Is de Gaulle history? Photo by Henri Bureau/ Getty.
A conventional wisdom is sweeping across much of Europe as indignity is heaped upon it by the new imperator in Washington. Maybe Charles de Gaulle was right after all. Finally, it seems, France’s age-old push for “strategic autonomy” has found its moment. No longer simply an aspiration of the usual sovereigntists in Paris, but the stated ambition of the continent’s most stalwart Atlanticists in Berlin — and even, perhaps, London too.
The scale and speed of this geopolitical shift was captured by the incoming German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, when, responding to his party’s victory at the weekend, declared that his priority would be to “achieve independence from the US”. Once the archetype of a solid West German realist, Merz declared that Trump’s behaviour had left Europe with little choice. Two days previously, the CDU leader had even argued that Germany needed to begin discussions with Britain and France about “nuclear sharing” because the US could no longer be relied upon.
Nor is Britain quite as allergic as it once was to such talk. Following the emergency summit called by Emmanuel Macron last week to discuss the Trump administration’s opening of peace talks with Russia, Keir Starmer declared that Europe could no longer “cling to the comforts of the past”; it needed to take responsibility for its own security.
In Paris, were it not for France’s own political crisis, there might have been a sense of delayed gratification. For as early as 1962, de Gaulle had been clear about the purpose of what was then the Common Market. “What is the point of Europe?” the general asked. “The point is that one is not dominated by either the Russians or the Americans.” And so it seems today.
For most of the French presidents who followed de Gaulle, this central vision remained the unrealised — but axiomatic — purpose of what became the EU. In one of his first major interventions after being elected in 2017, Macron called for the continent to rapidly carve out its own autonomy from the US. “We cannot blindly entrust what Europe represents [to] the other side of the Atlantic,” he declared, only to be mocked for his apparent naivety. Macron claimed that the central reality Europe needed to face up to was the “gradual and inevitable disengagement by the United States” from the continent, which, in turn, demanded Europe develop its own “autonomous operating capabilities”.
If anything, Macron’s speech has proved too timid. Back in 2017, he was calling for an autonomous European force capable of “complementing” Nato. Today, Germany’s Merz is questioning whether the trans-Atlantic alliance even exists in practical terms any longer.
The appeal of the Gaullist argument always lay in its apparent moral clarity and dignity. As Thomas Paine might have put it: There is something absurd in supposing a continent be perpetually governed by an Empire on the other side of the ocean. Perhaps, but the problem has never really been one of morality — rather the reality of national ambition lurking underneath. As de Gaulle said, Europe was not so much the means to make Europe great again, but France. It was, he said, the means for France to “become again what she has ceased to be since Waterloo: First in the world”.
Macron’s 2017 speech is a reminder that just beneath the European surface of French foreign policy lurks that old Gaullist national interest. As well as calling for European autonomy to protect the continent’s interests from an American withdrawal, Macron also called for the EU to develop a foreign policy focused above all on the Mediterranean and Africa, and for the euro to be placed at “the heart of Europe’s economic power in the world”. Neither of these priorities speaks in any way to the one country France would need to support a policy of European autonomy from the United States: Poland. In fact, the focus on the Mediterranean and Africa is a transparent attempt to use the power of the EU to pursue what are, in effect, French strategic concerns.
A regular complaint from American officials over the years has been that, despite repeated demands for European autonomy, there was never much interest shown in the practical realities of turning this into genuine continent-wide integration supporting any war for survival against Russia. It is notable, for instance, that Macron’s speech from 2017 focuses on threats from terrorism and instability in Africa but not Russia, despite the fact that it had already invaded and annexed land from Ukraine.
Even today, many of the old instincts remain. Starmer’s hopes for a new defence and security pact, for example, are currently being held up by discussions over fishing rights. Those close to Starmer remain deeply sceptical that there will be any significant change in the EU’s willingness to compromise its single-market “red lines” in order to forge a closer relationship with Britain’s defence industry — something which could be a key asset in developing European military-industrial capacity. “The French see no benefit opening up the market to British competition,” one British official put it. The simple fact remains that whatever the rhetoric coming out of Berlin, Paris or Brussels about nuclear deals and “resets”, the old red-lines of the Brexit negotiations remain: if Britain wants more than it has today, it will have to accept the EU’s rules.
Amid Trump’s disregard for Europe’s interests — and sensitivities — it is understandable why the allure of de Gaulle has returned to the continent’s politics. As Julian Jackson put it in his biography of the general, although much of what he stood for was built on the myth of French victory in the Second World War — ”throwing dust in the Allies’ eyes so that they might be blinded into thinking that France was great” as he put it — de Gaulle really did save the honour of France, while posing many the questions which continue to dominate Europe’s discussions today, including, most pertinently: How to create ‘Europe’ itself?
Yet, de Gaulle was also a deeply flawed prophet, casting his country “into a role which was beyond her power”, as Britain’s ambassador at the time, Gladwyn Jebb, remarked. This remains a core challenge for Europe today. While there are questions of indignity and morality, there are also questions of means and will. France, Germany and Britain remain bound by fiscal and political constraints — many of their own making — which make any serious push towards strategic autonomy hard to take seriously.
Right now, Germany is in the fifth year of an unprecedented post-war economic stagnation, having seen each of the core planks of its geopolitical strategy ripped apart following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Having bet the house on its export-led industrial economy, it was ultimately dependent on Russian gas, Chinese trade and American defence. Today the German economic model faces the existential challenge of losing all three of these core pillars in one go. Having also removed all nuclear energy in a gamble on renewables, and tied itself to the most extreme form of fiscal conservatism imaginable by shoehorning a “debt brake” into the German constitution, the incoming government’s room for manoevre is extraordinarily limited.
The initial results of the election suggest that Merz will not have the required two-thirds majority in the Bundestag necessary to remove the debt brake, making any significant uplift in defence spending extremely difficult. In July last year, the previous coalition government agreed to cut military aid to Ukraine by almost half to €4 billion in its draft budget for 2025, despite Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende — or turning point — speech declaring a whole new attitude to defence following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In France, meanwhile, Macron has no majority in the National Assembly to pass any budget, and lost three prime ministers last year trying to do so. Faced with a blocking majority of the hard-Left and hard-Right, much of which is sceptical of the war in Ukraine and opposed to significant cuts to pensions or welfare, it is similarly difficult to see a path to significant defence spending increases in the foreseeable future — unless new elections later this year can break the impasse.
Even in Britain, which has the most parliamentary powerful government of the three major European powers, there are severe fiscal constraints against any rapid increase in defence spending of the sort required to achieve independence from the US. According to senior British officials, even increasing the budget to 3% of GDP would only strengthen the conventional forces we already have, allowing London to fulfill the role demanded of it by Nato. To fill the hole left by the United States — including, as Merz suggested, an independent European nuclear deterrent against Russia — would require an uplift of the order Trump has demanded: to 4-5% of GDP.
For any British government, such a choice is not only politically unfeasible, but far from obviously militarily desirable. As one senior official put it, in some of the core aspects of modern defence — from space, to drones and AI — European states dreaming of autonomy from the US could quickly look markedly unattractive to the UK, which may chose to partner with fast-moving, well-funded American programmes, rather than speculative, expensive and unproven European alternatives. These also come with the added risk that Britain could be “blocked at the last minute because Breton langoustine fishermen are unhappy”.
But as the spectre of de Gaulle looms over a Europe bickering over seafood, the continent should find inspiration in another figure: not the great man of France, but the founding father of modern Europe, Jean Monnet.
In his biography of the great statesman, François Duchêne sets out how Monnet used moments of crisis to pursue new ideas, rather than simply leaning on those old maxims of foreign policy: “He suspected history of being a crutch,” Duchêne wrote, “for those who hoped relying on it would be easier than thinking for themselves.”
Indeed, one of the interesting things about Jean Monnet is that he is not simply revered by Europe’s federalists as the founding father of modern Europe, the first to be given named an honorary “citizen of Europe”, but that he is also held up as icon among eurosceptic revolutionaries such as Dominic Cummings who see him as one of the geniuses of modern politics, able to give institutional life to his ideals. Monnet led a remarkable life: French official and European hero, but also a man of the Western order who was knighted by the British, worked for Churchill, proposed the union of Britain and France and was seen by de Gaulle as being too much of an anglo to be trusted.
The highest praise Monnet had for any statesman was that they were “generous”, the opposite of which he called the “spirit of domination” whereby these men seek only to further their immediate interests within their narrow positions of power. Looking out across Europe today, it is hard to see much generosity among its statesmen — or indeed any of Monnet’s genius for taking an idea such as “strategic autonomy” and making it real. For Monnet, in fact, one of the central purposes of the “Europe” he created was to keep together the Atlantic world and what he originally saw as its three component parts: the continent; the British Commonwealth; and the might of the United States.
There were, for Monnet, very few politicians who combined the skill of high office with the “generosity” to achieve results that went beyond immediate national interest. Without that generosity, Monnet argued, men turned too often to what he called “little solutions to big problems”. If there is a description of modern Europe’s predicament, it is this: a continent stuck in its old ways of thinking, still focused on its old red lines and petty nationalisms — and still lacking the generosity required to break free from the indignity of Trump’s domination.
In the summer of 1945, with Europe lying in ruins, Charles de Gaulle and Jean Monnet were the two dominant Frenchmen of the day. Having returned from a visit to Washington, the general and the “inspirer” as de Gaulle dismissively referred to Monnet, held a long discussion about the state of the continent. “You speak of greatness,” Monnet told de Gaulle, “but today the French are small. There will only be greatness when the French are of a stature to warrant it… For this purpose they need to modernise.” De Gaulle had returned from American stunned by the prosperity — and power — of the new hegemon. “You are certainly right,” he replied. “Do you want to try?”
The rest is history. But some things remain unchanged. Europe today is small and it will only achieve greatness when it assumes the stature to warrant it. Instead, no doubt, Berlin, London and Paris will argue about fish and plead for America to stay just a bit longer.
Tom McTague is UnHerd’s Political Editor. He is the author of Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution 1945-2016, due to be published in September 2025
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SubscribeEurope…irrelevant and led by trivial people whose yapping is ignored by those of consequence…none of whom are European.
As The Duran point out, German politics is more provincial than national.
What can you say, Enoch was right
He usually was.
I wonder how Macron’s France would think about Germany developing its own nuclear deterrent?
It seems rather absurd it hasn’t already done so already, or do they really ‘trust’ the French that much?
I’m not trying to be condescending but what is the reason that so many European countries feel they can’t fund their own defense. Is it because domestic social promises eat up such a high percentage of the budget?
I don’t understand how Trump is “dominating” Europe. He’s actually doing the opposite. He’s saying, the US is in stifling debt and can’t continue the RATE of these of trans-atlantic expenditures when we can’t even properly defend our own sovereignty. Its literally just Math.
He’s got leverage to negotiate for better cost sharing because he’s not feigning a desire for less US influence over Europe. We pay for 2/3 of NATO defense and are always well above the 2% annual spending target which many countries frequently miss. The US is not doing a pressure campaign. Its value congruity. If “we’re all in this together” and want less War than why aren’t we equal partners in cost percentage?
The US does not want to tell European countries what to do anyways. Europe has built flourishing Democracies and is full of world class intellects and innovators. I see no reason its nations can’t build up defense capabilities through the collective “Spirit of Democracy.”
Of course most of the European governments are doing their organized best to kill off democracy and civil liberties…
Including our good selves!
I agree with much of that, from the US angle.
The issue from our perspective is that, despite what the EU elites want us to believe, there is no Europe – except in a geographical sense, and we’re attached to hostile entities. From your perspective, imagine if Mexico were a nuclear power!
The individual nation states in Europe can’t individually defend themselves, and have therefore given up trying hence their meagre defence budgets. (The UK at least has island status, which makes us almost unique, certainly among the bigger players.)
Meanwhile, nothing encapsulates the lack.of coherence between nations as their inability to agree what a combined defence force might look like, or how it’d operate. But that’s what they’re desperately trying to do now.
The ‘Big Three’ of UK, France and Germany all suffer from internal political inertia so the chances of succeeding in acquiring strategic defence capabilities after 70 years of not even trying is, for the foreseeable future, remote.
The wake-up call is, from my perspective, very welcome indeed.
Britain can easily defend herself and her interests. We are a nuclear-armed island. We need good air defences and a navy capable of patrolling the North Atlantic (alongside the Americans and Canadians) and our coastal waters. It would also be good to have the naval reach – which we largely have – to protect our shipping along out trade routes from state or private actors.
The problem comes when we start to get over our skis. Why are we putting infantry regiments in Iraq, Afghanistan or Ukraine? That isn’t a role we are, or ever have been, equipped to perform. The Continental powers should have large Eastward-facing land forces. We can always assist them by relieving them of naval duties if necessary.
We should raise our defence spending to 3% but it is much more important to spend it on the right things – air defences, navy, hardening our offshore infrastructure, intelligence, special forces, R&D, nukes. And of course focusing on border security.
Given our open borders policy it will become increasingly unclear what we are defending ourselves from and why
Informative. Thanks!
Remind me, where is our dog in this fight?
““The French see no benefit opening up the market to British competition,” one British official put it. The simple fact remains that whatever the rhetoric coming out of Berlin, Paris or Brussels about nuclear deals and “resets”, the old red-lines of the Brexit negotiations remain”
If our support is not welcome leave them to their own devices. Twice in the last century were unnecessarily dragged into European wars much to our cost
Could America fund its military to the extent it does if the dollar wasn’t the reserve currency?
If America was unable to run the huge deficits it does would its spending be more in line with the Europeans?
Exactly right.
And when we are looking at trade deficits are we taking into account the wealth that the US extracts through Amazon, Google, Facebook and IP licencing?
We’re effectively funding our military with foreign debt. We now pay more interest on debt than we spend on defense. Do you think that can go on in perpetuity?
I take your point about the Reserve Currency to mean that the Dollar’s strength is a transactional benefit that America gets for agreeing to run trade deficits with everybody. It then follows that if we hit countries with reciprocal tariffs to erase the trade deficit than countries would diversify their currency holdings which would end Dollar Supremacy, correct?
I guess my response would be why did BRICS form if the world was planning on perpetual dollar supremacy? It wasn’t Trump that ran 55% of the world’s population into an alternative trade alliance.
I don’t know what BRICS is hoping to accomplish given that the ringleader, China, probably holds more dollars and more American debt than any other nation. The Chinese are playing both sides, because as much as Chairman Xi wants to be independent of the US economy, the fact remains that much of China’s economic success was built on devaluing its currency, subsidizing manufacturing, and exporting to the US. He can’t just wave a wand and change the economic patterns that built over decades and that his government actively promoted without serious consequences. He benefits politically from appearing to be building an alternative to the US while still benefiting from the old system.
My guess is that in the short term, it’s more political than economic, a way to push China’s soft power in terms of diplomatic influence. It’s probably also an early attempt to achieve the bifurcated global economy into a Chinese sphere and an American sphere, which is the reality most of us expect is coming down the pipe one way or the other, but it will take time, and the ball is very much in Xi’s court, as he knows the red lines that would trigger the US to push the economic doomsday button, and he can choose when and if he crosses them. If he doesn’t cross them at all, then we should all be thankful he showed wisdom and patience and the new order will emerge gradually, but probably won’t retain its current form. There is quite a bit of antagonism between India and China, the two largest and most powerful economies. India will try to remain neutral and China will try to turn BRICS into a vehicle for its geopolitical ambitions, and the two will likely come into conflict before BRICS makes any substantial progress.
” American debt than any other nation ” not true
Which countries own US Debt
Japan $1.1 trillion
China $749 Billion
UK $690 billion
https://usafacts.org/articles/which-countries-own-the-most-us-debt/
it’s a wonder why no UK government exploits that fact
You’re reversing cause and effect. America didn’t make the dollar the reserve currency so it could run huge deficits. It started running huge deficits because the dollar became a global currency. America hasn’t been keeping the dollar as a global reserve purposefully since at least the seventies. The US didn’t start this. Nixon actually tried to stop it when he took the US off the gold standard. He was seeing trade deficits starting to emerge all the way back in the early 70’s, and he took the dollar off the gold standard to enact reforms and correct these deficits. It didn’t work. There were no reforms and the dollar remained strong in spite of the common sense notion that its value would decline once it was detached from gold. After the initial shock, the relative value of currencies stabilized with the dollar still stronger than most despite being backed by nothing but the goodwill of the American government. The US didn’t make the dollar a reserve currency. Other nations did that, and they did it for their own benefit, not just because it allowed American politicians to spend profligately. Because of the global dollar, America’s huge deficits don’t just reflect America. The US is debt financing the entire global economy. The Chinese and the Japanese before them built their economies on devaluing their currency and selling exports to the US, undercutting American manufacturing through financial manipulation. Many other countries have niche industries or products which they sell to the US to drive their economies. If the US stopped running a deficit and reduced spending to a level that would keep down deficits, it would almost certainly lead to a global economic slowdown, and perhaps worse, and it would probably be much worse for those nations that have built themselves to export massive amounts of consumer goods to sell to the American market. Trump knows all this and has been saying it since the 80’s. When he says other nations are taking advantage of us, or laughing at us, this is what he means. Our debt is financing their economic growth.
Thus, tariffs put nations that run trade deficits in a bind. If they do nothing, the trade deficit shrinks as the cost of goods from that nation rises relative to others who might face lower or no tariffs, and that drives production towards other nations. If they simply devalue their currency to erase the effect of tariffs and maintain the same trade balance, they essentially are paying for the tariff through inflation of their domestic currency and thus paying for their share of America’s deficit spending. If nations choose this route, Trump will look like a genius because the US will suddenly have a new source of revenue to reduce its deficit that will appear to come from nowhere. Trump is running a substantial risk doing what he’s doing. If too many nations call his bluff or he starts a full blown trade war, he could easily touch off a global depression. The thing is I believe that would have happened eventually anyway, Trump or not, and it might still happen despite Trump’s reforms. I give credit to Trump for having the courage to try and change course rather than just drive right into the iceberg. It’s risky, but his method at least has a chance to push a gradual shift away from unrestricted globalism that leads nations towards more responsible, self-interested, and self-sufficient economic models.
Very well explained
The reality is that the European states DO spend far more on the ‘domestic social promises’ you mention. The US makes far more modest promises and it still costs trillions more than is spent on defense. Europe promises much more and they’ve gotten away with it fiscally by essentially behaving as if globalist ideals were already realized and that war and military spending were obsolete. Given the historical trauma of having its globally dominant civilizations decimated by the World Wars, it’s understandable that Europe bought into the high optimism that prevailed at the end of the Cold War. One can understand why Europeans in the decades following WWII and the Cold War would wish for a world where guns, bombs, and soldiers were no longer needed and they could spend their money on other priorities, but wishing for a thing does not make it so.
The reality is that wherever the rules of the globalist order prevailed, it was underpinned by American military hegemony. In short, the American taxpayers had to subsidize Europe’s social spending. The elite class in the US was fine with this as they liked the idea of inheriting European culture as the Romans inherited the Greek. The elite class in America has always had a far greater attachment to European culture and history than the rest of the people going all the way back to the revolution, when Jefferson and Franklin were well known in the French court. The problem always lay in the American people, who are not as well educated, worldly, and well traveled. The greater part of the American people are known for being rebellious, independent, and disinterested in global affairs. The American people always had the option to blow up the globalist scheme, and it was up to the elite class that concocted the scheme to run it well enough that the people had no reason to do so. They failed, and here we are. I don’t envy the Europeans having to deal with this now as they’re so ill prepared for it, but the situation is what it is. What Europe must come to terms with is that the version of America that protected them for the several generations following WWII was not the true face of the nation or its people. Trump is far closer to the reality, and Europeans will have to adjust accordingly. Frankly Trump is doing them a favor by being brutally honest and up front about the matter. Sugar coating it won’t help and asking nicely won’t lead to any meaningful action, but his over the top threats no doubt will.
Save for this, following WW1 and continuing after WW2 the US set out to destroy Great Britain as a potential global rival and succeeded. It saw the Soviet Union as a potential rival and destroyed it as well
So the US got what it wanted and is complaining about the tab.
For the US, the Great Britain has always been an ally of convenience. It has never been a friend, and Great Britain has paid a far higher price for relationship than the US
You’ve hit the nail on the head actually. The US is complaining about the tab, but it’s not the elites, the intellectuals, or politicians who started complaining. It’s the people who lodged the complaint. Trump is just the messenger. He represents the reassertion of American tradition against what global elites tried to make the US into over the last century. The USA’s people are and always have been isolationist in outlook, mostly disinterested in foreign affairs, including sustaining an overseas empire. The elite class though, began to deviate from the lower parts of the culture. At about the turn of the 20th century, they recognized that the US had the resources and capability to be a global power if they could only lead the people along, and they did.
All the wars the US has fought in the 20th and 21st century were elite projects in the sense that a majority of the people never wanted anything to do with the war until some event triggered outrage from the general populace. The Maine, the Lusitania, the weapons of mass destruction. There was always an excuse the government had to get the people behind the conflict, and that excuse was usually rather flimsy in hindsight, or exaggerated, or provoked by conscious action of leaders or all of the above. The people can be outraged enough to support a war, for a time, and to a point, but they expect the war to begin and to end in a neat and tidy manner. They expect the wars to be resolved quickly and for the expenditures to end. Every war in American history that the US has won has ended in less than five years. Every war that has gone beyond five years, the US has lost, and not because it was defeated on the battlefield, but because the people refused to sustain the conflict any longer. Once Saddam and Osama were dead, the American people believed we were done, and the troops should come home. The elites, the globalists, the multinational aristocrats were the ones that wanted to stay and invest the time, money, and resources to build up these conquered nations into reliable American allies. They wanted to engage in nation building, which is really just another word for empire building, and they were checked by popular resistance. Vietnam was the same. America was not defeated by North Vietnam, but by the protests of its own people. The disconnect between America’s elite class and its people goes back quite a bit farther than is generally acknowledged. It’s a struggle that has gone on basically continuously throughout America’s rise as a global power and up to the present.
Basically, all this is a culmination of what Jefferson realized two hundred years ago. The US is temperamentally unsuited for empire. It’s people are far too independent, fractious, and conflict prone to ever sustain the kind of unity that empires require. America claims credit for starting the trend of revolutions against kings and tyrants. The American spirit is in direct opposition to the concept of empire as such. Globalism centered around the US was never going to work. It might have worked with the UK had Europe not self-immolated in the world wars, but alas, history unfolded as it did. I and many Americans lament the loss of the British Empire whatever our elite class thinks.
That’s what all this is about. To an outsider, this must appear quite distressing, but this is what America is, or rather this is the aspects of America the globalist elites of the 20th century tried to keep hidden and out of view of the international community, aspects they tried to change, but could not. Trump is, among other things, an avatar of America’s other half, the side that hasn’t been seen since the end of WWII. This is America’s Jeffersonian spirit rather than the Hamiltonian veneer the elites have tried so hard to paint the US as. This is the America’s rebellious side, its pioneer side, its independent side. This is the part of the American spirit that hates aristocrats and deeply distrusts concentrated wealth and power. The world hasn’t really had to contend with that America for some time, but there’s no avoiding it now.
Two words: net zero
Courage, fuyons
The current posing of Europe’s naked Emperors about their dignity and honour isn’t credible. America, by paying a disproportionate share of NATO, financed the social welfare states of Europe. Additionally, there is nothing dignified or honourable about unlimited open migration. The same holds true for the Stasi style domestic terror used against the citizens of Europe who seem to be considered liabilities to be minimized.
Not really. The US can spend a lot more easily because of its reserve currency status. In fact, by investing dollars back into the US economy, exporting countries are financing the social welfare state in the US. Mostly welfare for the rich that is, but welfare nonetheless.
Finding excuses and false comparisons doesn’t actually advance your side.
That maybe somewhat true in trade terms but NATO is a cost sharing agreement. Those funds are not clearly getting reappropriated back into the US economy.
But if you can run much higher deficits and import everything, without suffering from hyperinflation, it is a lot easier to spend more on the military as well isn’t it?
The simple fact remains that whatever the rhetoric coming out of Berlin, Paris or Brussels about nuclear deals and “resets”, the old red-lines of the Brexit negotiations remain: if Britain wants more than it has today, it will have to accept the EU’s rules.
You’d think that in these momentous times, they might be willing to be a bit more flexible, i.e. back off a bit on the fish to cooperate better on defence. At the end of the day, you are not going to fight Putin by whacking him around the face with a wet mackerel.
But no.
I don’t care about French fishermen to be honest, but what I do care about is the ability to think quickly and flexibly beyond the patterns and rules of the past in order to create new solutions as required by our new and fast-moving situation and forcibly reordered priorities (perhaps that’s what’s meant by “generosity” in the article). Allowing defence matters to get bogged down by fishing rights – not to mention watching European leaders have a big urgent defence summit, only to squabble once they got there – makes me think that this new sense of realism will end up simply being talk and not much more. The moment for greater European integration will be missed – again.
Indeed – it’s ridiculous to be tying fishing rights up with a security issue.
However, if the situation remains as it appears now, the nettle will be grasped, because it has to be.
I thought sharing nuclear strike capabilities was something friendly countries did!
The vindictive way Continental Europe has behaved, for decades, towards Britain hardly shows any indication that they have any empathy with British thinking. And much of Euro-Thinking has been disastrous and, even more importantly, once shown to be deleterious, there is no mechanism to alter course.
Of course, all this is insignificant if you are a Remainer, or a Rejoiners.
NATO deals with individual countries, not the EU, and there’s no reason why a new security arrangement need involve the EU, especially given the UK, Norway and others are not in it. Security and trade are separate issues.
As Macmillan said about Germany “we are defending them while they steal our markets”.
It shouldn’t happen again. Britain should link defence to trade. Effectively Trump has done just that.
The Morgenthau Plan would have been a better option in retrospect.
I’m starting to have my doubts that it will.
Monnet thought that Europe could not be prosperous if a great deal had to be spent on the military.
What sort of war would be necessary to ‘whack’ Putin? Oddly, Monnet’s early achievements included assisting in the organisation of war as industrial production and manpower. The sort of war that is being fought in Ukraine.
Monnet (likened in appearance to Hercule Poirot, who was depicted as a Frenchman in films of the 1930s) thought that as long as national leaders had the ability to veto any plan there could be no progress to prosperity in Europe.
Monnet’s ashes would be stirring unquietly in the Pantheon if news of the proposals of European leaders in this crisis were carried there; proposals that do not survive an hour and at the hands of their ‘colleagues‘.
Proposals that advance national pre-eminence, such as Macron’s offer of a French nuclear umbrella over Europe. Starmer is prevented from offering cooperation in an Anglo-French umbrella while having Trident.
In order to achieve prosperity – and greatness – the European nations had to be unable to fight a war of 1917, that of industrial production and manpower. The European Coal and Steel Community, one creation of Monnet, was designed to make nations unable to fight such a war. Now the EU member states find they cannot fight such a war outside the EU either. At least that’s one enduring success of Monnet.
The ‘generosity’ was, in part, Monnet’s genius for networking, in finding people of influence who would work with him on his supranational ideas, putting away national self-interest without which any progress to European prosperity – and stature – would be unachievable. In Starmer’s cabinet is there an Arthur Salter?
Is there much generosity, of any sort, in the Guardian now primly declaring without embarrassment that encouraging the idea of total victory for Ukraine was ‘misleading’?
The Ukrainians have been misled? Before generosity can be had, perhaps there has to be humility. And repentance. Encouraging the Ukrainians in total victory encouraged national supremacy, revenge, and war of the sort Monnet tried to prevent – that of ancient antagonisms. Even more shamefully, not having a Churchill of her own, the UK could have one vicariously: the prestige without the blood, toil, tears and sweat reaching Coventry or London.
Stature for Ukraine – as the hammer of the Russians – has ended with the diminution of Monnet’s vision for Europe. A Churchill cannot make peace with a Hitler. A Churchill can neither hold elections in wartime nor resign from office. A Churchill cannot be overthrown except by fascists. A Churchill can cooperate in peace talks with an American president and a Russian autocrat; agreeing divisions of territory and population transfers. And lastly, a Churchill can lose a post-war election.
Meanwhile, Monnet’s ashes lie unquiet. At the end of his life Monnet thought that perhaps the presence of the US in Europe had been necessary to reconcile Germany and France after all.
This is what happens when a whole continent basically dismisses defense as a priority for several generations. Uncle Sam has had their backs and they’ve gotten used to that, so they fight about other things as if they were as important as defense. It’s a bit difficult when the time comes to turn psychology on a dime and reevaluate priorities.
In a lot of ways I have some sympathy for the US. All across Europe Americans are sneered and scoffed at, “overweight, under civilised, gun obsessed oafs. Some of them don’t even have passports you know!”
I’ve heard all this said. When in actual fact the US is the one holding cards. It reminds me of a Randy Newman song ‘Political Science’.
We have been rather ungrateful. And now it’s our time to step up. But we won’t. We will squabble over petty things. While still not confronting the world as it now is. We are pathetic.
I completely agree. Europeans also don’t seem to grasp that the Americans are in a difficult situation themselves, adjusting to the new reality of not being the sole hegemon and the world’s policeman.
Rather than understanding that the US has to deal with Russia on some level rather than just throwing around moralistic platitudes, European media is full of posturing à la “Trumpists are nothing other than Putinists! ARGH!”.
Please God, let some realism and pragmatism prevail soon.
Go on, step aside, make the USA’s day.
Once you notice the frequency of the platitudes you can’t unsee how dense and unserious some people are.
The paean of praise for Jean Monnet obscures the fact of his thoroughgoing elitism, which is reflected in the unrepresentative nature of European institutions, the root cause of the permanent crisis the continent faces.
The belief in a secular priesthood able to put the common good before its own class interest is a delusion. What happens in practice is that the priesthood – in this case the financial/academic/bureaucratic elite – convinces itself that what’s good for it’s membership must, by definition, be good for everyone.
Énarques rule OK?
Once it was ‘benefit of Clergy’, now it is these entitled morons. Perhaps it is time for Mademoiselle Guillotine to make a reappearance?
Perhaps it is time for Mademoiselle Guillotine to make a reappearance?
Macron had the last remaining guillotine destroyed. Maybe he foresaw what was coming?
Vandal!
Europe’s weakness, and only that, has resulted in it being dominated by both Russia and the USA.
Well its going to be a bit difficult to be strategically independent while simultaneously importing half the 3rd world, destroying all your industry on the altar of Net Zero and pretending your armed forces should largely comprise of women and trans people. Europe (including the UK) can only start to become independent of the US militarily when its politicians grow out of their student politics and start behaving like adults. The concept of national sovereignty, the need to have shared values that are worth defending against outsiders and the ability to supply your needs from within your borders is kind of fundamental to being an independent nation (or bloc of likeminded nations).
Europe’s problem is that it offshored its defence to the US, offshored its energy production to Russia and North Africa, and offshored its manufacturing capabilities to China. It’s been trying to turn itself into a big nursing home run by funcionarios and regulators where few people really raise a sweat for work, where being a writer or entertainer, or running a cafe, are the heights of private sector ambition.
Yet the whole world needs European ultraviolet lithography machines to produce advanced semiconductors. When it comes to electric cars, AI and rockets the Chinese are keeping up with the Americans but they cannot match these lithography machines.
JD Vance: “Stop oppressing your own people by curtailing freedom of speech”. Trump: “Pay for a decent defence force and sort out your own back yard.” European leaders: “How dare you talk to us like that! We will have to throw our toys out of the pram.”
When the headline is a closed question the answer is always no
Europe has a future of continued decline unless it sheds net zero, overbearing statism and naivety about immigration from hostile cultures.
Assimilation, not multiculturalism, will help Europe. Importing the US principle of ‘One drop’ will delay the assimilation of mulattos. It would be easier to assimilate Christians and atheists than Muslims. It is thus necessary to discriminate against Muslims in immigration. Minorities should adapt to majorities. The prevailing policy is to force (ethnic, racial and confessional) majority groups to adapt to (ethnic, racial and confessional) minority groups.
This article rests upon the theory that Russia is a threat: that they want to invade Europe or something. This remains a theory only, with no supporting facts. In my personal opinion, nothing could be further from the truth. If one is aware what was behind the SMO in Ukraine, it is clear as daylight that Putin (or whoever takes over from him) has no intention of marching on and threatening countries with nuclear cover (and non-Russian speaking populations). The only people who have a real vested interest in all this sabre rattling are arms manufacturers..
That’s nonsense. Russia has open designs on Georgia, Moldova, Central Asia, and the Baltics, as well as Ukraine. How does Europe plan on defending the Baltics without a lot of help from the US and our arms makers?
In any case, defense spending is the most productive thing Gov’t funds. It drives technological innovation (your GPS system was built to target weapons), generates high paying jobs, and can generate significant foreign sales. That’s a whole lot better than wasting money subsidizing 3rd world migrants who hate your culture, or paying your working class not to work.
It’s not an SMO. It’s an aggressive war of conquest, nakedly designed to be the first step on a path to re-establish a Russian Empire. An empire Putin openly admires and longs for.
Ukraine is Europe’s Afghanistan. Russia is playing the great game in reverse.
Really? That’s a pretty strange math, since Russia has suffered 800,000+ casualties and lost half its military hardware (the best half) while non-Ukraine Europe has suffered ZERO casualties.
I was waiting for someone to make the connection to Charles de Gaulle because this is exactly where things are heading. If we analyze historical patterns, the parallels become clear.
Take Japan, for example. During the Plaza Accord of 1985, Japan’s economy became too dominant for US and EU and had to be contained. By agreeing to U.S. demands for yen appreciation and opening its financial markets to both the U.S. and Europe, Japan effectively subordinated itself to Western financial interests. This move reinforced U.S. hegemony, with Europe—as usual—playing along but staying in the background. A missed opportunity for understanding: what you allow to be done to others can eventually be done to you.
As Europe moved toward deeper financial integration and the creation of the European Union (EU), a similar strategic maneuver emerged. The U.S. betrayed the UK at a crucial moment, ensuring that Britain distanced itself from European financial structures. The UK’s withdrawal from the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in 1992, during the Black Wednesday crisis, was not merely an economic miscalculation but part of a broader strategic move. This effectively positioned the UK to remain skeptical of European financial systems just as the EU was consolidating its own. Such financial kneecapping does not happen by accident—it was a deliberate strategy.
When the EU was formally established in 1993, and Europe became highly competitive—excelling in manufacturing and benefiting from a strong currency—the U.S. responded strategically once again. It could not tolerate a strong EU and facilitated China’s integration into the global financial system through Wall Street in 2001, fully aware that China would flood the markets. Almost immediately, Europe’s industrial strength began to erode as China absorbed much of the world’s manufacturing power. Accidental? I don’t think so.
I will not even extrapolate about Brexit but you can see the patterns! I encourage you to do your own research and compare the patterns.
Now, we are witnessing another shift: the U.S. is actively working to destabilize the EU while simultaneously isolating the UK or creating a situation where UK and EU become adversaries. This is particularly significant because the UK, as a major financial clearinghouse, plays a crucial role in dollar transactions and economic sanctions that reinforce U.S. influence. If we follow the trajectory of history, the message to Europe is clear: the U.S. is not your natural ally but one that exploits you for power and global influence. Europe must recognize its own strategic reality and forge stronger relationships with neighboring nations and continents instead of blindly acting as if war with Russia is inevitable. If US can negotiate with China why EU cannot negotiate with Russia?
The global financial system was designed to sustain U.S. hegemony, and for decades, the U.S. needed EU support. But now that U.S. dominance may be declining, Washington does not want a strong or even a weak EU aligning with China and Russia. Just imagine what that would mean—so be prepared, because the boss knows your weaknesses and will exploit them until you bleed.
What saddens me is how painfully obvious this has been to outside observers like US, yet those directly involved have been unable—or unwilling—to see it. Europe’s blind trust in the U.S., perhaps due to shared language and cultural ties (with English itself being a European language), has now left it in a vulnerable and isolated position. Even worse, Europe now faces internal divisions, and ironically, the U.S. has had a hand in stoking those fractures as well.
The conversation should not be about war but actually negotiation of settling past grievances once for all – sort of reset. But if we stay on talking about war while we are so disoriented, I cannot even finish this sentence because we are talking about fishing!
I have a lot of sympathy for your take on the US. And Europe (or the EU plus Britain) can and should negotiate directly with Russia.
But we should not believe a word Russia says for a moment. Only a strong Europe, allied to but independent of the USA, will deter Russia from further aggressive moves.
It seems I have been ghost banned again
Did Trump or Vance ever say NATO was being abandoned by United States, or did they just say Europe has to pay their share, grow up and call out the tyranny? I understand Europe and UK has weak leadership, but Germany seems in a dark place, getting darker. Why listen to Merz or follow that lead? There’s practicality in his words, but if you look closely, he’s really using Trump and Musk’s hurty words as an excuse to further crack down on free speech and distract from his country’s problems, which are the same for all of us … immigration, woke destruction, economy and globalist/leftist tyranny and corruption. Let Trump make the peace deal, which will make no one happy, but it’s true it wasnt his mess and US is currently having a revolution against the deep state, if you haven’t noticed. He’s been in office less than 40 days and focusing on a domestic house fire. Still the best house in the block….
As an American, I hope Europe (except may Germany lol) and UK stay in NATO at least for now, give time for Ukraine to get sorted out and more leveling with Trump, pay more and thereby have more clout, also build their own defense gradually (but c’mon, it’s going to be tough) and stop getting hysterical over everything Trump says.
Think about what the EU globalist leaders have done and said against Trump and our electorate for five years at least, and election meddling? which Merz accuses them of? UK literally sent envoys here during our election. Just hang on everyone! Do we have to break up NATO or just adjust for reality? We need each other to claw out of this mess, I believe anyway. Can’t magine being American, without our European frienemies.
I watch a lot of French TV and it is clear that their loss of sovereignty to the EU (shamelessly promoted by M. Macron) rankles for many. Just like in the UK the leaders strut and fret across the stage, signifying nothing. Despite increasing dissatisfaction amongst the people, European democracy has become paralysed like a very sleepy frog in the proverbial pan of warming water. The “petits hommes gris” who work for the government ensure than nothing – or at least nothing unwoke happens while the temperature slowly rises and our services fall apart. Inflation is rampant despite the positive stats circulated to us all and everyone wants to be paid more while we wonder why being paid more doesn’t keep up (and that’s for the lucky ones who are being paid more!). Cat food (sic!) has simultaneously shrinkflated by 15% while the price per box went up 15% and that’s just in the last three months! But that’s no exception. Everyone is jumping on the inflation bandwagon making it a self-fulfilling prophecy! Try getting a builder out of bed in the morning for much less than 500 quid! Everyone’s at it – except HMG who say it’s going down! Things can only get better? No. They can get worse too! Going back to Monnet and Eurosquabble, wasn’t he the crafty sod who said: “Europe’s nations should be guided towards a super state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.”? Another nail in democracy’s coffin hammered in by someone who thinks they know better what’s needed by the populus. Of course he may have a point. It would indeed be great if the EU had become a friendly cohesive bunch of cooperating nations rather than a bureaucratic nightmare with the likes of empress van der L. ensuring that bananas are straight and tomatoes round and that the will of the people is kept safely under the carpet? However, the truth may simply be that European countries need several more generations before they will naturally fully warm to each other – it takes time for different peoples to mingle and discover the mutual benefits of such diversity. First the shortcomings appear. The mutual benefits take longer. But if we split with the US we just may not have the time we need… In the immortal words of Laurel and Hardy “That’s another fine mess you’ve got us into!”
Did Trump or Vance ever say NATO was abandoned, or did they just say Europe has to pay their share and grow up and call out the tyranny? I understand Europe and UK has weak leadership, but Germany seems in a dark place, getting darker. Why listen to Merz or follow that lead? There’s practicality in his words, but if you look closely, he’s really using Trump and Musk’s hurty words as an excuse to further crack down on free speech and distract from his country’s problems, which are the same for all of us … immigration, woke destruction, economy, birth rate and globalist/leftist tyranny and corruption. Let Trump make the peace deal, which will make no one happy, but it’s true it’s not his mess and US is currently having a revolution against the deep state, if you haven’t noticed. He’s been in office less than 40 days and handed a domestic inferno. But maybe his strong arm tactics will help pressure EU leaders to stop the tyranny. JD Vances words rang true and that was the intent.
As an American, I hope Europe (except maybe Germany lol) and UK stay in NATO at least for now, give time for Ukraine to get sorted out and more leveling with Trump, pay more and thereby have more clout, also build their own defense gradually (but c’mon, it’s going to be tough) and stop getting hysterical over everything Trump says.
Think about what the EU globalist leaders have done and said against Trump and our electorate for five years at least, and election meddling? which Merz accuses them of? UK literally sent envoys here during our election. Just hang on everyone! Do we have to break up NATO or can it be adjusted for the current reality we haven’t faced? We need each other to claw out of this mess, I believe anyway. Can’t imagine being American, without our European frienemies.
great article. Thanks.
One of the contradictions in the EEC/EC/EU from day one was that each of its main players saw the project as an opportunity to rebuild their previously powerful global positions. That hasn’t changed. In addition, when you look at people like UVDL, Kaja Kallas, our own towering political figures (not) and most of the other “leaders” of the EU it is obvious that the “greatness” referred to in the last paragraph, always a pipe dream, is now a joke.
what Justification is there for the UK/France to ‘lend’ Germans nukes. Again Germany seems to want Defence on the cheap, Germany you a big boy, you want nukes pay for them yourself