It’s exhausting and humiliating to have no control – watching every meeting in the Oval Office for a glimmer of Trump’s approval or displeasure, our security resting on a perceived slight or a mood.
The last week of meetings between Trump, Macron, Starmer and finally Zelenskyy always felt like crawling across a minefield. Some might agonise about whether Zelenskyy could have played things differently. It’s the wrong question. The point is that we can’t carry on being so dependent on every meeting at the White House. Until we start taking charge of our future, we will always be one heart palpitation away from dreading doomsday.
Here are the steps to solve that.
First: Europe has to show a united front. Britain can have its own side channels – there are some benefits of avoiding the coming EU-US trade war – but the most “special” relationship we have now is the one with our nearest neighbours.
Second: If you want to be taken seriously, bring serious money. There are, for example, $300bn worth of frozen Russian assets sitting in Euroclear in Brussels. Use these to negotiate with America and other providers of weapons about actual deals, rather than relying on maddening meetings predicated on mood swings to hope for rhetorical ones.
But we also have to be clear what we need from America. For the next few years, Europe is still dependent on the US for artillery supplies and for tech updates to Patriot missiles and other essentials.
Third: Recognise that the only real “security guarantees” lie in having armed forces that can defend you. So build a real European defence industry. That sounds terribly grandiose – but it’s possible.
Start thinking like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who took moribund American arms production in the 1930s and built it up to out-compete Germany’s. Don’t fall for any pauses in the fighting that Putin might sell Trump. Russia is continuing its military build-up all the time, preparing for many decades of conflicts. We are fortunate there is already one serious army in Europe – Ukraine’s.
Fourth: Disrupt Russia’s military supply chains. We usually think about this in terms of sanctions, but that’s just one tool. Nothing should be off the books: digital disruption, sabotage, the whole gamut of secret service tricks.
Fifth: Learn how to fight hybrid and information wars. We already know that Russia is waging relentless campaigns of covert disinformation and overt propaganda, cyber attacks, corruption and espionage across Europe. It’s about to get much worse. All the assets Russia has been using to subvert America will now be repurposed to attack Europe, and especially the UK.
In Brussels, there’s talk of creating a “democracy shield”. But we will need a sword too. Here we can learn from countries like Moldova who are already developing the hard craft of fighting non-democratic enemies with democratic tools.But it’s also something the British excelled at in the past: the second world war Political Warfare Executive united the wittiest minds from the arts with spies and soldiers to create a communications force that was far more effective than the Nazis’.
Once we show we have the will, and the wallet, to take these steps, then we can negotiate differently. Then we can speak of “mutual interests” as equals, not supplicants.
But most importantly, we will no longer feel as if our destiny is decided by others. The propaganda campaign for Brexit was sold on the idea of “taking back control”. It turned out to be an empty promise. But the feelings it tapped into were real enough. In a chaotic world, people feel vulnerable. Now we have the chance to do it properly.
