As the US retreats, Europe rises

Of all the consequences of Trump's shambolic presidency, among the most shameful is the backstabbing of Ukraine.  For the first month there was some doubt that he would really go through with this, but recent votes in the UN and escalation of Trump's rhetoric have now moved the issue onto the front burner.

With the US increasingly out of the picture, Europe must pick up the dropped torch and take over responsibility for defending the eastern borderland of Western civilization -- and not just the borderland, since Trump has also implied that the US might not fulfill its NATO treaty obligations if called upon, and might not help to defend even the west European core nations.  Fortunately it seems that European leaders understand the problem and are rising to the occasion.  They should have been preparing to do this for the last eight years, of course -- the first Trump presidency was a clear warning that he, or someone like him, could come to power in the US again.  But better late than never.

Europe certainly has the capacity for great power.  Today, military power depends less on sheer numbers of soldiers and much more on technological superiority.  Technological innovation, in turn, depends on money, an educated population, and a free society where the best minds feel safe and comfortable living and working and where the funding of research is not crippled by corruption.  Democratic Europe vastly outclasses Russia in all those areas.  For example, the Russian economy is less than two-thirds the size of the UK economy, even though Russia's population is a little over twice as large as the UK's.  The economic output of all of democratic Europe is several times that of Russia.  European countries have so far chosen to spend their wealth on a strong social safety net, with military power being a lower priority, but there are ways of strengthening the latter without shortchanging the former.  Arbitrary European Union limits on acceptable budget deficits may need to be loosened or ignored for a while to pay for a military build-up (and the UK, one of democratic Europe's two main military powers, is not part of the EU and has more freedom of action).  Also, the EU holds $280 billion worth of frozen Russian assets and is considering confiscating some of it to provide aid to Ukraine.  No doubt other strategies can be devised, given the importance of what's at stake.

Even today, democratic Europe is not weak.  While the Ukraine war has highlighted the pathetic decrepitude of Russia's military equipment, the UK and France have modern and well-maintained military forces.  They also have their own nuclear arsenals which, while smaller than those of the US and Russia, are more than sufficient to annihilate every target in European Russia worth destroying.  Russia does not even have a functioning aircraft carrier, and there is abundant reason to think that most of its nuclear weapons no longer work properly and would be almost as dangerous to Russia as to the target countries if Putin ever tried to use them.

The largest European economy is Germany, which has badly neglected its military and has been hobbled by understandably strong pacifist feeling in the wake of World War II.  However, this may be changing.  Friedrich Merz, the presumptive new chancellor since last Sunday's election, has made it clear he understands that democratic Europe can no longer rely on the US and must look to its own defense.  Germany is already the second-biggest donor to Ukraine after the US.  A larger German role in general European defense would be game-changing.

Another way Europe could enhance its strength would be to build a much closer relationship with Israel, bringing that country fully into the democratic European fold.  Israel is a powerhouse of technological innovation, and it has a nuclear arsenal comparable to that of France or the UK.  Jihadism in its various forms is a threat to both Israel and Europe.  Israel would not want membership in NATO or the EU, with the meddling those organizations bring, but the UK, Switzerland, and Norway are not part of the EU either, and still act as full members of the democratic European family.  It would be difficult for Europe to fully win Israel's trust after years of dithering about the jihadist threat and anti-Semitism within European countries, but I believe sincere efforts to build a real alliance would succeed eventually, and both parties would have a lot to gain.

One of the biggest risks is miscalculation by Putin.  Dictators have a long track record of underestimating the willingness of democracies to fight.  If the US is firmly out of the picture, Putin might believe he could escalate by attacking smaller NATO members such as Estonia or Latvia and that France and the UK would not honor their NATO obligations to defend those countries.  By the time they proved him wrong, it would be too late -- a wider war would already be under way.  One solution to this would be for eastern democracies such as Poland (and possibly Finland and Sweden), which have a much clearer grasp of the Russian threat due to their own history, to build their own nuclear weapons.  Putin might doubt the will of France or the UK to push the button if it were the only way of stopping him, but he would harbor no such doubts concerning Poland.  For psychological reasons, Germany is unlikely to nuclearize, but it could contribute financially to a fast-track military build-up, nuclear and otherwise, in Poland and elsewhere.  With this accomplished, Putin would never dare widen the war.

Finally, Ukraine itself should not be underestimated.  For example, it is now the world's largest producer of military drones, having built more than two million of them in 2024.  It certainly has the technological capability to build its own nuclear weapons, an option which three-quarters of Ukrainians support and which Zelensky has suggested should be on the table if Ukrainian NATO membership is delayed.  After the war is won, Ukraine will be a formidable asset to a fully-independent democratic Europe.

The US may not be out of the picture forever.  Trump has a pattern of backing down when firmly resisted, and Republican opposition to backstabbing Ukraine is growing.  The next president may be either a Democrat, or at least a Republican with more geopolitical sense than Trump.  But Europe cannot count on any of this, and certainly can't afford to dither for four years while hoping for the best.  It must build up its strength now, and the West as a whole will be stronger for it.

[Image at top:  French Triomphant-class submarine carrying long-range nuclear missiles]