This year, it dramatically shifted gear, marking a caesura between Europe and the US. We are now, as one senior delegate put it, living on “Trump time” – when events and fateful decisions are made at top speed, without consultation or input from countries who have been allies since the Second World War.
It is, however, no longer clear that the US and Europe agree about what we are defending, let alone how to do it.
Pressure selling is a Donald Trump specialism, because it spreads a panicky sense of powerlessness. The “deal” looks like a reckless one – a surrender of seized Ukrainian territory with no “security guarantee” from Nato, if or when Russia were minded to take another chunk out of its neighbour’s territory. International peacekeepers would be sitting ducks in any ensuing fray.
So what should Europe and the UK do? The advice of the shrewd Finnish president Alexander Stubb, representing a country with long experience of threats and invasion from its neighbour, is useful: “Calm down, take a sauna and don’t over-dramatise the present or the cacophony today – think about how you want the future to look.”
If you think this is only about “Eastern” Europe, think again. All of this inevitably comes with a large side order of destabilisation in Western Europe and the UK via cyber and misinformation attacks, and the persistent aim of separating Europe from America.
Dominic Cummings is our Elon Musk - without the rocket fuel
Read MoreSo Starmer is hoping this will allow him to ignore some of the provocations issued at Munich and focus on the practicalities of a deal on trade and financial services, while standing by commitments to Ukraine and being a big player in defence, AI counter-attack development, and troop training.
But that does not come for free. Defence spending targets of over 5 per cent of GDP no longer seem like weird ideas dreamt up by security hawks. To police the Ukraine ceasefire effectively would require a massive boost in UK troop numbers from present levels of 72,000 (about half of that would likely end up involved in a rotation).
Many steps which Europe and Britain have been cautious or reluctant about will become starker choices perforce. As Marco Rubio, the new US Secretary of State, put it, we have been in a Cold War hangover after which, “You were going to reach back to a point where you had… multi-great powers in different parts of the planet”.
This is the price of a freedom that is more than just a slogan or a memory of easier times. We are indeed all living now on “Trump time”.
Anne McElvoy is host of the Power Play podcast from POLITICO
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