Opposition to Putin Pulls Up European Leaders Dragged Down at Home

When Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain welcomes President Trump to his country residence, Chequers, for a planned state visit next week, their encounter will show off Mr. Starmer the statesman, drawing on his well-honed relationship with the president to lobby for his help in defending Ukraine against a predatory Russia.

It is hard to imagine a starker contrast to Mr. Starmer the politician. He is still reeling from the resignation of his deputy prime minister after a tax entanglement and the dismissal of his ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, because of Mr. Mandelson’s ties to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Add to that the government’s plunging poll numbers and a surging right-wing populist opposition.

The same split screen is playing out in France, where President Emmanuel Macron just lost another prime minister — his sixth — to a no-confidence vote, and in Germany, where Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s plans to overhaul the economy are bogged down by his shaky government coalition.

Rarely have Europe’s leaders acted so united and resolute on the global stage, while suffering so many domestic political setbacks. Their resilience reflects a determination to confront Russia’s aggression, which was on vivid display on Wednesday morning, when Russian drones entered Polish airspace and caused NATO allies to scramble fighter jets, in a dangerous escalation of the conflict.

“In the current climate, where there is such an overriding crisis, the fact that these leaders are weakened politically at home doesn’t matter so much,” said Peter Ricketts, a former British national security adviser who also served as ambassador to France. “There’s no divide across the parties about Ukraine.”

But experts question how long Europe’s leaders can keep walking tall abroad while stumbling at home. The fragmentation of politics in Britain, France and Germany has left centrist governments fearful of losing their grip on power and consumed by domestic issues like immigration and the economy.

In France, Mr. Macron, who has put himself at the vanguard of Europe’s response to the war in Ukraine, scrambled on Tuesday to name a replacement for his ousted prime minister, François Bayrou. Mr. Bayrou’s successor, Sébastien Lecornu, will have to navigate between far-right and far-left parties that seem more intent on forcing Mr. Macron to call new elections than they are on passing a budget.

“Europeans are limited in what they can do beyond their borders because of what they’re not doing within their borders,” said Richard N. Haass, a former president of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, who once published a book titled “Foreign Policy Begins at Home.”

Mr. Haass, whose book focused on the United States, said European leaders had been galvanized by the “scale and brutality of what Putin is doing,” as well as by the “wake-up call from America.” Their domestic roadblocks have encouraged them to look abroad for achievements — an impulse that echoes the careers of statesmen from Winston Churchill to Richard M. Nixon.

That ambition has produced results. European countries have pledged landmark increases in military spending. They are buying weapons from the United States to transfer to Ukraine. And they have projected unity in planning for a so-called coalition of the willing, which would provide security for Ukraine after a peace agreement with Russia.

The challenge, Mr. Haass said, will come in Europe’s generational project to wean itself off dependence on America’s post-World War II security guarantees. Such a project would require commitments that extend through multiple governments, which will be difficult to sustain in an era of political volatility.

Poland, which suddenly finds itself on the war’s front lines, provides a pertinent example. Its centrist prime minister, Donald Tusk, had taken a staunchly pro-Ukraine position. But after the election of a right-wing president, Karol Nawrocki, who opposes Ukraine’s membership in the European Union, the nation is now bitterly divided over how to treat Ukrainian refugees in the country.

Mr. Merz of Germany got off to a strong start by negotiating the loosening of state debt limits to finance a mammoth increase in military spending. At a gathering of European leaders at the White House in August, he urged Mr. Trump to push President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to accept a cease-fire with Ukraine.

“We were well prepared and well coordinated,” Mr. Merz said afterward. “I think that really pleased the American president, in the sense that he noticed that we Europeans are speaking with one voice here.”

Back in Berlin, Mr. Merz has had a bumpier ride. He took office promising to overhaul Germany’s sclerotic economy. But so far his grand coalition — a balky alliance of center-right Christian Democrats and center-left Social Democrats — has disappointed analysts with the cautiousness of its measures.

He has also been tripped up by a split within the coalition over the nomination of a judge to Germany’s highest court. The nominee, a liberal legal scholar, came under attack from the right for her views on abortion and other issues.

A bigger threat may loom from the far-right party Alternative for Germany, which now leads Mr. Merz’s Christian Democrats in polls. The party is bent on “splitting Merz’s conservatives, breaking his coalition and instigating chaos and alienation among voters,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“Merz’s key task,” she said, “is to make sure they succeed with none of it.”

Mr. Macron, whose term ends in 2027, has the freedom and the limitations of being a lame duck. Under France’s presidential system, he has more leeway on foreign policy than his British and German counterparts. Analysts say he has made the most of it since last summer, when his decision to call legislative elections backfired, resulting in the current paralysis.

“His own advisers say his domestic political problems have given him more time and space to do international affairs,” said Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst at the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.

But Mr. Rahman said Mr. Macron’s eloquence, and his vision of a strategically independent Europe, are vitiated by France’s inability to pay for it. “Macron has a policy but no ability to back it up, because France is bankrupt,” he said.

For Mr. Starmer, the calculus is different. His Labour Party has a 148-seat parliamentary majority, and he is not obliged to call an election until 2029. While the rise of the populist leader Nigel Farage has led to breathless predictions that he could be the next prime minister, Mr. Starmer will meet Mr. Trump next week as the major European leader most likely to be in office until after Mr. Trump himself is gone.

“In a funny way, he’s the most secure of the three,” Mr. Ricketts, the former national security adviser, said. “As long as a British prime minister has a stable, secure majority in the Parliament, he has a relatively free hand.”

Jim Tankersley contributed reporting from Berlin.