At the emergency meeting, delusion still reigns
Even the description of it as an ‘emergency summit’ is music to the ears of Trump. President Macron’s hastily convened meeting of European leaders in response to J D Vance’s speech in Munich may be 100% essential, but it still looks utterly pathetic.
The European Union has had its collective head buried in the sand. While it could have been preparing for this moment for the past eight years, it had instead been naively assuming that somehow the status quo would prevail.
The first Trump administration was seen as some kind of false alarm. When Biden emerged victorious in 2020, normalcy had been resumed.
To be fair, the US Democrats made all the same misguided assumptions. They thought that Trump was completely discredited after January 6th and would be jailed before he could stand for office again. They believed that Biden’s economic track record would act as a bulwark against right-wing populism. They defended Biden as the only person who could beat Trump, until such time as his failings became impossible to ignore. Then they placed their trust in the showbiz allure of Kamala Harris.
Those of us warning of impending disaster and a second Trump victory were often dismissed as naysayers and doom-mongers. But the tide of history in the 2020s and 2030s is clearly and undeniably towards chaos, conflict and potential catastrophe. Of course, there are no easy ways of stopping the trend, but to deny that it is even happening is a recipe for defeat after defeat.
And now we see the next level of denial.
UK Prime Minister Starmer saying that America will still be essential for defence against Russia.
Leaders of the Baltic and Scandinavian states declaring that NATO is still alive and kicking.
When will people wake up to the reality?
It’s not that the US has lost interest in defending Europe from Putin. It’s that Trump is in cahoots with Putin. He is pursuing Moscow’s agenda in its entirety.
This new America will never defend Europe against Russia.
We can spend 2.5% of our GDP on defence. We can spend 3%. Obviously we must. We might even have to ratchet up to Cold War levels of expenditure, as British Foreign Secretary David Lammy suggested recently. But it will make no difference to the attitude of the current administration in Washington. They won’t fight Russia, because Trump, Gabbard and Hegseth admire Putin.
So when we do start spending a lot more on defence in the UK and Europe — probably at the expense of welfare programmes, health, social care and education — we are doing so on our own.
NATO has now served its purpose. The main financial contributor and major military power in alliance has a better relationship with the bloc’s adversaries than it does with its members.
If you’re, say, Latvian premier Evika Siliņa, you must know this. But to say it is to admit that you are effectively defenceless, because right now, there is no alternative European protection in place.
And the impact of the Trump administration’s foreign policy is, of course, felt well beyond Europe. Ostensibly, the White House is disengaging with Europe to focus on Asia and the threat from China — a pivot that even Biden was keen to pursue. Let’s not kid ourselves though.
While Trump rails against Beijing and pursues his absurd trade-war strategy, he actually respects Xi as much as Putin. Just last month, he said that he’d always had a great relationship with the Chinese strongman. In an interview with Joe Rogan last year, he talked about how he admired the way the ‘brilliant’ Xi ruled his people with an iron fist.
So, probably within the next year and a half, China will impose a blockade on Taiwan or launch an all-out invasion. It will be done with the knowledge that Trump will do nothing to intervene. My prediction is that he will praise the leadership in Beijing and encourage Taiwan to do some kind of ‘deal’.
For those who doubt that this is going to happen, I say this: believe what people tell you they are going to do. Trump told us exactly what he planned for his second administration and he’s busy doing it. No hand-wringing in Congress or pesky judicial orders are going to stop him.
Xi has made clear that Taiwan is going to be reunited with China one way or another. Every military exercise conducted in the region is more extreme and intimidating than the last.
So the challenge is not just for the UK, France, Germany and others in Europe. It is for Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia too. It is for all those who worry about the slide towards lawlessness, naked aggression and revanchism across the world.
The MAGA philosophy is essentially that ‘might is right’. If America wants Canada as the 51st state, then it should have it. If the US needs Greenland for its security, Denmark should do a deal. Trump and his cronies have an affinity for other powers with a similar worldview. And in an instant, the world has been turned upside down.
