Meet the new leader of the free world.
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
By DAVID FRENCH
A remarkable thing has happened on the world’s battlefields. Ukraine — a nation that was supposed to dissolve within days of a Russian invasion — has fought Russia to a stalemate, revolutionizing land warfare in the process. It has become an indispensable security partner in the Western alliance, including in the war against Iran.
Now, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, is taking the next step, one that would have been unthinkable even as recently as 2024. By word and deed, he’s showing Europe and the world how the post-American free world can preserve its liberty and independence. This is what happens when, as Phillips Payson O’Brien wrote in a piece for The Atlantic, “Kyiv appears to have given up on the United States.”
If that is true — and it looks as though it is — it may be worse news for the United States than it is for Ukraine.
Events on the ground and in world capitals are moving so quickly that it’s hard to keep up. First, the strategic situation in the Ukraine war seems to have changed. Last week, Mick Ryan, a retired Australian major general and one of the most astute analysts of the war, wrote that Ukraine has largely stabilized the frontline in eastern Ukraine, deepened its coalition, isolated Russia diplomatically and developed an indigenous arms industry that makes it less dependent on external support.
It’s no longer accurate to think of Ukraine as a desperate underdog; it’s becoming an independent power. Even as it fights for its life against Russia, it’s reportedly reaching defense deals with the Gulf States and with the United States — and this time it’s Ukraine that’s providing military assistance.
In February 2025, Donald Trump mocked Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now,” Trump said. In April 2026, Ukraine has enough cards left that it’s sharing them.
This might be difficult for many readers to grasp — given our nation’s long-standing military supremacy — but the largest and most battle-hardened land force in the Western world may well be the Ukrainian army. While the precise numbers are classified, the Atlantic Council estimated in 2025 that Ukraine had roughly 1 million men and women under arms, the vast majority of whom serve in the ground forces.
America’s total force is larger than Ukraine’s, but to put the size of Ukrainian land forces in perspective, the combined size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps is around 620,000. It’s also worth noting that the U.S. forces have much less combat experience than Ukraine forces — especially when it comes to combat with a great power.
No one should minimize Ukraine’s manpower issues (more recent estimates place its total number of active troops well below the million-body peak) or the fact that it has no nuclear weapons and Russia has thousands. But its army is still vast, and its military is the only Western force that has fully adapted to modern drone warfare. Indeed, Ukraine is arguably the world’s leader in drone warfare.
Rapid change isn’t just occurring in Ukraine. Other developments across the Western alliance show that European nations are working with shocking speed to free themselves from dependence on America.
France is expanding its nuclear arsenal and increasing its defense spending. It has even changed its nuclear doctrine to allow it to deploy nuclear-armed aircraft outside France.
Germany has approved a plan to spend up to 1 trillion euros on defense and infrastructure. It has also set the goal of creating the strongest military in Europe by 2039 (ironically enough, the 100-year anniversary of the German invasion of Poland).
Canada is enacting its own defense budget increases — with the added twist that it will be spending far less money on American weapons.
This decision mirrors larger European and allied trends. Our allies are increasing their defense budgets and decreasing their dependence on American technology. Just last week, for example, NATO procurement officials decided to replace aging American-made early warning aircraft with newer designs from Saab, a Swedish manufacturer, and Bombardier of Canada. Ukraine has signed deals and letters of intent to purchase potentially hundreds of advanced fighters from Sweden and France.
There are readers who will welcome these developments. Good, you might think. Europe should take primary responsibility for its own defense. But there is an immense difference between allies who step up to contribute their fair share to a cooperative alliance and nations who engage in a military buildup to replace American power, which they no longer trust.
I don’t think Americans fully appreciate the extraordinary cost of Trump’s bluster and blunders. It should go without saying, but once you threaten to invade an allied country, you don’t just place the existence of the alliance in jeopardy; you raise the possibility of allies turning into mortal enemies. You can also trigger the kind of insecurity and scramble for power that contributed to the start of World War I.
In practical terms, it’s hard to see how alienating American allies puts America first.
There’s certainly no military benefit. Americans have spent the last several weeks watching our president dismiss our European allies as irrelevant then rage at them for not helping American forces reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
By launching the war against Iran without seeking the help of (or even consulting) our European allies, we lost potential access to their advanced fighters and frigates, as well as to France’s carrier battle group. In this context, there is no such thing as addition by subtraction. We are not stronger when there are fewer forces that will deploy to our aid.
There’s no fiscal benefit, either. This may sound overly basic, but it needs to be said: If you break faith with your allies, you can’t count on them to come to your defense. And that means you have to spend more money to maintain the same level of deterrence.
That’s exactly what Trump is planning to do; he has submitted a roughly $1.5 trillion budget request for the U.S. military, a staggering 40% increase from this fiscal year.
History has its hinge points, and here is one: On Friday night, Feb. 25, 2022, Volodymyr Zelenskyy released a brief video from Kyiv. He told the people of Ukraine that the government has not fled to safety in the West and that it intended to stand and fight.
“We are here,” Zelenskyy said. “We are in Kyiv. We are protecting Ukraine.”
When I visited Ukraine in 2023, I spoke to Ukrainian soldiers who told me that statement sent a jolt of electricity through Ukrainian lines. From that moment, they knew they would not surrender; they would stand.
In hindsight, that decision hasn’t just changed the course of Ukrainian history. Its ripple effects are extending across the globe.