“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” said Friedrich Merz, the man expected to become Germany’s next chancellor, at a post-election event in Berlin on Sunday night.
“I would never have believed that I would have to say something like that on television. But at the very least, after Donald Trump’s statements last week, it is clear that the Americans — at least this part of the Americans in this administration — are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe,” he continued.
Saying he had no illusions about what was happening Stateside, including Elon Musk’s championing of the far-right Alternative for Germany party prior to the election won by Merz’s center-right Christian Democrats, he added: “The interventions from Washington were no less dramatic and drastic, and ultimately outrageous, than the interventions we have seen from Moscow. We are under such massive pressure from two sides that my top priority is to create unity in Europe.”
Is the United States listening? Doubtful. Does it care? Doubtful. Will it matter? Undoubtedly.
It is time for a great geopolitical awakening. Europe needs to come to terms with the disillusioning idea and rapidly congealing reality that the America it has known since World War II is no longer there. The America that described itself as “the shining city upon a hill” and ordained itself “the indispensable nation” is no longer either, and has no pretense at being. America is changing course and upending a world order it no longer sees as advantageous, and the hell with any repercussions.
This is not the end of the world, but it is a process that will gradually remodel the international system. Some will see it through a dark prism, expecting gloom, doom, unpredictability, instability and heightened security tensions everywhere. Others may view it as a long overdue and imperative modification of a world order that, to a large extent, ceased to reflect contemporary power relations.
It is neither a good nor a bad dynamic, neither clearly dangerous nor potentially promising. It’s like tectonic shifts of the Earth’s plates: You have to recognize that it’s happening, accept its inexorability and try to make the most of it — because you can’t really stop it, only mitigate the adverse effects.
Western Europeans since 1945, and an expanded Europe since the dissolution of the USSR and the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s, perceived America as the leader of the Free World, a force for balance, dependability and peace. They enjoyed a U.S. military umbrella and deferred to Washington on foreign policy and grand strategy.
But Trump’s America is now closer to imperialistic mercantilism than it is to the 1948 Marshall Plan, when it transferred to postwar Europe the equivalent of roughly $174 billion in today’s money. It is now closer to being a malevolent agent of instability than a shining city upon a hill instilling confidence and hope.
Eighty years of American leadership, reliability and dependability expressed by a sturdy, stable alliance and cooperation have effectively come to an end — even if it takes a few more years. The post-1945 world order, “the American Order,” interchangeably defined as the U.S.-led, rules-based world that produced the era of Pax Americana, is over.
It may have outlived its usefulness or reached the end of its natural life expectancy. NATO being the longest durably existing military alliance in history since the Athens-dominated Delian League established in 478 B.C.E. is now facing an existential threat from its founder, the United States. But Europe is still tied to the obsolete idea that these changes and this course reversal is a unilateral American issue. Europe needs to recalibrate, and quickly.
In geopolitical terms, there is a staggering disparity between Europe and America’s economic power. The European Union is a geopolitical and geo-economic sphere of some 450 million people, compared to the U.S. population of about 350 million. Europe has a combined gross domestic product of $29 trillion in terms of purchasing power parity, compared to the U.S.’ $27 trillion. Yet however powerful and potent the EU is economically, Europe exudes weakness and disunity when it comes to foreign policy and security.
This political frailty is manifested in two aspects. First, despite enhanced economic integration, open borders, free movement of labor, commodities and capital, enabled through voluntary diminished national sovereignty, there is a conspicuous absence of anything resembling unified European foreign policy. There are historically extenuating circumstances to explain this, such as countries’ political-cultural differences, national experiences, elite traditions, relative strengths and foreign policy priorities through hundreds of years, but those are not relevant here.
Second, there is internal political turmoil, fragility and instability in many EU countries these days, but most important in the two strongest powers: Germany and France.
The cumulative effect of the complexity of modern governance, immigration issues, inequality and a pervasive political culture of misinformation, alternative facts and incendiary social media have all contributed to this political weakness, wherein all incumbent parties across the Continent have been losing strength in recent years and their longevity in office is questionable.
The one relatively stable European power, the United Kingdom, is no longer a member of the EU, but could still have a major say on devising European defense and foreign policy.
In the face of a fast-changing world order, this political deficiency is most accentuated in a lack of leadership. Europe currently has no political center of gravity in terms of leadership, and the disconnect between political elites and the general public on all things governmental and societal is growing. To confront the changes America is imposing on Europe will require more leadership gravitas and vision than Europe currently has.
Ironically, Trump’s chaos-inducing rhetorical tantrums on the EU, NATO, tariffs, Greenland and, especially, Ukraine could end up having a positive effect on Europe by expediting a necessarily rude awakening.
Europe’s aversion to wars and haunting memories of strongmen cynically and callously deciding the fate of nations has been ingrained in its political culture for the last 80 years. Once Europe — if we can use the term collectively — concludes that Trump is essentially no different to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping, it may be impelled by circumstance to forge a unified policy and exert the power it has, rather than conveniently deferring to America as it has done since 1945.
So what can Europe do? First, it needs to fully grasp the paradigm shift and realize that this is irreversible. Then it needs to deliberate the various dimensions and eventually adopt a blueprint. One such set of ideas and recommendations was proposed in a challenging, intriguing, provocative and compelling essay by geopolitical scholar Kishore Mahbubani, a former Singaporean diplomat who was president of the UN Security Council in the early 2000s.
Europe, he argues, needs to disassociate from the United States in regard to the formulation of foreign policy. Europe has been “slavishly” dependent on the Americans. It could voluntarily redefine and even threaten to dissolve NATO. Trump is constantly — not without logic — complaining that NATO countries are critically under-investing on defense. He says Europe should allocate 4 to 5 percent of its GDP, and not rely on or free-ride U.S. defense expenditure.
If each European country invests 5 percent of its GDP on defense, the cumulative sum will be in excess of $1 trillion. That is far more than the United States expends on NATO, not to mention the added benefit that budgets will be funneled to technological and military development within Europe, adding jobs and growth.
Europe, Mahbubani further argues, should seriously consider a grand bargain with Russia, which is far from the perceived threat the Soviet Union posed during the Cold War. Europe needs Russian oil, but can also alleviate Russian concerns about “NATO enlargement” — and in fact offer Moscow a better relationship with the world’s richest market.
In a rebuke to the Americans, but out of legitimate self-interest, Europe should strive to forge a new and expansive relationship with China, positioning itself as an independent actor rather than a U.S. foreign-policy satellite, constantly looking to Washington.
If U.S.-Canadian relations deteriorate further, Europe could even consider a bold move: inviting Canada to join the EU, thus maintaining an Atlanticist link.
These ideas are easier written and recommended than done, considering Europe’s relative disunity and political weakness. But they do highlight a critical element: Europe has much more potential power than both it and Trump think.
First published in Haaretz, 24.02.2025
