By Gram Slattery
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Pentagon officials sat down with a group of European diplomats in late August and delivered a stern message: The U.S. planned to cut off some security assistance to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, all NATO members bordering Russia.
More broadly, Pentagon official David Baker told the group, according to an official with direct knowledge of the comments, Europe needed to be less dependent on the U.S. Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. military would be shifting
its attention to other priorities, like defense of the homeland.
Some European diplomats fretted that the move could embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Friday, they may have been proven right.
Russian MiG-31 jets entered Estonian airspace for roughly 10 minutes, Estonia said, before being chased away by Italian F-35s. Russia denied violating Estonian airspace, saying its jets flew over neutral waters.
Hours later, Russian jets buzzed a Polish oil platform, Warsaw said. Last week, Russian drones were downed in Poland.
The U.S. response to those incidents has so far been muted. Trump did not address the latest incursion for several hours, before saying it could be "big trouble." After last week's Polish incident, he posted cryptically on his Truth Social app: "Here we go!"
His responses appear to fit an emerging pattern.
After months of proposing both ideas to solve or intermediate some of the world's most intractable conflicts, Trump has largely withdrawn from diplomacy in recent weeks. Instead, he has allowed and in some cases pressed allies to take the lead, with only distant promises of U.S. help.
He has increasingly turned his attention to domestic issues, like tackling crime, confronting what he calls violent left-wing extremism and overhauling a major visa program.
RETURNING TO FORM
After an intense summer of diplomacy, including hosting Putin in Alaska, Trump has told Europeans they must impose punishing sanctions on buyers of Russian oil if they expect Washington to tighten the financial screws on Moscow over its war in Ukraine.
After the U.S. president spent the first several months of his term trying to secure a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, he has lately shrugged off moves by Israel that would seem to undermine the possibility of a deal to end the war in Gaza.
White House officials protested when Israel bombed a Hamas office located in the territory of U.S. ally Qatar but took no action. When Israel launched a controversial military advance on Gaza City, Trump did not object, even as European and Arab allies condemned the move, which seemed likely to doom peace talks.
That Trump would be wary of U.S. involvement in major conflicts is in some ways unsurprising. He spent two years on the campaign trail arguing the nation was militarily overstretched. Political opponents called him an isolationist.
But over the summer, a different Trump emerged. To the chagrin of some conservative political allies, he bombed Iran's key nuclear sites in support of Israel's air war in June. At a NATO conference in the Netherlands later that month, he indicated he would send fresh Patriot defense systems to Ukraine. In July, he intensified his threats of sanctions and tariffs targeting Moscow.
Now, analysts say, Trump is returning to form.
Aaron David Miller, a veteran U.S. diplomat and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Trump may have simply realized the conflicts are far more intractable than he had imagined.
"He's not interested in doing anything unless he sees that the expenditure of effort and political capital will be worth the return," Miller said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
MERCURIAL PRESIDENT, EXHAUSTED DIPLOMATS
The president's latest zig could easily be followed by a zag. In April and May, he publicly floated walking away from the war in Ukraine, only to re-engage heavily on the issue.
Moreover, the White House's disengagement has not been absolute. In recent weeks, some U.S. weapons have begun flowing into Ukraine as part of a U.S.-NATO security assistance initiative called the PURL program.
Still, analysts expressed concern that the mild U.S. reaction to Russia's latest provocations will only encourage more aggressive steps by Putin.
Further U.S. disengagement "would lead us to more provocative actions from Putin as he sees Europe as weaker because it can be divided - especially without the U.S. there to back it up," said Alex Plitsas, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Several European diplomats in Washington privately expressed exhaustion at Trump's changeable attitude on Russia - and suggested another hardening of his stance toward Moscow could lack credibility.
Over the summer, those diplomats said, the mood was notably different.
At a NATO summit in June, Trump heaped praise on European leaders and the next month repeatedly threatened Russia with direct and secondary sanctions and agreed to set up PURL.
But the anti-climactic summit with Putin produced no breakthroughs and a major setback for Kyiv: Trump left the meeting saying a ceasefire in Ukraine was not a precondition of lasting peace - a position held by Putin, but not European allies.
In a testy September 4 call with European partners, Trump argued that European nations were expecting the U.S. to bail them out when Europeans were still themselves supporting Russia's war machine by purchasing Russian oil, according to two officials briefed on the call.
The next week, Trump told European Union officials they should hit China and India with 100% tariffs to punish them for their purchases of Russian oil. He portrayed such a move as a precondition for U.S. action, one official said.
Trump's supporters say he is only demanding that Europe stand up for its own security.
But some diplomats sense a trap. Such measures would be hard to get through the EU's bureaucracy promptly, particularly as the bloc prefers sanctions to tariffs. Two senior European diplomats in Washington also noted that Trump has recently spoken of lowering trade barriers with India.
It is unclear if Friday's Estonia incursion will alter Trump's calculus toward Russia.
His government appeared unmoved by a letter from lawmakers in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia last week calling for reconsideration of Trump's plan to eliminate some security assistance.
"Many of our European allies are among the world's wealthiest countries," a White House official said. "They are fully capable of funding these programs if they choose."
(Reporting by Gram Slattery; Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Don Durfee and William Mallard)
