America Blinks, Europe Rises: How the US Intelligence Freeze Is Igniting a New Superpower

This is the end of American Era. It is over. There won't be a second chance.

Even when Russia bombed a theater full of women and children in Mariupol, even when they massacred kids in Kyiv’s largest children’s hospital, even when they committed atrocities beyond comprehension—Ukraine never cut the flow of Russian gas through its territory.

There are contracts you don’t break, even in war. Ukraine honored its commitments, waited for the pipeline deal to expire, and made its intentions clear. A nation under siege still upheld its values. The same can’t be said for the United States under Donald Trump.

First, military aid approved by Congress and signed off by President Biden was frozen. Then, intelligence sharing with Ukraine was cut off. The Brits got a call: no passing along intel generated with American systems. Then came the HIMARS—disabled at the front lines. If there was software, Washington found a way to sabotage it.

A ringing endorsement of American products—not just its weapons, but everything stamped "Made in the USA." Putin must have been popping champagne in the Kremlin, watching Trump and company announce the end of the American era.

“Did anyone think this through? Some two-thirds of European defense procurement is spent on American weapons. If the U.S. indeed switched off the targeting of HIMARS in Ukraine — a country fighting a war that not just Kyiv, but most of Europe, consider existential — buying any American technology will soon be considered a security risk”: Yaroslav Trofimov, Chief Foreign-Affairs Correspondent of The Wall Street Journal