JD Vance, the US Vice President, told Europeans that their values are no longer America’s values. Pete Hegseth, the US Defence Secretary, added that Europeans “can’t make an assumption that America’s presence will last forever.” Keith Kellog, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, confirmed that Europe will not have a seat at the table when the end of the Ukraine war is negotiated.
Shellshocked, European leaders are stuck at the first stage of grief – anger. While there and failing to grasp that President Trump has a rational economic-cum-geostrategic plan (albeit one that is detrimental to Europe’s interests), Europe remains adrift.
Starting with his economic weaponry, Europeans need to realise that Trump does not naively believe that his tariffs will, magically, eliminate the US trade deficit. He knows that in the short run the dollar will rise. His tariffs are a negotiating tool to get foreigners eventually to revalue their currencies, to swap their holdings of short-term for long-term US debt, and to magnetise European chemical and mechanical engineering conglomerates (e.g. BASF and Volkswagen) from a stagnating Europe to a boisterous America.
Moving on to Ukraine, Trump’s team have made two things clear. First, they see Russia as a diminishing power that could never threaten NATO countries but which was given a temporary kiss of life by the transition to a war economy triggered by NATO’s planned expansion right up to the Russian border (through Russian speaking areas in Georgia and Eastern Ukraine). Secondly, they reviled how enthusiastically Europe helped push Russia into China’s embrace.
In this light, it is easier to understand why the Trump administration is cutting Europe out. And why it adds an ideological veneer to this by taking Europe to task for betraying its own values, for example the right to free speech and the cancellation of Romania’s elections on, admittedly, shaky grounds. And now? One option Europe has is to carry on alone, attempting to arm and fund Ukraine’s attempt to push Putin back. It would bankrupt an already insolvent Europe, it would not help Ukraine, and it would inevitably force a humiliated Europe back under America’s thumb.
A second option is to out-Trump Trump: To undermine Washington by rejecting any deal that gifts Ukraine’s resources to the US while signalling to Moscow Europe’s openness to a new security architecture that involves a sovereign Ukraine in a role similar to Austria’s during the Cold War. That would be tantamount to turning a dismal crisis into an opportunity for Europe to liberate and to re-energise itself. Alas, I cannot see our present crop of leaders seizing it.
For The Guardian’s site, where this op-ed was originally published, and where you can read the other contributions to the same theme, click here.
