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      in US Politics

      Top Democrat says Trump may seek mineral deal with both Russia and Ukraine

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      Donald Trump may be pursuing a mineral rights deal with Vladimir Putin and Russia as well as with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine, a top Senate Democrat has warned, discussing the US president’s demand that Kyiv grant US firms access to 50% of its rare-earth reserves, as a price for helping end the war three years after Russia invaded.“I think anything that helps position Ukraine for any peace negotiations is a positive move,” said Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate foreign relations and armed services committee, who recently visited Ukraine.“Now, what we heard when we were in Ukraine is that 40-50% of those mineral deposits are actually in territory controlled by the Russians. Maybe part of the deal is President Trump is going to get a deal with Vladimir Putin on the mineral rights too. So … that could be a little tricky.”Shaheen was speaking to the One Decision podcast, hosted by the former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove, the former CIA director Leon Panetta and the reporter Christina Ruffini.Saying Ukraine cannot expect to regain all territory taken by Russia, and rejecting Kyiv’s aim of joining Nato, Trump has demanded a deal with Ukraine as repayment for military support. On Wednesday, Trump said Zelenskyy would visit Washington on Friday to sign a “very big agreement that will be on rare earth and other things”.Trump did not offer details of a deal but said he was “not going to make security guarantees beyond very much,” adding: “We’re going to have Europe do that.”Trump is due to meet Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, on Thursday. Starmer has said the UK is willing to contribute peacekeeping troops.Shaheen said: “I do think there is support to do everything we can to help get a peace in Ukraine. And from my perspective, one of the most important aspects of that is ensuring that the Ukrainians are positioned in the most positive, favorable way for them. If this deal helps with that, and President Zelenskyy is comfortable signing it, then I support that.”Shaheen said her visit to Ukraine, with fellow Democrat Michael Bennet, of Colorado, and Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, proved “compelling, disturbing”.The senators visited Bucha, where Russian troops carried out a massacre in 2022. The town “showed the resilience of the Ukrainian people,” Shaheen said, adding: “They’re willing to resist. And it showed just what a murderous thug Vladimir Putin is.”Shaheen said the senators “met with the mayor of Bucha, we met with the priest. There had been a mass grave of a couple of hundred of the civilians who were killed. There were over 500 killed in Bucha in that 33-day siege [the final toll is unclear]. It was horrific. It was absolutely brutal. Finding the graves, taking the corpses out of the graves.“We met with the investigators who were investigating each murder individually, and they showed us the picture of the Russian commander who had given the order. And it was very clear that the order was to frighten the civilians, to do everything you can to try and reduce any resistance from the civilians. And for me … I thought this was a small village someplace in the hinterlands of Ukraine, but it’s not, it’s a suburb of Kyiv, and the tanks were stopped right there at the suburb.“So it really pointed out the stark contrast between the Russians and the Ukrainians and what’s at stake in this war.”Trump has stirred huge controversy by seeming to favor Putin and Russia in regards to the war in Ukraine, not least by beginning talks for a settlement without including Ukraine or European powers.Asked about Trump’s lie that Zelenskyy was a dictator who started the war, Shaheen said: “It’s very distressing. And the president’s wrong. He’s just wrong … Vladimir Putin is the dictator. President Zelenskiy was duly elected by the people of Ukraine, and he has a higher favorability rating than Donald Trump.” More

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      in Elections

      UK’s Starmer to Meet Trump With a Boost on Defense and Pleas for Ukraine

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      Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, fresh from announcing a boost to military spending, is flying to Washington for a high-stakes visit.Now it’s Keir Starmer’s turn.After President Emmanuel Macron of France navigated his meeting with President Trump on Monday, skirting the rockiest shoals but making little headway, Mr. Starmer, the British prime minister, will meet Mr. Trump on Thursday to plead for the United States not to abandon Ukraine.Mr. Starmer will face the same balancing act as Mr. Macron did, without the benefit of years of interactions dating to 2017, when Mr. Trump greeted the newly elected French president with a white-knuckle handshake that was the first of several memorable grip-and-grin moments.Unlike Mr. Macron, Mr. Starmer will arrive in the Oval Office armed with a pledge to increase his country’s military spending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2027, and to 3 percent within a decade. That addresses one of Mr. Trump’s core grievances: his contention that Europeans are free riders, sheltering under an American security umbrella.To finance the rearming, Mr. Starmer will pare back Britain’s overseas development aid, a move that echoes, on a more modest scale, Mr. Trump’s dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development. Mr. Starmer’s motive is budgetary not ideological — he says the cuts are regrettable — but Mr. Trump might approve.British officials said Mr. Starmer would combine his confidence-building gestures on defense with a strong show of support for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and a warning not to rush into a peace deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that fails to establish security guarantees for Ukraine.“The key thing is, we don’t want to repeat the previous mistakes in dealing with Putin, in going for a truce or cease-fire that doesn’t convert into a durable peace,” said Peter Mandelson, who became Britain’s ambassador to Washington three weeks ago and has helped arrange the visit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Friedrich Merz was the most pro-US politician in Germany – his shift could be historic for Europe | Jörg Lau for Europe |

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      It is hard to overstate the importance of Friedrich Merz’s urgent message to the nation after his win in the German elections. This, after all, is the beginning of a new, dangerous era in European security. It would be his “absolute priority”, Merz said, immediately after victory for the CDU/CSU was confirmed, to create unity in Europe as quickly as possible, “so that, step by step, we can achieve independence from the US”. He added: “I never thought I would have to say something like this on a television programme.”Indeed. For the leader of the conservative CDU, a lifelong believer in the transatlantic security alliance, this is a significant reversal. And it is highly personal for Merz: there is hardly a more pro-American politician in Germany than the man who worked for the investment company BlackRock and was the long-serving chairman of the influential lobbying group Atlantik-Brücke (Atlantic Bridge).That makes the unfavourable things the chancellor-elect had to say about the US government all the more remarkable. The interference from Washington in the German election campaign had been “no less dramatic and drastic and ultimately outrageous than the interventions we have seen from Moscow”, Merz said, referring to Elon Musk’s ever more frenzied support for the far-right AfD, and to the polemics of the US vice-president, JD Vance, against the CDU’s “firewall” policy, which excludes cooperating with the Putin-friendly party.Germany was under “massive pressure from two sides”, and Donald Trump’s government was “largely indifferent to the fate of Europe”, Merz said, warning that it was unclear whether, by the Nato summit in June, “we will still be talking about Nato in its current form or whether we will have to establish an independent European defence capability much more quickly”.The unusual frankness of his remarks reflects a deep frustration that has built up in traditionally pro-US conservative circles in Germany, particularly over interference led by Musk and Vance. Their coordinated campaign sought to undercut the centre-right Christian Democrats in favour of the far right in the run-up to the vote. Musk posted a barrage of tweets on his X platform, including some on election day. He has also tweeted his support for one of the most extreme proponents of the AfD, Björn Höcke – a man twice convicted for using Nazi slogans.Even more intrusive were Vance’s repeated statements linking the CDU’s firewall policy, which keeps the AfD out of power, with the US security guarantee for Europe. The vice-president’s menacing message to Germany was: if you continue to exclude the far right from power, the US cannot do much for you.It was heartening to hear the chancellor-elect refute this unprecedented meddling in Germany’s affairs. He must know that the vindictive Trump administration will most likely want to make him regret his choice of words.There is an irony here in that Merz had tried his own brand of Trumpism just weeks ago, when he reacted to a string of violent attacks in Germany with the announcement of a tough migration policy that he would enact “on day one” of his chancellorship. He put pressure on the centre-left parties, the Social Democrats and the Greens. If they refused to support him, he would have no choice but to accept the votes of the far right for his proposals. To the shock of many, Merz’s non-binding motion (which included controversial measures such as pushing back all asylum seekers at the border) was passed with the votes of the AfD.That left Merz with a mixed message for the rest of the campaign: he promised radical change but continued to vow non-cooperation with his far-right competition. Mainstream voters who wanted a more restrictive migration policy, but not with the help of the extreme right, were left with doubts: how trustworthy was Merz? Would he do it again? The conservatives’ underwhelming result in the election is testimony to his miscalculation.To make matters worse, Merz had opened himself to AfD goading that he lacked the stamina to follow through and form a rightwing majority coalition. Our hand remains outstretched, the AfD co-leader, Alice Weidel, has repeated maliciously since election day, but if you keep shutting us out, we will crush you next time.Expect to hear this tune a lot in the coming weeks. Merz’s gambit backfired. His only option now is coalition talks with the diminished Social Democrats. If both parties manage to form a government, it can hardly be called a “grand coalition” any more. The two “people’s parties” barely add up to a majority in parliament.Yet there is an opportunity that arises from these pressures. The Social Democrats may find it easier to compromise on migration policy when in coalition with the conservatives. The next government urgently needs to exert more control on the border to counter the far-right narrative.Merz’s blunt assessment of an emerging post-transatlantic order opens a long overdue debate in Germany. It is, indeed, a head-spinning moment for the country’s strategic defence community, a reversal of core beliefs that have guided Germany for the past 80 years.It was the CDU that tied Germany irreversibly to the western alliance. This was a major historical achievement, because it was not at all popular at the time, especially among German conservatives who had habitually been anti-US. Konrad Adenauer, the first postwar chancellor, risked all the political capital he had when he steered a fiercely anti-western and pacifist Germany towards rearmament and Nato membership in 1955. What’s more, he rejected the alternative path suggested by the French president, Charles de Gaulle, to opt for a European defence community.Trump has now turned Germany’s conviction on its head. All German governments from Adenauer onwards, irrespective of left or right leanings, had argued against the French project of “European strategic autonomy” for fear that it would weaken Nato. A security partnership with the US was the indispensable guarantee of peace on the continent, the thinking went. But now the US government is calling Nato into question, thereby making a more independent Europe a necessity.The consequences are not confined to the continent. Merz wants to explore closer security cooperation with London, and he already has his eye on the UK’s nuclear arsenal, as well as France’s. What a turnaround: Germany, once proud of phasing out nuclear energy, is shopping for a new nuclear umbrella.Ironically, these worrying turns might help Merz succeed in forming a coalition with the Social Democrats. Reforming the strict fiscal regime known as the Schuldenbremse, or “debt brake”, has always been a source of friction between them. No more. The rigid limit on borrowing, enshrined in the German constitution, must go. Everybody knows this: there is no way to replace US security protection while upholding a balanced budget.Changing the constitutional debt brake requires a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag, which leads to the final irony: Merz will have to make a deal with the parties on the left to win their support for loosening spending. More borrowing for defence, but also for infrastructure investments. Only a conservative could do this, like only Richard Nixon could go to China.There is quite a measure of poetic justice in this development. Merz has gone from flirting with Trumpism to easing Germany’s austerity policies in just a matter of weeks.

      Jörg Lau is an international correspondent for the German weekly Die Zeit More

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      in UK Politics

      Voices: Should the UK and Europe step away from Nato – and US influence? Join The Independent Debate

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      Your support helps us to tell the storyFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.Your support makes all the difference.Read moreGermany’s likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has stirred debate by calling for Europe to achieve “independence” from the United States and questioning whether Nato can survive.Amid America’s controversial negotiations with Russia on bringing Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine to an end, Merz has distanced himself from Trump’s rhetoric and advocated for stronger European unity.Merz argues that Europe should build its own defence, with potential backing from nuclear powers like the UK and France.However, critics warn that no European alternative can match America’s military strength and that breaking away from Nato could leave Europe exposed to growing global threats.The debate is heating up as UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer revealed – ahead of a meeting with Trump in Washington – that he plans to increase defence spending by 2.5 per cent of GDP, adding £13.4 billion annually by 2027 to counter threats like Russia. With Merz pushing for greater European cohesion, we want to know if you think Europe should chart its own defence path with the US. Or would leaving Nato put the continent in danger?Share your thoughts in the comments – we’ll feature the most compelling responses.All you have to do is sign up and register your details – then you can take part in the discussion. You can also sign up by clicking ‘log in’ on the top right-hand corner of the screen. More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Trump’s realignment: the geopolitical plates are moving. Brace for further shocks | Editorial

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      The rumblings prompted by Donald Trump’s re-election soon gathered force. First came tariffs and threats of territorial annexation; then the greater shocks of JD Vance’s Valentine’s Day massacre of European values and Mr Trump’s enthusiastic amplification of Kremlin lines on Ukraine.On Monday came another seismic moment. For more than a decade, the UN security council has been largely paralysed by the split between the five permanent members – Russia and China on one side; the US, France and Britain on the other. This time, when the US brought a resolution calling for an end to the war in Ukraine on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, it did not criticise Moscow, demand its withdrawal or back Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The result was that China and Russia backed the resolution – while the UK and France, having failed to temper it, abstained.Earlier, even Beijing had chosen to abstain rather than reject a UN general assembly resolution condemning Moscow as the aggressor in Ukraine. It was passed overwhelmingly, with the backing of 93 states. Yet the US joined Russia in voting against it – along with Belarus, North Korea, Syria and a handful of others. “These are not our friends,” the Republican senator John Curtis wrote on X.The post-1945 order is beyond repair while Mr Trump occupies the White House. Emmanuel Macron’s charm and deftness papered over the problems somewhat when he became the first European leader to meet the US president since his re-election. (Sir Keir Starmer, not noted for his nimbleness or charisma, is likely to find the task somewhat harder this week.) The French president was adroit in flattering Mr Trump even as he told the truth. But it is not surprising that he failed to make any real progress in closing the gap. These are not cracks in the transatlantic relationship, but a chasm.A committed Atlanticist such as Friedrich Merz, on course to shortly become the German chancellor, is compelled to urge independence from the US because “the Americans, at any case the Americans in this administration, do not care much about the fate of Europe”. He warned that European leaders might not be able to talk about Nato in its current form by June. The problem is not only what Mr Trump may do but what he may not. Nato is built on the conviction that countries will stand by the commitments they make. That confidence cannot exist while Mr Trump is president.When Sir Keir told MPs on Tuesday that “Here we are, in a world where everything has changed”, he was commenting on Russian aggression, but everyone understood the real shift underlying his remarks. To note, as he did, that the US-British alliance has survived countless external challenges was not quite a vote of confidence. It tacitly acknowledged that the threat this time is internal.The ground is rocking beneath Europe’s feet. It must brace itself for further shocks. In place of the post-second world war order, Mr Trump envisages a world where alliances are no more than empty words and great powers bluff and bully their way through. Bilateral meetings have their purpose – they may offer minimal respite and buy a little time – but it will require common will to defend the interests of European states. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, suggested that European leaders would be meeting in London at the weekend to discuss security. Their best hope of standing firm is by standing together.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      in US Politics

      Ukrainians in New York commemorate anniversary of Russia’s invasion: ‘three years of our resistance’

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      New York City officials, foreign dignitaries and members of the city’s Ukrainian community gathered in New York on Monday to raise the Ukrainian flag above lower Manhattan, marking three years since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.The anniversary this year follows escalating tensions between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Last week, the US president falsely claimed that Ukraine started the war and labeled Zelenskyy as “a dictator”, while the Ukrainian president expressed frustration over being excluded from US-Russia negotiations to end the war and accused Trump of living in a Kremlin “disinformation bubble”.Several dozen people, holding Ukrainian flags and dressed in blue and yellow, stood in the crowd at Bowling Green park on Monday morning, and observed a moment of silence in between remarks delivered by representatives and organizers to commemorate the anniversary.“Today we mark three years of Russian barbaric invasion of Ukraine and unprecedented of a large-scale war that [Vladimir] Putin unleashed on the European continent,” Serhiy Ivanchov, the consulate general of Ukraine in New York, told the crowd. “Three years of our resistance”.“Unfortunately, the Russian unprovoked war continues and Ukraine still needs international support more than ever,” Ivanchov said. “Ukraine needs a reliable and clear system of security guarantees.”View image in fullscreenNew York City is home to the largest Ukrainian community in the United States, with around 150,000 Ukrainian New Yorkers.The city’s mayor, Eric Adams, who attended the Ukrainian flag raising last year, did not attend Monday’s ceremony, but sent two representatives from the mayor’s office of immigrants affairs in his place.Dilip Chauhan, the deputy commissioner for the mayor’s office for international affairs, read out a statement sent from Adams in which he said that Ukrainians “throughout the five boroughs have long enhanced life in our diverse city and they will continue to play a key role as we take bold steps to grow our economy and afford a safer, fairer and more prosperous future”.The mayor proclaimed Monday, 24 February 2025, as Ukrainian Heritage Day, and said in his statement he was “honored and deeply moved on this anniversary to be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainian New Yorkers as we raise their flag and say in a single unified voice, united against aggression and ‘Slava Ukraine’ (glory to Ukraine)”.View image in fullscreenAt the gathering two wounded Ukrainian soldiers were present. As the national anthem of Ukraine was performed and the Ukrainian flag was raised alongside the US flag, many attendees wiped away their tears.“We have gathered to remember a very solemn day that many of us will never be able to wrench from our hearts, hearts that many of us will never be able to put together,” Andrij Dobriansky, director of communications and media for the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America said.Among those in the crowd was Dasha Wilson, who had a Ukrainian flag wrapped around her shoulders.“I’m very proud of my country that we have withstood for three years,” said Wilson, who moved to New York 10 years ago. “I’m very appreciative for Americans for helping Ukraine.”Given the recent rising tensions between Trump and Zelenskyy, Wilson said that she hopes that the US and Ukraine will “remain good partners” and continue to “work together”.Last week’s geopolitical events shocked many Ukrainians at home and abroad as well as US lawmakers and allies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis week, members of New York’s Ukrainian community told the Guardian that they were feeling a mix of disillusionment, betrayal, defiance and acute uncertainty about what the future holds for Ukraine amid the unprecedented rise in tension between the US and Ukrainian leaders.On Monday, the New York state assemblyman Michael Novakhov – a Republican who represents Brighton Beach, home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of immigrants from the former Soviet Union – spoke directly to Trump.“Mr President, I voted three times for you. I am a Republican, but Mr President, Putin is the dictator, not Zelenskyy. Russia started the war, not Ukraine,” he told the crowd.Another speaker, Oleksandr Taran – president of Svitanok NYC, a New York-based organization that advocates for Ukraine’s sovereignty and combats disinformation – recalled his memories of the day that Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.View image in fullscreen“The evening of February 23 I was going about my usual chores when I glanced at the television,” said Taran, who moved to New York eight years ago. “Suddenly, the breaking news banner appeared, explosions in Kyiv, my hometown, my heart stopped. Ukraine was under attack.”“And so it began,” he continued, “the war that upended millions of lives in a matter of hours, Friday morning, and the war that we as Ukrainian Americans have been fighting in our own way ever since”.He added: “The world soon learned, this war would not be over in days or weeks, and it would demand relentless courage from the Ukrainians and support from our allies worldwide.“If this tragedy has shown us anything, it is the immeasurable strength and unity of our people in crisis; our identity becomes an anchor.”Julius Constantine Motal contributed reporting More

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      in US Politics

      Starmer has the backing of Britons to stand up to Trumpism. At the White House, he should do so | Polly Toynbee

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      Day by day another vast hole opens up beneath what was once solid. The man who is on course to become Germany’s next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, once the most pro-US of leaders, has declared Nato in effect over. In his clear-eyed perception of Donald Trump’s first month, 80 years of shared transatlantic values have fallen into that crater. The US “doesn’t care about the fate of Europe one way or another” and Washington’s actions have been “no less drastic, dramatic, and ultimately no less brazen” than Moscow’s, he said. Now, Europe must defend itself.The moment smacks of that 1940 David Low cartoon of a British soldier standing on a rock in a stormy sea, shaking his fist as the Luftwaffe approach: “Very well, alone”. But this time we Europeans are alone. JD Vance, the US vice-president, declared war on European values and traditions; Europe’s liberal “enemies within” are more dangerous in his eyes than Russia or China. Those spell-breaking words told Europeans that the US can never be trusted again; at any time, Americans may vote for a leader who betrays old allies, sharing no affinity with Europe’s liberal democracies, international rights or laws. “The west” no longer exists as an entity bound by shared beliefs.Keir Starmer knows that every step he takes inside the White House on Thursday could set off some Trumpian explosive device. Emmanuel Macron will have already tested the ground (he arrived there today). The US president’s wild unpredictability, whether by design, delusion or distraction, is a weapon in itself, and a wary Starmer is war-gaming it with his advisers. That “bridge” of a “special relationship” remains in No 10’s official briefing lexicon, but by now it is wholly illusory.View image in fullscreenStarmer’s task is to salvage the best possible agreements on Ukraine, tariffs and defence without wavering on what once were mutual principles. He has his red lines, echoed across Europe: “No talks about Ukraine, without Ukraine”. No mafioso protection racket grabbing Ukraine’s mineral wealth to pay off bogus debts. Reuters reports that unless Volodymyr Zelenskyy pays half a trillion dollars, the US will cut off Ukraine’s access to Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite communications network, crippling the country’s defences. In the face of such brutishness, Starmer is the right man: lawyerly, calm and diplomatic. He will not be riled into pointless verbal warfare. He brings Europe’s pledges to spend more, and possibly the hubristic offer of the UK’s new ambassador, Peter Mandelson, of a “new economic partnership” with the UK as a hub for US AI to “Make our economies great again”.But everyone can see that Trump’s “reset” with Vladimir Putin is irreconcilable with Nato. The alliance is dead if it fails to resist a Russian aggressor, a despot who murders opposition politicians, commits unspeakable war crimes, kidnaps thousands of Ukrainian children, with a declared intent to return Warsaw pact countries to its embrace. Trump is Russia’s greatest asset.Starmer will avoid verbal spats with a champion spitter. Be bold, comes the best advice from Merz, warning Europe’s leaders “not to come to Washington as a dwarf” or they “will be treated as one”. As Europe speedily circles the wagons, the UK finds its role will be vital, as Macron and Merz call for a joint nuclear shield to be provided by France and the UK, pivoting from US nuclear dependence. In a continent that is losing the security we relied on all our lives, trade disputes become a trivial quibble, Brexit an irrelevance. Merz is calling for Europe to come together in foreign, trade and security policy. Starmer ought to seize the chance, and abandon Labour’s fears of Brexiters.With its colossal majority, Labour has nothing to fear in rallying the country around joint European defence as a necessary patriotic cause, leaving the Tories and Reform confounded. The public that welcomed Ukrainians rejects Trump’s betrayal plans: 21% of people strongly support British soldiers being stationed in Ukraine as peacekeepers, and 37% of people “somewhat” support the idea. Only 21% are opposed to it. The idea of a European army would have been unthinkable during the Brexit referendum. Meanwhile, on trade, a majority of voters in every constituency thinks the government should prioritise trade with the EU over the US, even in Clacton, Nigel Farage’s seat.Fifty-five per cent of Britons now say it was wrong to leave the EU, while just 11% call Brexit a success. There’s no need to reopen those old wounds. A Europe united against new perils seems likely to loosen its rigid single market rules on trade, given that Britain would be contributing so much in mutual defence. As Britain strives to spend up to 3% compared with Germany’s 1.5% defence spending, the doors to trade must surely open for the UK to regain some of the 4-5% of GDP it has lost since Brexit.View image in fullscreenThe Brexiters now sound bizarrely out of tune. Last week, David Frost, who led the UK’s negotiations with the EU, frantically tweeted: “Labour are taking us back into the EU orbit by stealth and hoping you won’t notice till it’s too late. Don’t let them get away with it.” Yet those days are done. Instead, all of Europe and the UK need defence eurobonds for all to borrow. If the opposition attacks the chancellor for breaking a borrowing pledge, Labour need only point to the frightening new world where Elon Musk sends warm congratulations not to Germany’s new leader, but to the far-right AfD.There will be a White House press conference during Starmer’s visit, a dangerous opportunity for Trump to say unspeakable things while leaving Starmer dumbstruck. If he’s lost for words, he might remember those spoken by a particularly memorable British prime minister at a press conference with a US president in 2003. Hugh Grant, playing the prime minister in Love Actually, told the president, Billy Bob Thornton: “I fear that this has become a bad relationship; a relationship based on the president taking exactly what he wants and casually ignoring all those things that really matter to Britain. We may be a small country, but we’re a great one, too … And a friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the president should be prepared for that.”The real world is not scripted by Richard Curtis for happy endings. Poking presidents in public is not politic, and Starmer is likely to offer Trump a carriage ride with King Charles. But he will have no trouble rousing voters to defend European and British values against Trumpism.

      Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      in US Politics

      There is a clear Trump doctrine. Those who can’t see it won’t have a say in reshaping the world | Nesrine Malik

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      A resonant phrase during Donald Trump’s first administration was the advice to take him “seriously, but not literally”. It was a singularly detrimental expression, widely quoted by politicians and the media. Its adoption fit with the position many felt most comfortable taking: Trump was bad, but he wasn’t smart. He wasn’t intentional. He wasn’t calculated and deliberate. He sounded off, but rarely followed up with action. He was in essence a misfiring weapon that could do serious damage, but mostly by accident.The residue of that approach still persists, even in analysis that describes Trump’s first executive orders as a campaign of “shock and awe”, as if it were just a matter of signalling rather than executing. Or that his plan for Gaza is to be taken – you guessed it – seriously, not literally. When that was suggested to Democratic senator Andy Kim, he lost it. “I understand people are bending over backwards to try to mitigate some of the fallout from these statements that are made,” he told Politico. But Trump is “the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world … if I can’t take the words of the president of the United States to actually mean something, rather than needing some type of oracle to be able to explain, I just don’t know what to think about when it comes to our national security.”Part of the problem is that people are reluctant to imbue Trump with any sort of coherence. But a Trump doctrine is emerging, most sharply in foreign policy. It has clear features, contours and a sort of unified theory of conflict. First, it is transactional, particularly when it comes to warfare in which the US is playing a role. Nothing has a history or any objective sense of right and wrong. Time starts with Trump, and his role is to end things, ideally while securing some bonus for the US.That upside is the second feature of the Trump doctrine: financialisation, or the reduction of politics to how much things cost, what is the return and how it can be maximised. Trump sees conflicts and financial assistance that have not produced anything tangible for the US. From the Gaza war, some sort of real estate deal can be salvaged. In Ukraine, a proposal for almost four times the value of US assistance so far in minerals is like the stripping of a distressed company by a new investment manager trying to recoup the funds disbursed by predecessors.The third feature is the junking of any notions of “soft power” – something that is seen as expensive, with questionable benefits that are abstract and unquantifiable. Soft power might even be a myth altogether, a fiction that flattered previously gullible regimes, giving them some sense of control while others fed off the US’s resources. In Gaza or Ukraine, the US was going through the motions of action without a definitive breakthrough. Where others saw soft power, Trump sees quagmires.The features of this approach may change, and they might be shortsighted and deleterious to the US’s security. And they may not entirely come from Trump himself, but rather the intersection of different political strands of the configuration of interests that support and advise him. Channelled through Trump, the doctrine takes on the hallmarks of his character – rambling, narcissistic, ignorant. However, none of this should be confused with a lack of underlying consistency and resolve to follow through.This leaves other leaders, particularly in Europe, in a place where their historical arrangements and understandings when it comes to US compact have been wiped out. European countries are now simply junior nations who can either dispense with their cancelled notions of the importance of rebuffing Vladimir Putin, join Trump in bringing an end to the war on his terms, or pick up the pieces themselves when the US withdraws its support.The ensuing anger and language of “appeasement” and “capitulation” feels like a misreading of what is happening, an echo of a time when it was universally agreed upon that aggressive enemies are to be stood up to, and anything else is a moral defeat and sign of weakness. But Trump is functioning in a different value system, one where these notions don’t even apply or have different definitions.As Europeans seethe, Trump’s plan for Ukraine is being worked out not only away from Europe in Washington, but in the Middle East, at new centres of middleman power that have always been transactional. They themselves are in the throes of redefining their relationship with the US, and have no illusions about the world that is emerging. Sergei Lavrov met with Marco Rubio in Riyadh and Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew to the region preparing for Gulf-mediated peace talks in Abu Dhabi. Those whose relationships with the US have been hard-edged, about mutual self-interest rather than shared values, and have always had to manage the US to greater or lesser extents, seem best positioned now to not freeze in moral horror.For the rest, for the country’s more intimate friends and family, those who shared America’s values and security liabilities, the regime change is a bitter pill to swallow. It is likely that there can be no persuasion, negotiation or hope of a “transatlantic bridge”, as Keir Starmer has been described, a figure that can act as an intermediary between the US and Europe and head off rupture. Perhaps Starmer can appeal to Trump’s ego? Or “tread a diplomatic line”, or convince him that giving in to Putin makes him look weak? All that assumes some measure of impulsiveness on Trump’s part that can be reined in (and by a prime minister not exactly known for his pyrotechnic charm), and also that Trump even shares similar notions of “judgment of history” or the same understanding of “weakness”. There is no small, but still shared, middle ground.There are now two options for the US’s former close friends and security partners: shed everything, dispense with notions of European solidarity, fast-forward the end of the postwar order, and make peace with defence vulnerability and political subordination. Or embark on a colossal power-mapping exercise. This entails rapid, closely coordinated action on a political, bureaucratic and military level to either replace the US, or at least demonstrate that they constitute a bloc that has some power, agency and agility – and challenge Trump in the only language he understands.It is tempting to think that Trump doesn’t mean it, or needs to be managed and cajoled because all that underlies his actions is recklessness. Or that there is a way to reconcile what are now in essence two incompatible conceptions of the global order. Who wants to wake up every day and reckon with the end of the world as they know it? But it is so. And the sooner political leaders come to terms with the fact that roads back to the old way are closed, the more likely it is that this new world will not be fashioned entirely on Trump’s terms.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More