The annual Munich Security Conference is usually a polite talking shop: debates about raising defence spending, sessions about military technology developments and, nowadays, AI potential and risks.
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.
An introductory blast from US Vice President JD Vance berated Europe for a range of shortcomings, from being in hock to “woke” thinking, to an off-topic segue into abortion protest rights in the UK, the boosterism of ultra-right parties like Germany’s AfD and, most substantially, condemnation of Europe’s general failure to step up on defence.
It is, however, no longer clear that the US and Europe agree about what we are defending, let alone how to do it.
Negotiations over the future of Ukraine have already begun between US President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin, and will continue in Saudi Arabia over the next couple of weeks. The beneficiary of this approach of omitting Ukraine and its allies is Russia. Its Cold War-inflected doctrinal intention of weakening Europe as a realm of liberal democracy and a defence entity has received a massive boost. In this plot twist, it has occurred with explicit assistance from the US. Ukraine is likely the first casualty.
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.
No concessions for this deal are required of Putin by Trump. The Russian president gets a lot of what he would not have had before the invasions of 2014 and 2022, and is now also able to pause the war as long as it suits him to stabilise a shaky economic outlook and cheer up a glum underlying public mood in Russia about casualties.
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.”
In that sense, Keir Starmer is absolutely right to issue an immediate reply, standing by Nato as a defender of Ukraine, regardless of how likely or not it is that the country could be a candidate for entry. The alliance is shifting from a transatlantic organisation to a “European Nato” of members who will have to figure out ways of combatting a pattern of Russian aggression and influence on politics which is spreading via Ukraine through Moldova to Serbia and the wider Balkans, and ultimately threatens Poland.
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.
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Read MoreBritain, as one senior German diplomat notes, is “not on the hit list” of the Trump administration to such an extent: “He hates the EU a lot more than he hates you.” Meanwhile, relations with Germany over JD Vance’s de facto support for the far-right AfD are at a low.
So 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.
It is a good time to dial down the (always overcooked) version of Brexit self-laceration, which claimed our break with the EU had made the UK irrelevant. In or out of the EU, Britain has a sizeable role in what happens next and a close tie with Berlin through the Anglo-German defence agreement is a sign that alliances can be remade to balance those being threatened.
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).
We need to talk about money a lot more and faster too. This includes the large amounts of Russian assets held in Europe (as opposed to just the interest on that debt currently targeted) which can be seized and diverted into military spending to assist Ukraine. All the half-measures have been tried; this is the moment for ones which might actually work, as the US dumps responsibility for defending Europe on Europeans.
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”.
But how this happens matters a lot and Europe needs to stand up for its interests and beliefs, if it is not to be a mere bystander to decisions unscrupulously made by others. Defence spending will have to soar, trade-offs will be hard for governments, and relations with America will be a calibration rather than “special” or trusted.
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”.
It does not mean that we need to march to his tune, when it jars with the interests of liberal democracies. That would be the way to lose the bigger war – as well as the one in Ukraine.
Anne McElvoy is host of the Power Play podcast from POLITICO
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