President Emmanuel Macron of France called a second emergency meeting of European allies on Wednesday seeking to recalibrate relations with the United States as President Trump upends international politics by rapidly changing American alliances.
Mr. Macron had already assembled a dozen European leaders in Paris on Monday after Mr. Trump and his new team angered and confused America’s traditional allies by suggesting that the United States would rapidly retreat from its security role in Europe and planned to proceed with peace talks with Russia — without Europe or Ukraine at the table.
Mr. Trump’s remarks late on Tuesday, when he sided fully with Russia’s narrative blaming Ukraine for the war, have now fortified the impression that the United States is prepared to abandon its role as a European ally and switch sides to embrace President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
It was a complete reversal of historic alliances that left many in Europe stunned and fearful.
“What’s happening is very bad. It’s a reversal of the state of the world since 1945,” Jean- Yves Le Drian, a former French foreign minister, said on French radio Wednesday morning.
“It’s our security he’s putting at risk,” he said, referring to President Trump. “We must wake up.”
In the vacuum, Mr. Macron has tried to show leadership, corralling allied leaders, particularly in Europe, to devise a united response.
The Élysée Palace announced that he would host a second emergency meeting on Wednesday, stating that the interim president of Romania, Ilie Bolojan, would attend in person while other leaders were expected by video.
The meeting comes the day after Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Russian representatives including Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to discuss a peace deal for the war in Ukraine, to the fury of its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who was not invited.
Mr. Rubio said they hammered out a three-part plan, which would start by re-establishing bilateral relations between Washington and Moscow and end by exploring new partnerships — geopolitical and business — between Russia and the United States, while addressing the parameters of an end of the war with Ukraine in between.
Mr. Rubio said he would consult with Ukraine, the American “partners in Europe and others,” but in the end, “ultimately, the Russian side will be indispensable to this effort.”
Afterward, speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, President Trump blamed Ukraine for starting the war, despite the fact that Russia had invaded.
“You could have made a deal,” he said, denigrating President Zelensky’s popularity and indicating he didn’t deserve a seat at the negotiating table.
“Well, they’ve had a seat for three years. And a long time before that,” Mr. Trump said. “This could have been settled very easily. Just a half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without, I think, without the loss of much land, very little land. Without the loss of any lives. And without the loss of cities that are just laying on their sides.”
Mr. Le Drian called it a monstrous reversal of world alliances, as well as an “inversion of the truth.”
“The victim becomes the attacker,” he said, adding that the United States seemed to be retreating to a 19th-century view of itself, and telling an aggressive, expansionist Russia to do what it wants in Europe. “It’s the law of the strongest,” he said, adding “tomorrow, it could be Moldavia and after tomorrow, it could be Estonia because Putin won’t stop.”
Before Mr. Rubio and President Trump’s pronouncements on Tuesday, Mr. Macron said he considered the Russian threat to Europe not just in military terms, but through slyer means, including cyberattacks and manipulation of electoral processes like Romania.
“Russia constitutes an existential threat to Europeans,” Mr. Macron said on Tuesday in an interview with French regional newspapers, including Le Parisen and Ouest France.
“Do not think that the unthinkable cannot happen, including the worst,” he added.
On Monday, a dozen European leaders left a quickly organized meeting in Paris with a resounding message that Europeans and Ukrainians needed to be included in any peace talks with Russia and a commitment to increase military funding.
Many made clear that they wanted a continued alliance with the United States, which they considered indispensable to European security.
“The positive message was that we all had the same feeling that this is not about the U.S. or Europe, but it’s about the U.S. and Europe together, and that Europe understands very well that we have to step up, but that we want to still do it together with the Americans,” Prime Minister Dick Schoof of the Netherlands said.
Mr. Trump’s latest statement poured water on many of those sentiments and may now force a deeper reconsideration of the trans-Atlantic alliance by European leaders.
Mr. Macron has been speaking for months to European leaders about forming a cease-fire buffer force in Ukraine and has long called for European strategic autonomy. Still, he told the French regional news media that he did not believe European countries could defend themselves without American support.
He said that he expected European countries to increase their military budgets and would announce new programs to allow them to do that “as early as March.”
Already, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced in a speech that she would propose an “escape clause for defense investments” permitting countries to fund defense without breaching the E.U.’s strict fiscal rules, which aim to keep budget deficits under 3 percent of the size of each country’s economy.
“This will allow member states to substantially increase their defense expenditure,” she said.
Europeans are also discussing joint spending on defense — including how to finance those, which could involve issuing joint debt, though that is still up for debate. They are also talking about how to ramp up the development of European defense industries.
Over the past week, Europe’s steadfast position that held the United States as the central pole of its defense guarantee seems to be changing, said Martin Quencez, the director of the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund.
The big question will be whether European nations follow through with increased military spending and maintain a united front, without fracturing off to individually negotiate with Mr. Trump, he said.
“I’ve heard Europe talk about wake-up calls so many times over the past 10 years, I remain cautious,” he said, pointing out that many European leaders, including Mr. Macron, find themselves in fragile political and economic positions in their own countries.
“I’m sure we will hear from every European leader, but let’s see what actual decisions are taken,” he said, adding: “It’s very, very difficult to tell your population., we’re going to have to make the tough choice of prioritizing European security over, social issues or environmental issues. Not many governments have the political capital to spend on all this.”
Jeanna Smialek contributed reporting from Brussels