Sad, mad, bad—or glad?

Europe in the era of King Donald

Europeans are in shock about the Trump presidency. ‘Is this administration sad, mad, or outright bad?’ they ask themselves amid the ruins of the Atlantic alliance and what many fear is the impending end of Nato.

For optimists, this talentless collection of over-promoted lackeys and grifters, led by a rough-tongued huckster with a gnat-like attention span, means mostly chaos. Some parts of the US government will simply stop functioning. Other bits will run on autopilot. It is sad, but allies will have to manage as best they can.

A more pessimistic “mad” take is that eccentricity will triumph. Conspiracy theorists and nutcases really are in charge. Truth and reason give way to hysteria and myth. Profoundly unserious people make unserious decisions on the basis of unserious evidence. It is goodbye not just to transatlanticism, but to the values of the Enlightenment.

Most worrying is that there may be method in the madness. The administration wants to befriend Russia at all costs—and is ready to throw not just Ukrainians, but all Europeans to the wolves to do it. Moreover, a MAGA international wants to promote “national conservatism” abroad.

I see some evidence for that. Supporters of JD Vance believe that his speech at the Munich Security Conference was not an attack on European democracy, but an attempt to save it. Remember: the US interfered repeatedly and vigorously in European and other allies during the cold war, keeping communists out of power in France and Italy for example, or toppling them in Chile. Then the aim was to push back against Soviet-inspired subversion. Now it is to stop migrants and Muslims.

The key concept here is hegemony. The era of American soft power is over. Ruthless self-interest, pursued with unabashed transactionalism, is the future.

What will this mean in practice? We can assume a fierce revival of the Monroe Doctrine, covering North and South America (watch out Canada, Greenland and any other country with uppity aspirations of sovereignty). Will it include Taiwan? I doubt it. Fortress America means a withdrawal from other theatres. I don’t expect US troops to retain a meaningful presence in Europe (sorry, Poland). Africom (the military command dealing with Africa, which is based in Europe) will go too.

The Europeans’ security plight is dire. The job got a lot bigger (Africa, Balkans, Middle East. Russia — the to-do list is huge). Their fancy American weapons such as F-35 warplanes and JASSM, the vital air-launched missile bought by Poland and Finland, need constant software updates, maintenance and spare parts. Don’t expect them to work in what the White House may dismiss as a “border skirmish” with Russia. Yet buying American-made weapons may be one of the few ways of currying favour at the Trump court.

Expect a scramble for nuclear weapons (I wrote about this in the Times). South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Poland and Ukraine are all thinking about this. America First means what it says. No nuclear umbrellas for other countries.

The US will be a hard-edged hegemon. Speak loudly, carry a big stick and don’t be afraid to use it is the motto. Performative lethality and machismo will be part of the deprofessionalisation of the military.

Amidst the gloom I find myself oddly cheerful. I’ve been warning about this since the 1990s, along with my friends in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and elsewhere. I take a grim satisfaction in our vindication. And at last people are listening. Europe is rich enough to do everything it needs. True, it will be risky and costly because we are so late. But we can do it. We should be glad that we have the chance.

So instead of sitting around complaining, let’s act. My idea of a new Rearmament Bank seems to have got real momentum. I’m also working on a new project to provide air defence for at least parts of Ukraine. I want to restart my campaign (launched in 2016) for a European Foreign Legion, run by the French but paid by the rest of us. It will recruit experienced veterans who have recently left their own country’s military and want to do some serious soldiering. I am also continuing to push for us to seize the frozen Russian central bank reserves.

More on all of this in future editions of this newsletter.

In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been writing.

I wrote up the London summit for the Times, lamenting the vagueness and the exclusion of the Baltic states.

I suggested that we erect a golden statue to Trump in Brussels to mark his contribution to European unity.

Also for CEPA, I wrote about the “Trustquake” that has ended the old Atlantic Alliance — this was before the meltdown in the Oval Office. And I reflected on the Munich Security Conference, warning that Europe faced a defence emergency.

In another Times column, I lamented the green light for kleptocrats now blinking over Washington DC.

I reviewed a mostly excellent book about Pskov, Russia’s neglected western province. And rebuked the author for his sloppiness about Estonia.

What I’ve been reading:

Baltic: the Future of Europe, by Oliver Moody. A review is coming out soon

The Stoic Capitalist: Advice for the Exceptionally Ambitious by Robert Rosenkranz. This sober and thoughtful account of the ethics you need to succeed well reads rather poignantly in the current madness. May those days return.

More later.

Edward