Donald Trump is dragging the world into chaos. Two days ago he announced that a conspiracy theorist podcaster named Dan Bongino would be made deputy director of the FBI. Absurd. Not so long ago that kind of lunacy would have dominated the news agenda for months. Now it barely touches the sides.
But if you step back, you can still discern the signal amid the noise, a truly historic moment amid all the transitory chaos: we seem to be witnessing the birth of an independent Europe right before our eyes.
Keir Starmer’s announcement on Tuesday of an increase in defence spending is a case in point. On the face of it, it was unimpressive. The announcement came wrapped in the typical clown-maths of British politics, assuming a mythical counter-factual spending freeze to pretend there would be £13.4bn extra for defence rather than the £5.3bn the Government is offering in reality. This is nothing like enough. If it was enough, they wouldn’t have felt the need to misrepresent it.
The money is being raided from the international development budget, which is not just immoral but also counter-productive, because it contributes to precisely the kind of global instability which will increase defence pressures in future. And it is sold, humiliatingly, as a kind of feudal tithe to Trump, an act of fealty to earn a hearing with him in Washington this week.
This is all true, but it is not the only truth. Close one eye and tilt your head slightly and another picture emerges.
Defence spending plays a changeable political role. On the one hand, it is in line with US demands. On the other, it is an insurance policy against the US. It provides the kind of support which allows Ukraine to reject a Putin-backed US peace deal.
It allows Europe to defend Western values, even if America forsakes its traditional role. Starmer is pursuing his usual dual-track strategy: trying to work with Trump, but preparing to work without him, or even against him.
This is in line with what Emmanuel Macron has been promoting for years. Throughout his time as French President, he has been trying to convince Europe to adopt a policy of strategic autonomy. No one was interested. Europe was in a daydream, trying to convince itself that the first Trump term had been an aberration.
That daydream is no longer possible to maintain, if it ever was. Macron’s vision is the option. In fact, it is barely a vision at all. It is simply the practical necessity left behind when all other alternatives have turned to ash.
This week, Macron seemed to almost embody the idea of strategic autonomy. During his meeting with Trump, he was friendly and tactile – but also confident enough to decisively refute the US President where necessary.
When Trump started misrepresenting EU funding of Ukraine, he put his hand on his arm, and said: “No, in fact, to be frank, we paid.” When Trump hesitated about whether Putin was a dictator or not, Macron nearly laughed in his face.
One of Europe’s chief military weaknesses is not just manpower but coordination. Europe, including the UK, currently has 1.47 million active-duty military personnel. The reason it is not considered a world-leading military power is because there is no unified command. The same applies politically. If the US President wants to do something, he just does it. But in Europe, you have to bring all these disparate voices together, from Spain to Slovenia.
And yet this week has been striking for the degree of co-ordination on show. Antonio Costa, president of the European Council, has been decisive in this regard, working practically on a day-to-day basis to provide a coherent European response.
Once Macron was finished in Washington, Costa organised a debrief with EU leaders ahead of a special Council meeting on 6 March to take further decisions on defending Ukraine.
Over in Germany, this week’s election was met with countless headlines about how the country had swung to the right. They weren’t wrong per se, but they were lazy and uninformative. Sure, the far-right Alternative for Germany doubled its vote and the centre-right Christian Democratic Union had become the largest party. That was all as expected.
What was not expected was for the new Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, a lifelong Atlanticist, to come straight out and say that one of his chief goals was to “strengthen Europe as quickly as possible, so that we achieve independence from the US”.
Nor were we expecting Merz to be able to form a coalition with just the centre-right CDU and the centre-left SDP (Social Democratic Party), potentially providing a much more stable government than we anticipated. Or for the SDP’s Olaf Scholz, who has maintained a stubbornly naive approach towards the Ukraine conflict, to retreat from future coalition negotiations, leaving the hawkish defence minister Boris Pistorius in his place.
For Germany, these are seismic changes. Its debt rule has held back increased defence spending. Its unique historic experience makes it sceptical of military adventurism. Its political class has long aspired to work with Russia rather than demonise it. But now, with incredible speed, things are changing, on a really deep fundamental level.
In Berlin, Paris and London, all the signs point in the same direction.
Starmer has long viewed defence as his key offer in talks about improving the UK-EU post-Brexit relationship. Now, Europe has become uniquely open to that message. Everyone is reading the same script, with the same narrative structure, leading to the same outcome.
Much can change. Things can alter quickly in a period of unprecedented chaos. But as things stand, we seem to be witnessing Europe’s transformation from a purely trading and regulatory project into a powerful military entity capable of projecting its values.
Decades from now, when the names of Trump’s FBI appointments have faded from memory, we may well consider that one of the most important political developments of our lifetime.
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