Europe Has the Money. Where Is the Army?

On 9 October the US Treasury issued General License 135, which allows Russian diesel to be sold and imported, including into the United States, until 7 April 2027. Donald Trump announced it after a call with Vladimir Putin: 300,000 tonnes at once, more to follow. The motive is plain. US diesel averages $6.28 a gallon, up 70 percent since the war on Iran began on 28 February, and the midterms are weeks away.

Volodymyr Zelensky called it "a weak decision by strong partners." Republican Representative Don Bacon argued for more pressure on Moscow, not less. CSIS's Clayton Seigle expects little effect on prices and a benefit to Russia. This column sides with the critics. Paying Moscow in the middle of a war to lower a pump price is wrong, and so is leaning on Kyiv.

THE ARITHMETIC

Europe is not poor. France and Germany together have about 150 million people (roughly 67 million and 84 million on UN estimates), slightly more than Russia's 143 million. On the IMF's 2026 projections Germany's economy is worth about $5.3 to 5.5 trillion, France's about $3.6 trillion and Russia's about $2.5 to 2.7 trillion. France and Germany together are roughly three and a half times Russia. Nominal GDP is the flattering measure for Europe, and Russia has put its economy on a war footing. Even so, the gap is not close.

THE MONEY

On cheques, the complaint that America does Europe's dirty work is out of date. The Kiel Institute's tracker shows Europe passed the United States in cumulative aid to Ukraine in early 2025, by €23 billion. Washington has since cut its contributions by up to 99 percent. European military aid reached about €29 billion in 2025, against €17 to 18 billion a year before.

The complaint holds for something else.

THE EUROPEAN WAIVER

Europe's own hands are not clean. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air counted €2.3 billion spent by EU buyers on Russian fossil fuels in May 2026, with LNG the largest share, and €1.3 billion in July from the five largest buyers alone. At that pace Europe pays Moscow roughly €16 to 28 billion a year, the same order of magnitude as the €29 billion of military aid it gave Ukraine in 2025. The EU banned short-term Russian LNG contracts on 25 April, yet May LNG imports rose, because Spain doubled its purchases. The long-term contracts end only on 1 January 2027, pipeline gas by autumn 2027. Hungary and Slovakia still take Russian crude through the Druzhba pipeline.

Washington's waiver is a loophole written in one line and for six months. Europe's is a loophole written in a regulation and kept for three years.

THE GAP

• Space and intelligence. European states operate about 17 percent of NATO's military satellites, according to CNAS, and European officials only began to take that seriously after Washington froze intelligence-sharing with Ukraine in March 2025. The EU's IRIS² network began limited service in January 2026. Full operation is expected in 2029 or 2030.
• Air defence. Ukraine's stock of Patriot PAC-3 interceptors is nearly exhausted, The Economist reported in September, and American stocks have been drained by the Iran war. Older French-Italian SAMP/T batteries are due by the end of 2026, eight of the new generation in 2027. MBDA expects to reach about 300 Aster missiles a year only by 2028.
• Drones. Europe is learning from Ukraine. An EU-Ukraine drone deal worth about a billion euros aims at joint production by the end of 2026. Ukraine says it can build 10 million drones a year; that is Kyiv's own claim, not an audited figure.
• American weapons. In the first half of 2026 European donors bought at least €3 billion of weapons from US firms, about 30 percent of what they delivered through industry.

What Europe can do when it chooses is visible at sea. France has seized at least five Russian shadow-fleet tankers since September 2025, and Moscow calls it piracy. It is also fragile: one of them, the Deyna, was released a month later.

A continent that can seize a tanker but cannot replace an interceptor has not yet become a power.

What follows is the editorial view.

THE LEVERAGE

Here is the uncomfortable symmetry. Trump can lean on Zelensky, and wave through a diesel waiver that Europe despises, because Europe cannot yet replace what America supplies. Zelensky's phrase, "strong partners," is accurate and cuts both ways: the strongest partner is also the one everyone depends on. Leverage follows capacity, and it also follows clean hands: a Europe that still sends Moscow billions every month for gas and oil is poorly placed to lecture anyone about diesel. A speech in Brussels does not move Washington. A factory in Lorraine would.

That is the real answer to the question of why 700 million Europeans have no network of spy satellites of their own, no home-built air defence in quantity and no drone industry at scale. It is not poverty. Russia's occupation of Crimea in 2014 was a warning, and so was the full invasion in 2022. Europe heard both and answered with committees. For thirty years the American arsenal was the cheapest insurance on the continent, and Europeans let the policy lapse while still collecting the cover.

The diesel waiver is a bad decision. It is also one decision inside a very large bet: that America can rebuild its industry, modernise its armed forces, secure its border, end racial preferences hidden behind gentle labels, and unwind energy policies that, in this column's view, hollowed out Western economies. Those are arguments to be tested by results, and results are not yet in. If the bet pays off, a stronger America is good for the West. It is better for Europe if Europe is a partner and not a ward.

The best reply to a wrong American decision is not outrage. It is capacity, delivered on a date. Today Europe's own dates are 2027, 2028 and 2030. Putin has been counting them.

WHAT TO WATCH

• Whether the long-term Russian LNG ban really takes effect on 1 January 2027.
• Whether Congress pushes back on General License 135 before it expires on 7 April 2027.
• Whether the first SAMP/T NG batteries reach Ukraine in 2027, as scheduled.
• Whether joint EU-Ukraine drone production actually starts by the end of 2026.
• Whether courts hold the next seized tanker, or release it as they did the Deyna.
• The US midterms on 3 November, and whether cheaper diesel is what voters credit.