For those who reside in self-righteous echo chambers, this week was a disaster. Donald Trump turned fully against Ukraine, accusing it of prolonging the war with Russia before suggesting that Kyiv should hold elections and calling Zelensky a dictator. The US President clearly characterises the decision to fight Russia as a mistake.

The single most important decision the Europeans need to make right now is not about Ukraine, but about their own readiness to plug the gap the US will leave as it reduces its security commitment to Europe. The US won’t go from everything to nothing, but it will leave Europe badly exposed to a potential future threat from Russia.

This is a time for the Europeans to really focus — something they are not good at. The first decisions to be taken by EU and Nato leaders should be a credible multi-annual strategy to raise defence capabilities to a level that provides sufficient deterrence and the first step needs to be implemented now. This could be a defence spending target, measured in percentage points of GDP, or it could be something more ambitious, like a target measured in terms of defence capabilities. And Europe should try to produce the weapons within its own borders, rather than reinforcing its dependency on the US. Rheinmetall, for example, is already expanding its manufacturing capacity for ammunition. There will be a lot of idle industrial capacity in Germany as de-industrialisation proceeds.

Under-fire German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was right to say it is too early to talk about peacekeeping in Ukraine. It was a stroke of diplomatic stupidity by Emmanuel Macron to call an ill-prepared summit that ended up with a German chancellor storming out and telling the media about his irritation. This is a good moment for Mark Rutte, Nato Secretary-General, to show the leadership that national leaders are failing to.

The EU has to start reconnecting with reality. It was unforgivable for Ursula von der Leyen to classify Ukraine as the political priority for the EU. It absolutely is not. The EU evidently has no control over what is going to happen there. It is not even at the table. The European Commission should focus on its narrow mandate, the European economy, something over which it actually has some influence, and which is in need of urgent attention.

The Europeans are still shell-shocked by what is happening around them, which is due to the echo chamber effect mentioned above. Earlier this week on the BBC’s Newsnight, there was repetition of the most unchallenged lie of the entire war — that if Ukraine would only be allowed to fight a little while longer, Russia would collapse. Reputable newspapers have peddled the lie that Russia’s war economy would create hyper-inflation. It would eventually. But to turn Keynes on his head: Russia can stay liquid for longer than rational analysis would assume, especially when its stated enemies are still paying for its oil.

There are still calls for the West to send more money to Ukraine. Whether or not Ukraine could have won the war had different decisions been taken is a legitimate matter which will be discussed by historians. I doubted the claims of glorious victory early on, especially after the EU’s timid sanctions against Russia. Countries that prioritise their own comfort do not win wars.

Nothing that happened this week should have come as a surprise. Trump may not have been very effective during his first term, but he told us everything we needed to know. EU leaders chose to ignore him. Five years earlier, they chose not to use the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis as an occasion to give the area a fiscal, banking, and capital markets union that it now so badly needs to catch up on investment. Weakness, after all, is a choice.

This is an edited version of an article which originally appeared in the Eurointelligence newsletter.

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Wolfgang Münchau is the Director of Eurointelligence and an UnHerd columnist.

EuroBriefing

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