Wake up Europe - America is not your ally
As Macron convenes an emergency leaders summit today to react to Vance's Munich provocations, a new survey finds 78% of Europeans no longer consider the US an ally. Can their leaders get the message?
At President Trump’s press conference with India’s strongman prime minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, a British reporter had a pointed question for him. “Today, you spoke about hoping to have three-way talks with President Xi and President Putin [to end the Ukraine war]. What would you say to European leaders and other allies who may be concerned that you’re apparently more keen to speak to America’s adversaries than to its allies?” Trump’s replied, “We told the European Union and NATO people you have to pay more money, because it's unfair what you're doing ... at the same time, we had a very good conversation with President Putin.”
Trump's response makes the answer clear: the fault lies in the question. The US government no longer considers European countries to be allies. The main problem for Europeans now is whether they can bring themselves to accept that new reality. But for the current crop of Atlanticist leaders in Europe, accepting this reality seems to be near-impossible. This continent has been so thoroughly and humiliatingly owned by America for so long that their leaders behave like mistreated children who cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the abuse of their parent, for fear of being abandoned by them. President von der Leyen’s embarrassingly weak responses to Trump’s military and economic threats against Europe, in which she keeps insisting that the EU-US alliance is strong, has been a painful reminder of this delusion. Europeans have ignored the signs of where the United States was headed for two decades, choosing to bury their heads in the sand rather than having to grow up and take adult decisions that would make Europe sovereign and free.
Now, as the US sinks into authoritarianism and grows closer with like-minded authoritarian regimes around the world, it is clear that it is even too late to have a conversation about whether America is still an ally or not. That conversation was for yesterday. The conversation for today is about accepting that the United States is no longer an ally and preparing for a scenario in which it could become an enemy. But the current Atlanticist leadership in Europe is simply not mentally equipped to have that conversation.
And so, Europe’s leaders continue to call the US and Europe “great allies”, despite all evidence to the contrary. But as they stick to this line, they are becoming increasingly disconnected with the public who can see with their own eyes that this is not the case. Last week, the latest survey from the European Council on Foreign Relations found that only 22% of Europeans still consider the United States an ally. Most Europeans (51%) now feel like prisoners in a toxic relationship, saying the US should only be considered a “necessary partner” with which Europe must cooperate because of its size - the same language that European leaders only use for China.
The percentage of Europeans who still consider the US an ally varies widely by country, but the highest proportion, in the UK, is now only 37%. A fifth of respondents in both Germany and France say America is already now a rival or adversary.
But you wouldn’t know it by the way their leaders talk. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been falling over himself to insist that the UK and US still have a special relationship, despite all evidence to the contrary which has led 63% of British people to believe the US is no longer an ally of Britain. NATO Secretary General Marc Rutte, the former prime minister of the Netherlands, struck a similarly humiliating tone at last week’s NATO defence ministers’ summit in Brussels after US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told his European counterparts that the US had already conceded Ukraine surrendering territory to Russia and promising not to join NATO in a bilateral call between Trump and Putin. Rutte unconvincingly tried to claim that the European ministers had been in the loop, that there was no division within NATO and the United States remains a steadfast ally. Watching that press conference last week, I had to wonder to myself - who could still take this man seriously after this abject humiliation?
The cruelty is the point
Following this weekend’s attacks on Europe launched by US Vice President JD Vance from the stage of the Munich Security Conference, it is going to seem completely absurd if this week European leaders continue speaking of the US as a steadfast ally. The US government is now actively campaigning for the far right to take power in Germany - with Vance meeting the far-right AfD party’s leader in Munich while he refused to meet with the German chancellor. Vance was effectively declaring the end of the Transatlantic alliance. His speech, which praised the far right and attacked European democracy, was so shocking that it appears to have driven the Munich Security Conference chairman to tears in his closing speech (MSC is publicly saying his tears were not related to Vance, I find that hard to believe). But the cruelty is the point. Those tears will only delight the Trump administration and the one-third of Americans who constitute Trump’s base. Another third of Americans will be indifferent to European suffering. The remaining third who might care feel so defeated and scared at the moment that they’re incapable of action.
To quote today’s Financial Times:
If Vance hoped to persuade his audience, rather than simply insult it, he failed. Indeed, his speech backfired spectacularly, convincing many listeners that America itself is now a threat to Europe. In the throng outside the conference hall, a prominent German politician told me: “That was a direct assault on European democracy.” A senior diplomat said: “It’s very clear now, Europe is alone.” When I asked him if he now regarded the US as an adversary, he replied: “Yes.”
From now on, this alliance should only be spoken about in the past tense. This isn’t just about semantics. For Europe to wake up, Europeans need to be honest with themselves about the crisis situation they find themselves in. Deluding themselves into thinking there is still a transatlantic alliance only gives a false sense of security that encourages continued inaction. President Zelenskyy spelled it out very clearly for Europeans when he spoke after Vance in Munich this weekend: "Some in Europe might be frustrated with Brussels. But let’s be clear: If not Brussels, then Moscow. It’s your decision. That’s geopolitics. That’s history. Moscow will pull Europe apart if we, as Europeans, don’t trust each other." His implication, of course, was that it can no longer be Washington.
Emergency Paris summit
So, where do we go from here? That’s what today’s emergency summit of European leaders in Paris called by French President Emmanuel Macron will try to determine. But the fact that today’s summit is happening in Paris instead of Brussels is not a good sign. After last Wednesday, a day which will go down in history as being a turning point for this continent, many people were saying that Antonio Costa, the new chair of the European Council, should urgently call an emergency summit in Brussels. He did not, for reasons that are still unclear. So Macron has called his summit with a limited selection of European leaders, which will also include Britain’s Keir Starmer, instead. On one hand, this means there will be no Orban or Fico to throw a spanner in the works. But at the same time, the fact that this summit had to be called in Paris rather than Brussels shows just how incapable of a response the EU and its presidents have been.
One could say that Macron deserves to be the host of this summit. He was right all along, but his fellow Europeans, particularly in Germany, Britain and the EU’s East, refused to listen to him. France has for decades warned about the danger of Europe becoming too dependent on the United States, warning that it is not inconceivable that a regime change could bring about a situation where America both owns Europe and means it harm. Europe needed its own sovereign military force coordinated by the EU as an equal pillar to the US within NATO, they said. But for this they were lambasted as fantasists, and the concept of an “EU army” was mocked. Nobody’s laughing now. We would be in a very different place today if Europe had listened to the French all along. Macron is now a lame duck domestically. But could he give himself new relevance now by being the European leader who is able to finally build EU defence - perhaps in partnership with Poland’s Donald Tusk? We may have a better idea of whether such a scenario is feasible by the end of today.
Moving on from a decade of delusion
The most important thing in this dangerous moment is for Europeans to stop deluding themselves and accept the situation as it is. They convinced themselves during the Biden interlude (a presidency which will go down in history as “an asterisk of the Trump era”) that everything was back to normal, even after enduring the humiliation of not being consulted during the chaotic Afghanistan pullout in 2021 despite it being a NATO mission.
Trump is not an aberration, as so many Europeans wanted to convince themselves. He is the true face of what Americans have become. His approval ratings have only gone up since he started his full-frontal assault on American democracy and global alliances. Many Americans enjoy the cruelty to Europe, they want it. They view Europe as an enemy. The rest of Americans, except for a select few, are completely indifferent to Europe. These are not friends. Europe has no choice but to accept the US as a continued strategic partner going forward due to the size of its economy and its military. But the US should now be considered equal to China in terms of the risks and rewards of that relationship. And the American-dominated international institutions which have dominated the global order for the past 70 years need to be rethought.
“This is no longer the America we used to know,” Friedrich Merz, the hardline conservative politician expected to become Germany’s next chancellor, said two weeks ago. Given that he is facing an election in a week, Merz can’t afford to deny the reality Europeans his voters can see with their own to eyes. Keir Starmer, not facing any imminent election, isn’t as accountable.
What does all this mean in practice? America must be redefined as a partner for Europe, not an ally, and the occupation of this continent by 100,000 US troops should be reconsidered (Vance and Hegseth have suggested the US is considering unilaterally withdrawing them anyway). Europe should heed Zelenskyy’s advice and take drastic and urgent steps this week toward building a sovereign European defence which does not have the US within the chain of command. Since Trump has killed Ukraine’s hopes of joining NATO, Ukraine’s expert military should be part of this sovereign European defence. To quote the Financial Times again: “European officials believe Trump is likely to agree to withdraw US troops from the Baltics and perhaps further west, leaving the EU vulnerable to a Russian army that NATO governments warn is preparing for a larger conflict beyond Ukraine. It is clear that the US can no longer be regarded as a reliable ally for the Europeans. But the Trump administration’s political ambitions for Europe mean that, for now, America is also an adversary — threatening democracy in Europe and even European territory, in the case of Greenland.”
The time for European defence is now, because time has run out. If Europeans don’t take the scales off their eyes and act with urgency and clarity, then they are inevitably in for some very dark days ahead.