Charlemagne, Jean Monnet, Konrad Adenauer, Donald Trump: the pantheon of figures who have helped forge European unity has taken an unexpected turn of late. In less than two months in office the American president has prompted such disbelief and revulsion in Europe as to unexpectedly jolt the place into collective defiance. A dozy continent that has ignored decades of geopolitical wake-up calls has at last located its resolve. Yes, the sudden wobbliness of the transatlantic alliance that has underpinned European security for generations means it is yet again in crisis (there have been so many in the past decade or so, ranging from the euro-zone miasma to Brexit, that it can be hard to keep count). Yet a set of circumstances that might have petrified the continent into stupor seems to have galvanised it into action instead. It is too soon to cheer, for there is much to be done. But a jilted Europe feels like a place suddenly in a hurry.
Such an outcome hardly seemed likely as Mr Trump readied for office. Then, the continent looked like a deer caught in headlights. Efforts to “Trump-proof” Europe—from misguided tariffs or his impetuous comments about encouraging Russia to invade NATO allies that didn’t spend enough on defence—looked futile. Worse, a deepening of the fissures formed during Mr Trump’s first term seemed inevitable. On one hand were Atlanticists, particularly in central Europe, who thought the returning president could be brown-nosed into alliance, whether through commerce (buying American gas) or flattery (Poland had once proposed renaming a military base “Fort Trump”). On the other were Gaullist types, native to France, who had long fretted about NATO being “brain dead” and Europe needing to be ready to go it alone. European disunion threatened once again.
But the divisions never opened up. The bullying, erratic ways of Mr Trump and his vice-president, J.D. Vance, were decried from Warsaw to Dublin. Nobody will soon forget their haranguing of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the Oval Office. In the same way that there are no atheists in a foxhole, it turns out there are no Euro-Atlanticists during a rebooted Trump presidency. The upshot is the early stage of what might be called a European Zeitenwende, the epochal change that Germany committed to after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The defeatist vibe that Europe too often exudes has been replaced by a yearning for ways out of the mess. The acute phase of the euro-zone crisis ended in 2012 when Mario Draghi declared the European Central Bank he presided over would do “whatever it takes” to save the single currency. It was not by coincidence Friedrich Merz, the incoming German chancellor, alighted on the phrase soon after his party came top in elections.
Thus the European Union, at heart a “peace project”, looks ever more at ease talking about regiments and missiles. Countries that had gorged on a post-cold-war peace dividend have ordered enough military kit to send European defence contractors’ shares soaring (just as, satisfyingly, shares of the tech companies whose bosses have kowtowed to Mr Trump have taken a battering). Change is in the air. Germany is ditching its quasi-religious attachment to fiscal restraint to splurge on infrastructure and defence: just the thing to fend off economic blues and Russians.
Then, on March 6th the EU’s 27 national leaders pledged to make €150bn ($165bn) of cheap loans available for countries wanting to spend more on defence, on top of agreeing Eurocrats would look the other way when countries bust the bloc’s budget rules. That is a good start, but only that. Talk is afoot of rebooting a covid-era scheme whereby EU countries jointly borrow money for common aims, in this case to buy arms. Such a plan would once have been stymied by one veto-wielding member or another (not least by Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, or the skinflint Dutch). But the union is happier than ever to set such institutional constraints aside. For now that means exploring “coalitions of the willing” which can both exclude recalcitrant countries inside the club and bring in enthusiastic ones from outside (one upshot: Britain is back in the European fold, closer than it has been for years). Down the line, a more radical rethinking of how the continent’s nations confederate around common priorities may emerge, for example a fully fledged “European pillar” of NATO.
Europe’s can-do spirit is necessary for it to meet the moment, but is it enough? The challenges to be overcome are formidable. Announcing lots more defence spending is easier than telling voters their taxes will go up or pensions be trimmed. The EU economy is still sluggish and needs to be reformed, just as a trade war with its biggest commercial partner is brewing (the EU imposed retaliatory tariffs on America this week). Some Europeans—notably those far from the front lines in Ukraine—do not share the urgency of Poles or Balts. Hard-right politicians who parrot Kremlin talking points are doing well at the polls.
European… union?
Mr Trump will no doubt try to take credit for this huge! European awakening. Not so fast. What Europe is doing is not protecting itself alongside America, as it has been asked to do for so long, it is protecting itself from an impetuous, unworthy America. Perhaps this ally will one day rejoin this partnership, which many hope it has not quite abandoned. But Europe will ensure it will be on its own terms. Perhaps delusionally, this once washed-up continent seems to think it can pick up the burden of global responsibility that America has now decided to shake off. As it looks to an erstwhile friend that seems to have lost its head, Europeans are on a mission inspired by a place they used to admire: to show that government of reasonable people, by reasonable people, for reasonable people, shall not perish from the West. ■
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