In the following days Donald Trump Europe, who won the election and guaranteed his return to the White House early next year NATO members were nervous. Yes, we are worried and cautious, but we still strive for public optimism.

Estonian defense minister Hanno Pevkur said past statements made by the Republican Party could be “disturbing” news week on the sidelines of the IISS Prague Defense Summit in the Czech Republic over the weekend. But he quickly added: “I’m not as pessimistic as most people.”

The president-elect’s return brings two big questions to the minds of NATO’s European members: How long will Washington continue to bear most of the burden for its allies, and what will happen to the military aid being funneled to Ukraine.

Trump did not mince words criticisms of the alliance. In remarks condemned by the president, he appeared to give the green light to Russia’s attacks on NATO countries, which he said earlier this year were not providing enough funding to the alliance. Joe BidenHe described his administration as “terrible and unbalanced”.

He also vowed to end military aid to Ukraine before votes are counted across the United States. Kiev is heavily dependent on its allies for weapons and equipment, and with Washington’s help it will take a massive European effort to close the gap left by the United States. evaporated.

news week He reached out to Donald Trump’s team and NATO via email for comment.

Defense spending in Europe fell after the end of the Cold War and was slow to recover.

Each NATO member is required to allocate 2 percent of the country’s GDP to defense. Many countries have not been able to meet this threshold for years, which is not mandated by the alliance. Now, roughly two-thirds of countries expect that rate to reach 2 percent by the end of the year.

The three Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, along with other countries in Eastern Europe, have surpassed much of Western and Southern Europe. Estonia’s defense spending hovers around 3.4 percent of GDP and plans to increase this to 3.7 percent by 2026.

Lithuania said in March it would increase defense spending to 3 percent from 2025. But defense minister Laurynas Kasčiūnas said in September that Vilnius should consider increasing funding for the military to 4 percent to finance new long-range air defenses and other equipment.

Speaking in Prague over the weekend, Kasčiūnas said Trump “always comes with strategic uncertainty.” “That’s his way of working.”

Kasčiūnas said US battalion-sized forces arrived in the Baltic state in 2019 during the previous Trump administration.

Kasčiūnas said the difference this time will be the team surrounding the president-elect. Kasčiūnas said people who had an ear for Trump when he was elected in 2016 broadly followed Republican president Ronald Reagan’s policy style, which benefited the eastern flank and the Baltic states.

The “critical question” is who will make up Trump’s inner circle now, the official added. “It depends a lot on that.”

Estonia and Latvia are pressed against Russia’s western border for hundreds of kilometers, while Lithuania borders Belarus, Russia’s Kaliningrad region, home to the Baltic Sea Fleet, and its president. Alexander LukashenkoPresident of Russia Vladimir Putin‘s loyal ally. Russia used Belarusian territory to launch operations against Ukraine at the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

It may have a bright side. The mission to boost Europe’s defense spending is one that officials on the continent are united in, but whether European NATO members can develop the capacity they need is open to debate.

As warnings from top military and political figures grow more urgent, it is questionable how quickly they can do so. But officials and experts think Trump could openly tell European countries that defense spending needs to increase, making the final push that some politicians still need.

Speaking at the summit, Czech President Petr Pavel also said Friday that European nations will always have to do more to support their own defense, but “with President Trump, we will probably have to do it faster.”

“With the experience of his first term, when he came to NATO with a shocking message that the United States would not defend anyone who did not pay enough, we were shocked because we were not used to this kind of approach,” Pavel said. he said.

“Of course the message was absolutely correct,” the Czech president added. “It’s just that Donald Trump’s predecessors presented it in a much more casual way. That’s probably why European allies didn’t listen so intently.”

“We built this moral wall against him,” Lithuanian Kasčiūnas said during Trump’s first inauguration.

“I understand that, but maybe it wasn’t very good to deal with him,” Kasčiūnas said. He added that starting in January, Europe will take a more pragmatic approach to shaping how NATO states will interact with the new US leader. “We need to sit down together to think about how to work with it.”

Estonian Pevkur said that it is too early to say how the discourses during the campaign will turn into official policy. news week. “Campaigning is one thing,” he added. “Real life is a little different.”

Pevkur said that the same situation occurred the last time Trump came to the Oval Office. “We actually saw that foreign and defense policy was not that bad.”

“I talked to a lot of people RepublicansPevkur said, “Not only at the top, but also in Trump’s team, in Trump’s team.” On issues such as how to handle the war in Ukraine, which lasted more than two and a half years, the Estonian defense minister said: “I believe that Trump is the loser.” He doesn’t want to be on the side.”

Trump has repeatedly said he would Stopping the war in Ukraine He must be reassigned to the White House “within 24 hours.” He did not explain how he hoped to quickly end the largest land war in Europe since World War II.

Advisers to the president-elect signaled a deal could happen in the future Giving part of Russian-controlled Ukraine to MoscowPavel said this delayed Kiev’s NATO membership by at least two decades and gave Europe long-term responsibility for protecting the continent’s eastern flank and hundreds of kilometers of demilitarized zone. Similar reports have appeared in the media in recent days suggesting that the grueling conflict could be frozen.

Officials generally agree that the timeline is unrealistic, but they believe Trump will reach some kind of agreement with Putin, whom the president-elect has praised as having “very good relations.” Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedevwho remains a prominent and hawkish figure in Russian politics Republican He was a “business owner through and through,” which he described as “a useful quality for us.”

“Let’s wait and see what happens in January,” the Kremlin spokesman said. Dmitry Peskov he told reporters Wednesday after Trump’s election victory.

Ukrainian leader will visit Budapest on Thursday Volodymyr Zelensky He said he believes Trump “really wants to make a quick decision” to end the war, but that “doesn’t mean it’s going to happen that way.”