New Jersey has two congressmen on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Chris Smith (R, CD-4) and Rep. Tom Kean, Jr. (R, CD-7). US Senator Cory Booker serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which had once been chaired by former Senator Bob Menendez, who is currently facing an 11-year jail sentence for corruption. New Jersey’s elected officials in the Congress have yet to release statements regarding the dizzying events unfurling in Europe, with respect to the invasion of Ukraine, and the president’s bilateral approach to dealing with Russia, which shocked European allies and left Kyiv out in the cold. New Jersey is home to some of the largest Ukrainian and Ukrainian-American populations in the country, just behind New York, California, and Pennsylvania.

As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth emphasizes the need for NATO countries to step up their own defense spending, something which NATO countries have been undertaking since the attack on Ukraine began in February of 2022, he also signaled an American retreat from its previous position of aiding Ukrainian defense for the long-term, with the new priority of ending the war, and fast. Ukrainian and European leadership had been bypassed, with the Trump administration talking directly with the Kremlin about conditions for a potential peace.

It was reminiscent of the 1884 Berlin Conference, where the Great Powers of the time, European countries with vast colonial empires, were cognizant of the dangers they faced from each other in particular over the “Scramble for Africa.” Without African representation present, the Great Powers agreed to divide up the African continent among themselves to avoid future clashes and exploit their gains as they saw fit. It largely worked until conflict reignited in 1914 on a scale hitherto unseen in human history.

These episodes have parallels to the present European crisis playing out, where American power, the dominant military and economic force within NATO, appears to be reversing course from the Biden Administration’s unwavering support for Ukraine, NATO, and in halting Russian aggression, without Ukrainian input as a priority. The US has long argued, under both the Trump and Biden administrations, that European allies need to increase their defense spending, and shoulder more of the burden. And European countries have been responding in kind, although not with the speed desired by Washington DC and NATO itself.

NATO Secretary-General (and former Dutch Prime Minister) Mark Rutte said, “Secretary Hegseth came with a clear message, of America’s enduring commitment to a strong NATO Alliance, and of America’s clear expectations for all Allies to carry their fair share of the burden.”

Rutte acknowledged, and has been a long advocate of, the need for increased defense spending. He said that Europeans need to position themselves to a “wartime mindset” to defend the continent from Russian aggression. “To ensure we are fully ready to execute these plans we need more military capabilities, and for that we need significantly more defense spending. It is clear from our discussions today that Allies recognize the need to invest much more.”

Rutte pointed out that, since 2014, the year Russia invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine, Canadian and European NATO members added $700B to their defense spending policies. Last year, excluding the United States, NATO allies increased their defense budgets by 20%.

The often-missed target for NATO members was to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense, with NATO reporting that about two-thirds of member countries currently meeting that goal. The US makes up about 16% of the NATO budget. In December, Rutte agreed with Trump, who was calling for 5% NATO targets. “I can tell you,” Rutte said, “we are going to need a lot more than 2%. If we don’t spend more together now to prevent war, we will pay a much, much, much higher price later to fight it.”

Even the United States does not meet a 5% defense target.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy had said that Ukraine would not agree to any kind of peace process in which his country was not participating. A Kremlin spokesman said Ukraine would be involved “in one way or another” within the bilateral US/Russia framework.

President Zelenskyy released a statement, appealing to Poland, the European country spending the highest percentage on defense and ardently opposed to further Russian aggression. “I spoke with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. We discussed the conditions needed for a lasting and real peace in Ukraine and agreed that no negotiations with Putin can begin without a united position from Ukraine, Europe, and the U.S. I informed the Prime Minister about my conversation with President Trump, and we discussed key messages and the need to coordinate the positions of all Europeans to achieve successful outcomes for the whole of Europe. I emphasized that Ukraine must negotiate from a position of strength, with strong and reliable security guarantees, and that NATO membership would be the most cost-effective for partners. Another key guarantee is serious investment in Ukraine’s defense industry. I also warned world leaders against trusting Putin’s claims of readiness to end the war.”

The unilateral approach Trump has taken appears to have made it clear that the United States does not expect nor will require Russia to return the Ukrainian territory it is occupying, either the eastern territories captured since 2022 or Crimea. Hegseth said the administration wants to “Make NATO great again,” while also pointing out that the United States would not seek Ukrainian membership in the alliance.

While European and NATO leaders are rushing to make sense of the American whiplash, it should be noted that the Trump administration has already antagonized NATO members outside of the scope of the war on Ukraine. Denmark, which owns Greenland, has been pressured by the Trump administration to give up its autonomous territory, something they have flatly rejected. US relations with Canada, derided as the “51st state” and whose Prime Minister has been repeatedly mocked by President Trump as “Governor Trudeau,” are at a new low over threats of tariffs and demands for greater increases in border security and narcotics trafficking. After briefly imposing, and then suspending, tariffs on Canada, Trump said in a pre-game Super Bowl interview that he is serious about Canada being annexed. Canadian authorities have threatened to suspend electricity sold to northern US states in addition to their own retaliatory tariffs, should Washington reimpose them.

The BBC Monitoring’s Russia editor, Vitaliy Shevchenko, said, “Russian commentators are overjoyed by Washington’s shift of policy on Ukraine – they literally cannot believe their luck.” Where freedom of the press is curtailed and media is under almost total state control, he noted that the elated Komsomolskaya Pravda ran its headline, “Trump has signed a death sentence for Zelensky.”

New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, represented by Republican Congressman Kean, Jr., is home to the largest concentration of Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Americans living in the state, with gubernatorial candidate and Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill’s CD-11 home to the second-largest. How their representatives respond to the administration’s approach to NATO and Ukraine may be long remembered by the diaspora in New Jersey and their families.