“Europe is already at war!”
Welcome to the Euro-Atlantic crisis! This is an extremely dangerous moment for NATO. They were the essential messages from a troubling debate that considered the confluence of growing pressures to European security and defence. Trump 2 could come at a worst moment for Europeans given the absence of leadership in Europe. Britain is dysfunctional, France is broken, and Germany mired in elections. Whatever President-elect Trump demands of Putin or ‘peace’ he imposes on Ukraine his demands of European allies to spend at least 3% GDP is far beyond what many of them will be able to pay. “Show me the money” will be the mantra of an Administration that will have little or no political or emotional attachment to the transatlantic relationship given its focus on domestic US issues. “Draining the swamp” will be Trump’s overriding political goal.
Europeans “must move very quickly. This is not business as usual.” The NATO Europeans will have the first six months of 2025 with the NATO Hague Summit vital to demonstrate the Allies will take on more strategic responsibility for European defence. Only such a demarche will prevent a potentially disastrous schism emerging in the Alliance. The litmus test will be further increases to defence spending and a European commitment to the long-term security of Ukraine, even though “NATO membership is not on the cards.” Many believe “the war in Ukraine is a European war,” but many Europeans also think “the war in Ukraine is done!”
“Trump is very much the decider” with two competing ‘baronial’ camps in the Administration competing for the attention of ‘King Trump’ over Ukraine, both of which “lack foreign policy experience.” One camp simply wants to end the war by freezing the position on the ground and force Kyiv into a bad peace. The other camp is willing to “boost Ukraine militarily” in the short-term to increase Ukrainian leverage in ‘peace’ negotiations. Either way Trump’s aim will be “to convince Putin to end the war,” will massively reduce US engagement in Ukraine’s struggle and transfer much of the responsibility onto the Europeans whilst at most offering Kyiv some form of latter day lend-lease deal that Europe will pay for.
Interference by China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea is increasingly evident in Europe through information and cyber warfare. Russia is actively engaged in a campaign of sabotage. Trump will also likely engage in a tariff war with Europe in the belief that tariffs can help close the US deficit/debt gap. And yet, European “policy elites are asleep at the switch,” partly because “peace is in the European DNA.” Trump will seek to bypass both NATO and the EU through a series of bilateral relationships in which US power and support becomes a “negotiable commodity.”
Consequently, EU Member-States, but by no means exclusively so, will face the most profound of choices: preserve the Euro or the transatlantic relationship. The only viable way for post-COVID debt laden European states to meet Trump’s defence demands will be to incur more debt by breaking the monetary convergence criteria that underpin the Euro or further integrate their respective defence efforts. Either option will not be good for NATO. Over time the EU would naturally replace NATO’s European pillar as the locus of Europe’s defence. Trump would see such an outcome as good for America. However, the abandonment of NATO as “the only place where political will and military might meet” would be a disaster for the United States.
The scale of the coming challenge to NATO and the established transatlantic relationship cannot be overestimated driven as it is by the catastrophic decline of the West since 2000 and the lack of European political will underpins it. This fraying of solidarity will not only undermine institutions Europeans take for granted, but it could also erode the very foundations of conventional and nuclear deterrence. It is to be hoped European leaders can “get ahead” of the crisis, not least because “the moment is far closer than many leaders realise when Europeans might have to fight for European sovereignty.”
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Julian Lindley-French
Photo Credit: The attached photo belongs to NATO and is used under NATO’s newsroom content policy.