Mitchell, the former British Cabinet minister, warned that the accelerating shift from aid to arms risks ending in catastrophe. “At a time when you really need the international system … you’ve got the massive resurgence of narrow nationalism, in a way that some people argue you haven’t really seen since before 1914,” he said.  Mitchell, who was the U.K.’s international development minister until his Conservative Party lost power last year, said cutting aid to pay for defense was “a terrible, terrible mistake.” He argued that soft power is much cheaper, and often more effective, than hard power on its own. “Development is so often the other side of the coin to defense,” Mitchell said. It helps prevent wars, end fighting and rebuild nations afterward.  At no point since the end of the Cold War has military spending surged as fast as it did in 2024. | Federico Gambarini/picture alliance via Getty Images Many ambassadors, officials, diplomats and analysts interviewed for this article agree. The pragmatic purpose of diplomatic networks and development programs is to build alliances that can be relied on in times of trouble. “Any soldier will tell you that responding to international crises or international threats, isn’t just about military responses,” said Kim Darroch, who served as British ambassador to the U.S. and as the U.K.’s national security adviser. “It’s about diplomacy as well, and it’s about having an integrated strategy that takes in both your international strategy and your military response, as needed.” Hadja Lahbib, the European commissioner responsible for the EU’s vast humanitarian aid program, argues it’s a “totally” false economy to cut aid to finance military budgets. “We have now 300 million people depending on humanitarian aid. We have more and more war,” she told POLITICO.  The whole multilateral aid system is “shaking” as a result of political attacks and funding cuts, she said. The danger is that if it fails, it will trigger fresh instability and mass migration. “The link is quite vicious but if we are not helping people where they are, they are going to move — it’s obvious — to find a way to survive,” Lahbib said. “Desperate people are more [willing] to be violent because they just want to save their lives, to save their family.” Advertisement Countries that cut their outreach programs also face paying a political price for the long term. When a wealthy government closes its embassy or reduces aid to a country needing help, that relationship suffers, potentially permanently, according to Cyprien Fabre, a policy specialist who studies peace and instability at the OECD.  “Countries remember who stayed and who left,” he said.  Vacating the field clears space for rivals to come in. Turkey increased its diplomatic presence in Africa from 12 embassies in 2002 to 44 in 2022, Fabre said. Russia and China are also taking advantage as Europe retreats from the continent. “The global bellicose narrative sees big guns and big red buttons as the only features of power,” Fabre said.  Politicians tend to see the “soft” in “soft power,” he added. “You realize it’s not soft when you lose it.”  Nicholas Vinocur contributed to this report.

BERLIN — Germany’s governing parties moved to provide Ukraine with €3 billion in additional funding, significantly upping military assistance at a time U.S. support for the embattled country is wavering.   During marathon negotiations on a draft 2026 budget that lasted into early Friday morning, coalition lawmakers agreed to increase Ukraine aid to €11.5 billion, bringing Germany’s support for Ukraine to its highest level since Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in 2022. The additional money is to be spent on artillery, drones, armored vehicles, and two Patriot air defense systems, according to German media reports citing the defense ministry. Germany is Ukraine’s largest donor of military aid, after the U.S., in absolute terms. But as U.S. aid flows to Ukraine stall, European countries have attempted to pick up the slack. Still, military aid to Ukraine dropped sharply over the summer despite a deal to allow European NATO countries to acquire weapons from U.S. stockpiles. Germany’s overall draft budget deal foresees total expenditure of around €524.5 billion in 2026 — €4 billion more than initially anticipated. Lawmakers on the coalition’s budget committee approved debt of more than €180 billion, a level made possible by a historic reform of spending rules passed earlier this year, which largely exempted defense expenditures and Ukraine aid from Germany’s constitutional “debt brake.” The draft budget must still be approved by lawmakers in Germany’s Bundestag. As Russia’s invasion grinds on, Ukraine’s war chest is running increasingly low. At the same time, European countries’ military aid to Kyiv declined by 57 percent this summer compared to the beginning of the year, according to a report by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. This decline follows U.S. President Donald Trump’s suspension of new aid packages to Ukraine earlier this year. The European Commission wants to use sanctioned Russian cash to fund a €140 billion loan to Ukraine, but the plan is stalled due to Belgian objections. European leaders say they will attempt to reach an agreement to unlock the funds during a summit in December at the latest.