OPINION / EXPERT PERSPECTIVE (LONDON) – U.S. President Donald Trump has only been back in the White House for 6 weeks, but the reaction in Europe to his foreign policy interventions has already reached fever levels. The focus over here seems to be determinedly fixed on a single imperative, the need to prove what a terrible person Trump is. I would advise critics to judge Trump and his team by what they do, not by what they say and I wish I could be as certain of what Mr. Trump is up to as some of his critics.
For example, everyone goes berserk when the president talks about some bonkers scheme to kick Gazans out of Gaza and turn it into a destination paradise. But his intervention has at least enabled some in the region to get away from the Nowheresville of the “two state solution” and think about what sort of future Gaza might have post-Hamas; it has enabled others to wonder what’s next for the wounded regional destabiliser, Iran.
Listen to ‘Dispatches from Munich’ with General David Petraeus (Ret.) as he lays out Ukraine’s options while discussions take place between the U.S. and Russia on how to end the war – exclusively on The Cipher Brief’s digital channel on YouTube
Trump has the ability to spot when something is out of time and, brutally, to call it out.
Here in Europe, Trump sees a war in Ukraine that is going nowhere. And while it goes there, more people are killed and maimed, more economies are distorted by the needs of military production, and the biggest country in the world, a member of the UN Security Council, is hammered by sanctions and thrown out into the cold. Trump is calling this self-destructive stalemate out.
Of course, the way he is doing it is making people nervous on both sides of the pond. It’s all very well to point out the bankruptcy and the unsustainability of certain old policies. It’s fine to demolish them. But it would help if you then had some idea of what you wanted in their place. In the absence of which, all that beckons for the U.S. is isolationism and transactionalism. And while some may like the sound of that, they are incompatible with getting tough on China. If the deal that the U.S. does with Russia on Ukraine is a sell-out of the latter – and it may not be – that is great news for China as potential leader of the new world order.
But that is for the Americans to worry about. It is no use for Europeans criticising the U.S. unless they are prepared to step forward themselves. As a career foreign service officer, I hated the way the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, but I also knew we Europeans had long forfeited the right to criticise. So, droning pious sermons against Trump for doing what he always said he would do is nothing more than empty virtue signalling.
If the U.S. is stepping down from Ukraine, we Europeans have to step up.
At no time since 1945, has it been harder for us to do so. The foundation stone of European security has been taken away from us. And Europe is short of the security consensus that sustained us during the cold war. Hungary is already unreliable: there is a pro-Russian government in Slovakia: pro-Russian parties could be close to power and already exert much influence today in the two EU super-powers, France and Germany.
Listen to Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management as he tells Cipher Brief COO Brad Christian how European leaders could be using seized Russian assets in ‘Dispatches from Munich’ only on The Cipher Brief’s digital channel.
On the other hand, there are real signs that Europe is waking up. Britain has pledged thousands of troops in Ukraine to support a peace deal. European Council President Antonio Costa is talking about the need for Europeans themselves to design a “new security architecture” in response to Trump’s challenge. The NATO chief, Mark Rutte, has warned against the European assumption of a “place at the table” at peace negotiations before that place has been earned. French President Emmanuel Macron says Europe in the Trump era needs to “muscle up” on defence and the economy.
We Europeans have to make sure that Ukraine is strong, and that other countries that may be threatened by Russia – Poland, the Baltics – are secure. On the face of it, this should not be beyond even a Europe as divided as we currently are. Europe is incomparably wealthier than Russia and I note signs that the Russian economy could be lurching toward crisis. We are smarter in the technological space. We are stabler. And there will be countless areas where U.S. support will be vital and maintained.
A deal on Ukraine that kept them formally out of NATO but informally closely aligned that also enabled Ukraine to join the EU, that let western countries help build up Ukraine’s independent military capabilities, that placed NATO soldiers in Ukraine: a deal like that could be worse. As Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov lurches into the media again, it’s clear that the war against Putin is not over. But it is Europe’s turn to lead.
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