Top diplomats from the United States’ foreign allies are flocking to the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Wisconsin this week to make inroads with a Republican Party that some fear could abandon them under the ascendant MAGA movement.
Ambassadors from around 20 European countries plan to head to the convention with pitches on the value of alliances that they hope are tailor-made for former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Republican Party—with talking points that emphasize how they are beefing up defense spending and toughening their stances on China. What’s unclear is whether their messages will get through to the skeptics.
“It’s our last-ditch pitch to the MAGA wing of the party,” said one European official, who, like many of the more than a dozen officials whom Foreign Policy spoke to for this story, requested anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters. “We have a lot to offer. I just hope they are willing to listen.”
For supporters of Ukraine, the RNC got off to a rocky start. On Monday, the convention’s opening night, prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist and political donor David Sacks took to the stage to bash President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party—including through jabs about the war in Ukraine that mirrored narratives frequently seen in Russian propaganda outlets. Biden “provoked, yes provoked, the Russians to invade Ukraine with talk of NATO expansion,” Sacks said. (All NATO allies sharply dispute this characterization and say that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the war unprovoked.)
It’s common for diplomats from U.S.-allied countries to attend both the Republican and Democratic conventions in election years. But this election cycle has taken on a new level of urgency for European allies due to the prospect of Trump and his newly anointed running mate, J.D. Vance, taking the White House in November.
Trump has repeatedly criticized NATO allies and vilified the European Union as an arch economic rival, rather than a valuable ally, of the United States. Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, has parted with many Senate Republicans in calling for a halt to U.S. aid to Ukraine—a point that has unnerved U.S. allies and energized Russian media circles as the war in Ukraine drags into its third year. The bulk of Republicans in Congress support NATO and Ukraine, but the faction of the party that is skeptical of alliances and continuing support to Ukraine is rising, particularly with Trump’s pick of Vance as running mate.
Jovita Neliupsiene, the EU ambassador to Washington, is currently in Milwaukee and downplayed the narrative of a Europe gripped by anxiety over a second Trump term. “You have to keep a cool head and do your work,” she said in an interview. “Yes, it takes a bit of effort to explain how interlinked we are,” she added, but her message this week to skeptical Republicans is that “we would be better off together.”
Ukraine—and many NATO allies—rely heavily on the U.S. military and its massive defense industry to keep supplying Kyiv’s defense against Russia and deter attacks on NATO’s European allies. Many allied countries believe that Ukraine would quickly lose ground if the U.S. cut off support—and Moscow could set its sights on invading other countries on the alliance’s eastern flank next if it is victorious in Ukraine.
“I cannot think of a moment in time over these long years where the presence and role of America in European security has been more important than at this crucial moment in history, where we have an ongoing war with a nuclear power in the heart of Europe,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, a top German foreign-policy thinker who runs the Munich Security Conference. (Ischinger flew to Milwaukee on Tuesday to host his own MSC events on the sidelines of the RNC. He noted that he will attend the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later this year, too.)
Yet the view that Europe has for too long freeloaded off U.S. military might and still isn’t spending enough on defense has taken root in the populist faction of the Republican Party that has shown up in force in Milwaukee for the convention. Some hawkish pro-NATO Republicans, such as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined the roster of speakers at the convention.
Yet skeptics of Ukraine aid and European alliances also got their own top speaking slots—indicating that Europe’s battle for the narrative in Milwaukee was far from a done deal. These skeptics included Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (who has repeatedly parroted false Russian conspiracy theories on Ukraine), and the influential conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.
Like much of Washington, European governments were caught flat-footed by Trump’s surprising victory in the 2016 presidential election, leading to the surge in engagement at this year’s RNC.
“Embassies do not want to be in the same place they were in 2016,” said Heather Conley, the head of the Washington-based German Marshall Fund think tank. “They were surprised and just did not have connections into the administration,” she said, “so this time it’s clear they learned their lesson and are trying to make new contacts, reach out to folks in the Republican world they do not know.”
For European ambassadors, the RNC also represents a unique opportunity to pitch the importance of trans-Atlantic ties to the Republican Party machinery outside the Washington bubble—if the skeptics are willing to engage and listen.
One main pitch is focused on the Republicans’ top foreign-policy priority: countering China. On Tuesday, the EU’s ambassador to Washington, Neliupsiene, the EU ambassador, hosted a meeting in Milwaukee on U.S.-EU ties with China with Republican Texas Rep. Nathaniel Moran and Elbridge Colby, a prominent conservative foreign-policy thinker. Colby has ties to Trump campaign circles and has called for the United States to step back from supporting Ukraine and redirect military resources to confronting Beijing.
“The best 5G technologies, apart from Chinese [options], are in Europe. If we’re serious on de-risking from China, we have to work together, the EU and U.S.,” Neliupsiene said.
Another focus for allies at the RNC, officials said, will be driving home the message that Europe is taking its own defense more seriously and ramping up investments in its militaries—a main thorn in the side of U.S.-Europe ties during Trump’s first term. (In 2014, just three member states met the NATO threshold of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense; this year, 23 of the 32 allies are slated to meet that target.) The British, German, Swedish, and Canadian ambassadors will speak at an event about NATO on the sidelines of the RNC hosted by Politico on Thursday, fresh off the heels of a NATO summit in Washington last week that was overshadowed by doubts about Biden’s own ability to stand for a second term given his age.
Ischinger said that Europeans need to stop hand-wringing about the prospect of a second Trump term and muscle through managing trans-Atlantic ties.
“I will spend quite a bit of time in the next couple days trying to tell my Republican friends: ‘You should actually dispatch smart people from the Trump camp to Europe in the coming months before the election to explain [that] the world is not going to end if the Republicans take over the White House again,’” he said.
“We’ve had too much panic-driven commentary in European thinking,” he said. “There are problems, yes, and they need to be discussed … but we have solved them for almost 80 years, and we can do so again.”
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