(personal underlines)
‘J.D. Vance was right’: Is Europe finally waking up?
The organisers of the Munich security conference weren’t subtle. A large statue of an elephant stood in one of the lobbies. The logo on all official documents was an elephant, this time with bits of countries printed on it. A poster for an exhibition celebrating the meeting’s 60th anniversary had an image of an elephant in a stately room. Everyone understood the meaning of the elephant in the room: it was America’s disregard for Europe.
At last year’s meeting, J.D. Vance had declared the biggest threat to Europe was not from Russia or China but ‘from within’. Europe’s leaders were becoming tyrannical, the Vice President argued, arresting citizens for exercising their free speech. ‘If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,’ he said.
The relationship has only worsened since. Donald Trump has tried repeatedly to end the Ukraine war in Russia’s favour, horrifying European leaders. Last month saw a full-blown diplomatic crisis as the President attempted to bully Denmark into handing over Greenland in the name of US ‘national security’.
The German Chancellor Friedrich Merz seemed to have got the message. ‘Let me begin with the uncomfortable truth,’ he said. ‘A deep chasm, a deep trench, has opened between Europe and the United States. Vice President J.D. Vance said this here, in Munich, a year ago. He was right.’
Europe, Merz argued, was ready to take more responsibility for its own defence: it must re-arm. Last June, Trump extracted commitments from Nato allies to increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP. But what no European leader can say for sure is whether these commitments are to win Trump over or to protect themselves should America withdraw security guarantees from the Continent – or, worse yet, attempt to seize European territory by force.
The threat of Trump annexing Greenland looks to have receded, but the President may yet try again. Meanwhile, there are doubts the US would honour the Article 5 agreement to come to the defence of any Nato member that is attacked. According to one poll, 44 per cent of French people think the US has become an unreliable ally; half of Germans think the same.
In some respects, Europe is already going it alone. Since Trump returned to the White House last January, it has been Europe that is funding military aid to Ukraine. Last year, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, European countries donated approximately €29 billion in military aid – an increase of roughly two-thirds on the year before. While American-made weapons are still finding their way to Ukraine, they are first purchased and then donated by Europe and Canada through Nato. Under Biden, the US gave approximately €130 billion to Kyiv; Trump hasn’t handed over a cent.
Nonetheless, the President is trying to negotiate a peace deal with Russia on Ukraine’s behalf, locking Kyiv and its European allies out of the talks. It seems that only sycophancy from Europe’s leaders has prevented Trump from forcing Ukraine to agree terms approaching Russia’s maximalist demands. The Nato chief Mark Rutte referring to Trump as ‘Daddy’ has become emblematic of Europe’s bowing and scraping to the White House.
As some lose faith that the US would defend Europe under Article 5, European armies are ill-equipped to protect it themselves. Donations to Ukraine over the past four years have hollowed out military arsenals. Defence chiefs in Germany and Britain warn that the failure to replace this materiel has left us with insufficient means to defend ourselves. Can Europe re-arm and reduce its dependence on America? During the conference, Merz pointed out that, despite having a collective GDP nearly ten times the size of Russia’s, ‘Europe is not ten times as strong as Russia today’.
Germany’s foreign intelligence agency has estimated Russia’s military expenditure is now roughly 10 per cent of GDP, or about half of total state spending. Meanwhile, European members of Nato face a major struggle to balance budgets in pursuit of their 5 per cent target. Within this figure, it’s been agreed that 3.5 per cent must be spent on core defence needs, with the remaining 1.5 per cent spent on defence-related infrastructure. Only six of the 30 European countries in the alliance – Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Norway – are currently spending more than 3 per cent of GDP on core defence contracts.
Apart from Germany, few Nato members have publicly set out roadmaps for raising defence spending. Among those that haven’t are France – currently spending around 2 per cent of GDP and saddled with the third-highest debt per capita in the European Union – and Britain, at 2.4 per cent. Italy only met Nato’s old 2 per cent target last year, and is not planning to meet the core 3.5 per cent of defence spending until 2035, with no indication of if, when or how it intends to spend the additional 1.5 per cent.
Despite the lagging spending, at least seven European countries have reintroduced military service. The Netherlands plans to more than double the size of its army by 2030, from 70,000 to 200,000 (including reservists). Poland – with the highest level of defence spending in Nato, at 4.7 per cent – is aiming to grow its army from 216,000 to 300,000 troops by 2035.
Germany aims to increase the Bundes-wehr to 260,000 permanent soldiers plus 200,000 reservists by 2035. In Munich, Merz reaffirmed his intention to make the German army ‘the strongest conventional army in Europe as quickly as possible’. One naval officer I spoke to after the speech called it a ‘great morale boost’ to hear his Chancellor talk in such terms. But morale alone will do little to improve Germany’s defences.
One solution European leaders discussed was the idea of creating their own nuclear deterrent that could operate independently of Washington. Unlike Britain, France has nuclear weapons that are not reliant on the US for maintenance or deployment. Some leaders have asked France to consider extending its nuclear umbrella to protect Europe. Emmanuel Macron is expected to give a speech in the coming weeks outlining his approach to the country’s nuclear doctrine. Teasing that speech in Munich, Macron said: ‘The French nuclear deterrent has, what I would call, a European inspiration’.
How realistic is all of this, given the Europeans’ love of squabbling? Just look at the joint European defence projects already under way. Plans to build a new class of fighter jet, agreed between France, Germany and Spain, are dead in the water. The two companies involved in the plans, Airbus and Dassault, couldn’t agree on which would lead the project. Meanwhile, talks to allow Britain to participate in the EU’s €150 billion defence fund broke down at the end of last year because the French want us to pay a joining fee of up to £2 billion. Bickering is an inherent part of European politics, even as the Continent’s protector pulls back and its eastern border is threatened.
Despite all the talk of deep chasms and elephants in rooms, Europe seems unwilling to face this reality. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio flattered delegates, speaking of America’s European inheritance and the values shared by the two continents. But his core message was much the same as Vance’s. America had no interest in continuing to be the ‘polite caretakers of the West’s managed decline’, he reiterated.
There was little indication that Europe’s political elites realised that the central message had not changed. Nor, judging by their lacklustre approach to rearmament, have they yet realised the magnitude of the task they face. At the end of his speech, Rubio received a standing ovation; the conference chair Wolfgang Ischinger declared that Europe’s leaders would be giving a ‘sigh of relief’ on hearing Rubio’s ‘message of reassurance and partnership’. A year on and the elephant was clearly visible within the conference hall, but few delegates seemed to be taking it all that seriously.
