In his official remarks delivered today to the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth presented the Trump administration’s policy on Ukraine in no uncertain terms: 1) there will be no Ukraine in NATO; 2) there will be no U.S. troops in Ukraine; and 3) it is illusory to think that Ukraine will be able to return to its 2014 borders.
But at the same time, he announced a pivot towards confrontation with China, which he claimed has the “capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests.”
“As the war approaches its third anniversary, our message is clear: The bloodshed must stop.… We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. But we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.… That said, the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. Instead any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission. And they should not be covered under Article 5…. To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine.…
“Safeguarding European security must be an imperative for European members of NATO. As part of this Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine.”
Hegseth then turned to China: “We’re also here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe. The United States faces consequential threats to our homeland. We must—and we are—focusing on security of our own borders.
“We also face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail. Deterrence cannot fail, for all of our sakes.”
