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9 August 2023

Get Ready, Europe: Trump(ism)’s Coming

Edward Lucas

For three decades after 1991, Europeans ignored the threat from Russia and China, skimped on defense, and took the United States for granted. Now they spend more on defense, fear Russia, and worry about China.

But they have not yet fully grasped their dependence on the United States, and the dangers it poses. They were unprepared for Donald Trump’s first term. They are adopting the same hopey-dopey approach to what the betting markets say is his one-in-three chance of re-election in 2024, and, perhaps more importantly, to the tide of opinion he is riding. Many in Washington, DC—not only Trump supporters—think the US is overstretched and should leave Ukraine to the Europeans while concentrating on China.

True, the first Trump presidency was not the geopolitical disaster that his critics foretold. The US military presence in Europe increased, after years of drawdown. Alliances survived. The national security apparatus functioned. Given the woeful past (Obama’s reset, anyone?) the record withstands scrutiny. But it was not fully tested. NATO’s credibility rests on the US president’s willingness to go to war to defend allies. If Vladimir Putin, perhaps emboldened by a stalemate outcome in Ukraine, chose to test this resolve, perhaps with a “minor” incursion in the Baltic region, how would President Trump 2.0 respond: With military force, or with a phone call to the Kremlin?

We do not know. But we do know that Europe will have little say in this. Ukraine has revealed its strategic nakedness. Britain and France have last-ditch nuclear capabilities, and Finland and Poland have stealthy, conventional, precision-strike weapons that act as a kind of sub-strategic deterrent. But for at least the next decade, European allies lack the clout to repel a Russian attack. Everything, as always, depends on the Americans.

The big question here is, “Why?” European allies do not lack people or cash. Their population is 590m (the US is 330m). Their combined GDP is about $18 trillion (the US, $26 trillion). They can spend when they want to: American readers may be surprised to know that since the start of the war, European countries have provided more aid to Ukraine than the US does.

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