In the early 19th century, when Britannia — John Bull — ruled the waves and funded all of Europe’s struggle against Napoleon, there was a popular English song that included the lyrics: “Who pays the piper? I, said John Bull. Whoever plays the Fool, I pay the piper.”
For the past 80 years, whoever has “played the fool” on the world stage, it has been the US that has paid the piper.
While MAGA supporters — those who subscribe to US president-elect Donald Trump’s “make America great again” campaign slogan — decline to accept that exercising the leadership of democracies has advanced political and economic interests of the US, most economists believe that dominance of NATO, and of its costs, has not been a downside transactional burden for the US.
Yet even assuming this is true, what is for sure is that this era is ending. Europe is preparing for a new life, almost certainly further distanced from the US than at any time since Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Although it is likely to be many months before we know the details — just how deep could become the strategic divide between the continents — the big picture is plain. If Trump makes good on his promise to work with Russian President Vladimir Putin to foreclose on Ukraine, the future for NATO and collective Western security is bleak.
The days are over when Europeans could look to the US as its shield. US President Joe Biden is likely to prove to have been the last US president to regard the continent’s security as a vital interest — even the predominant foreign interest — of the US. The strategic standoff with China will dominate Washington policymaking in the years ahead.
Some believe that Trump, in his incomprehensible enthusiasm for Putin, is making a disastrous mistake. He promises to pull back support for Ukraine and, indeed, for NATO, but the one big global issue on which Trump has made a strong, rational case is that of denouncing the western Europeans for failing to carry their portion of defense burden-sharing.
It is outrageous that EU members spend so little on their own security. Spain, for instance, currently allocates just 1.8 percent of its GDP to its armed forces. Italy does worse — 1.5 percent. Britain — now outside the EU, but traditionally Europe’s leader on defense — claims to spend 2.3 percent, but this figure includes stuff such as service pensions, which contribute nothing toward manning, arming and equipping men and women to fight at the sharp end.
Only the eastern Europeans — above all Poland, which has more than doubled its armed forces budget in a decade — together with the Nordic states are dramatically increasing their defense spending in the face of Russian aggression. In 2017, EU nations committed themselves to a big joint program of weapons and ammunition procurement, but pathetically little of this has been made good.
As for European support for Ukraine, I have written many times that without the US, the cause of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s nation would be doomed.
And so it now appears.
Even if military aid to Kyiv is not immediately shut down, the Ukrainians’ will to resist the Russians is dwindling, because these hugely impressive, embattled people are watching the West’s will to arm them ebbing away. Trump’s electoral victory almost certainly signals their defeat.
European governments must continue to do everything in their power to sustain a close relationship with the US and to persuade the new Trump administration that it is strongly in Washington’s interests — no good talking about European interests, or about “the cause of freedom” or suchlike mantra — to continue to lead NATO.
Nonetheless, if the European nations are to make policy prudently, they must also increase their own defense spending and their support for Ukraine, in anticipation of US cuts.
If we look to the strategic picture for the next 10 or 20 years, as we should, we must expect the threat from the autocracies to persist and likewise the need for Europe to strengthen its capability to defend itself.
Unfortunately, the leadership of the major European nations is not in great shape; indeed, it looks pretty awful. French President Emmanuel Macron, an erratic policymaker even on a good day, has been a lame duck since he impulsively called a July election. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz talked a good game about Ukraine when Russia invaded in February 2022, but has since failed to make good on many of his promises — and that was before the recent collapse of his government. Italy has never contributed much muscle to NATO and is unlikely to do so. Spain is preoccupied with its own troubles and dissentions, worsened by last month’s catastrophic floods in Valencia.
Britain has traditionally led the European continent within NATO, because its armed forces were the most effective. This is no longer true in the post-Brexit world.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies, an influential London-based think tank, says: “If the UK stays out of the single market, it will be hard for it to play a leading role in a new joint European military-industrial strategy.”
Europe needs some leaders who will cry from the rooftops to their people that they can no longer regard security as an optional extra to the core issues voters care about — immigration, welfare and health services, their economies. It is extraordinary and frighteningly naive, that Europeans behave as if it is within our powers, our range of choices, unilaterally to renounce war. Such a delusion is madness as long as hostile nations led by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea see extreme violence or the threat of it as the most effective means of fulfilling their policy objectives.
This year, EU governments collectively budgeted US$326 billion for defense, about one-third of US spending, which provides two-thirds of NATO’s budget.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has emerged as Europe’s most effective leadership personality. It used to be said that, when Washington wanted to talk to Europe, it called former German chancellor Angela Merkel. Today, such a call is almost always made to Brussels and Von der Leyen.
She is pushing for stronger and better-funded defense — “a true European defense union,” and greater integration and rationalization of defense industries. Yet nothing proposed is likely to fill the yawning gulf if the US pulls the plug on Ukraine or turns its back on NATO.
Despite a 2017 EU commitment to increase collaborative defense equipment spending to 35 percent, today only half of that figure has been achieved.
A struggle lies ahead to persuade MAGA Republicans that, while the US remains the mightiest nation on Earth, it, too, needs allies. We all do to confront the grave strategic challenges that lie ahead.
However, it would be naive to pretend that the outlook for the security of the Western democracies is today anything but bleak.
Max Hastings is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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