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    Now is not the time for the US or Europe to go it alone, warns Nato chief

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    Nato’s secretary general has told the US and Europe it is “not the time to go it alone” amid reports that Washington and some European leaders want to weaken their commitments to the transatlantic military alliance.Mark Rutte said in a speech in Warsaw that the US needed to be told that European countries would “step up” and lift their defence spending – while they needed to hear that Washington would not abandon them.“Let me be absolutely clear, this is not the time to go it alone. Not for Europe or North America,” said the Dutch head of the alliance. “The global security challenges are too great for any of us to face on our own. When it comes to keeping Europe and North America safe, there is no alternative to Nato.”Europe “needs to know that Uncle Sam still has our back”, Rutte continued, but in turn “America also needs to know that its Nato allies will step up. Without restrictions and without capability gaps” because “reassurance is a two-way street”.The 76-year-old alliance has come under intense pressure following the election of Donald Trump, most recently with key administration members complaining about European defence “free-loading” in a confidential chat on the Signal app that leaked when a journalist from the Atlantic was added to the group by mistake.On his first trip to Europe earlier this year, Pete Hegseth, the new defence secretary, said the US was no longer “primarily focused” on European security and signalled that cuts to the number of American troops in Europe were a possibility.Since then, some reports had suggested that the US was willing to relinquish its hold on the position of Nato’s top military commander, the supreme allied commander Europe (Saceur), a position first held by Dwight Eisenhower and currently held by Gen Christopher Cavoli, whose tour expires in the summer.One Nato source said that idea had been dropped. A second said the UK was particularly keen to ensure the US remains inside the alliance at a time when any sustained end to the fighting in Ukraine could allow Russia to distribute 600,000 troops elsewhere along member states’ eastern flank.On Friday last week, Trump himself appeared to dismiss the speculation. When asked directly about the US being prepared to give up the top military command, he replied that the alliance was “gone until I came along” before praising Rutte, his predecessor and European members for increasing defence spending.“Nato is solid, is strong but they have to treat us fairly,” the US president added.Another report suggested Europe’s leading military powers wanted to devise a plan to shift the financial and military burden to European capitals over the next five to 10 years and present it to the US, amid worries about whether Washington would come to the defence of Europe in a crisis.However, this idea was dismissed by British sources who argued that the idea that the US contribution to European security could be replaced in five years or so was “living in cloud cuckoo land”.Rutte said he recognised that “the US commitment to Nato comes with a clear expectation” and “that European allies and Canada take more responsibility for our shared security”. He said he would work towards developing this at the next leaders’ summit in The Hague in June.Nato members have begun to announce some increases in defence spending, with the UK promising to lift its budget from 2.33% of GDP to 2.5% by 2027, starting with an extra £2.2bn next year. Germany has agreed to loosen its debt rules to allow for additional spending on defence under the incoming chancellor, Friedrich Merz. More

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      After America: can Europe learn to go it alone without the US?

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      The German ­electronics firm Hensoldt has a backlog of orders for its technology, ­including radars that protect Ukraine from Russian airstrikes. Meanwhile, Germany’s car industry is struggling with low European demand and competition from China.As Europe worries about how it can weather the economic and ­political turmoil unleashed by Donald Trump, executives from Munich and Düsseldorf say they have at least a partial answer.In January, Hensoldt offered to take on workers laid off by the car parts suppliers Bosch and Continental. The defence giant Rheinmetall made a similar ­proposal last year, and in February announced it would repurpose two automotive component factories.It was a pivot that offered hope amid America’s rapid ­dismantling of the postwar global order – ­protecting jobs and Germany’s industrial base as access to US ­markets shrinks, while ramping up Europe’s capacity to protect itself.As politicians around the world try to work out how best to ­protect their countries from Trump’s ­capricious policymaking, the one constant in all their calculations for the future is a diminished American role in their countries. Trump has mooted plans for a 25% tariff on EU goods, including cars, and has already put duties at that level on steel and aluminium from the bloc.In February, his vice-president, JD Vance, launched a blistering attack on European democracy in Munich, questioning whether it was worth defending.In his first term, Trump touted decoupling from China as a way to bolster US jobs and the economy against a rapacious rival. Now, in his second term, he is pursuing a much broader decoupling from the ­country’s historical allies – a shift that few had anticipated or were prepared to face.The new US administration is sealing off its markets, retreating from America’s global security role, and cutting soft-power projects that aimed to shape the world through research, aid and culture.The only form of greater American presence beyond the country’s ­current borders that seems to ­interest Trump is ­territorial ­expansion – ­encouraging, ­perhaps, for a dictator such as Vladimir Putin as he wages an ­imperial war in Ukraine, but ­unwelcome and ­alarming elsewhere.“The idea of the US ­abandoning western Europe was ­unimaginable even a decade ago, because its role there also secures broader American influence in the world,” said Phillip Ayoub, a professor of international relations at University College London.“There is a comparative ­advantage to strong alliances because they make you richer in trade and safer because they deter other powers.”Trump’s vision of the world rejects that view, casting his ­country as a naively magnanimous ­superpower that has for decades funded and policed the world while getting little more than debt and ingratitude for its troubles.View image in fullscreenYet if postwar American ­presidents did not pursue the ­territorial empire that Trump now dreams of, they wielded an ­imperial power not reflected on maps. Decisions made in Washington DC reshaped countries from Chile to Iraq without the participation or consent of their populations.And the global order he is ­tearing down made the country so rich and powerful that for a brief, heady moment around the turn of the ­millennium, the US elite embraced the idea that history was over, and that human society had reached its peak and permanent form in the ­liberal democracy embodied in their constitution.The details of the new American relationship with the world are still being worked out day by day in court battles at home and trade and diplomatic negotiations abroad, but the impact of Trump’s presidency will last long into the future.“An election could change ­policy in Washington DC. But the new ­reality is that from government to government you could have a ­different attitude to the US’s place in the world,” Ayoub said. “This retreat will be factored into policymaking everywhere now.”For now, the ­immediate priority in most ­countries is limiting the extent of tariffs and the impact of US cuts, in areas ranging from aid to defence.Geography and the impact of ­previous free trade deals have ­combined to make neighbours of the US extremely vulnerable to its tariffs. Exports to the US account for a quarter of Mexico’s GDP. In Canada, where all other potential trading partners are an ocean or half a continent away, they are about a fifth of GDP.European countries may be less immediately vulnerable to a trade squeeze, with exports to the US accounting for less than 3% of the European Union’s GDP.But budgets from London to Warsaw are also strained by the need to ramp up defence ­spending to make up for the US retreat, both from immediate support for the Ukrainian forces battling Russia, and from the longer-term backing of European defence. Even ­optimistic assessments suggest it will take the best part of a decade before the continent’s own defence ­capacity can match the protection currently offered by the US, excluding its nuclear deterrent.The pain of breaking up or reshaping major relationships does not only fall on one party – ­something even Trump has ­admitted. The cost of some tariffs will be passed on to US ­consumers, and American businesses may lose customers.One early high-profile casualty could be Lockheed Martin, which produces F-35 jet fighters. Contracts allowing the US to restrict how the planes are used by allies caused little debate during friendlier times. Now, in Berlin and other capitals, defence ministers are worrying about a ­possible “kill switch” and hesitating over major new orders.Longer term, Trump could also fuel a ­cultural “decoupling”, with attacks on the arts and academia ­driving highly talented ­individuals to flee the US or avoid it.Several artists have cancelled tours, and the concert pianist András Schiff last week said last week he would no longer work in the US because of Trump. He had already boycotted Russia.Academics at elite British ­universities say they have seen a surge in job applications from US-based colleagues, many ­willing to lose tenure and take a ­considerable pay cut in order to move across the Atlantic. A French university that offered ­“sanctuary” to US researchers said it had received 40 applications, and one academic moved this month.As with the economy, the US’s ­cultural standing is not under direct threat. American music – much of it made by ­people who publicly oppose Trump – will be consumed worldwide. The Oscars are likely to remain the most ­coveted prize for cinema, the Emmys for ­television, the Pulitzers for ­journalism. Yet an exodus would still be ­damaging in a country where research and the creative arts are key drivers of growth, and benefit the places they settle instead – the long-term US allies that Trump sees as threats.The US president has promised voters that where his economic policies cause pain it will be short-term, and pave the way for long term prosperity in America.To critics, they look like a ­template for a poorer, more ­dangerous and fragmented world, where any limited benefits of ­decoupling are as likely to be reaped by a British university or a German defence firm as by Americans.View image in fullscreenCultureThe hit to America’s creative ­sector, from budget freezes and threats to the federal bodies and national schemes that fund ­museums, ­galleries, theatres and libraries, is set to take a toll on its income from tourism – and send visitors to Britain and Europe instead.In response to the second Trump presidency, some international ­artists are already pulling out of ­appearances in American venues, or at music festivals, and the likely knock-on effect is a reduction in ­visits from abroad.Last week, the Canadian singer/songwriter Leslie Hudson cancelled her American tour, saying on social media: “Like a lot of Canadians, and so many others, I no longer feel safe to enter the country.” The German violinist Christian Tetzlaff cancelled a spring tour in protest at the new administration’s policies, with particular reference to Ukraine.In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the managing director of City theatre, James McNeel, has ­spoken of a growing funding threat. “What we need more than anything is stability,” he says.Prior to the pandemic, the US Travel Association ­valued the total spending of the near-80 million tourists who came into the US at about $2 trillion (£1.5tn).This was supported by federal investment in ­infrastructure and the ­airline industry, but travel experts also traced back much of this tourism success to the diverse image of many of its cities. Art tourism was a big part of this, with art fans who ­travelled to North America in 2023 ­accounting for more than a ­quarter of the global total. Cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago boast ­celebrated museums and ­galleries, and the rise of immersive art and public installations has broadened this appeal. The attraction of art fairs such as Art Basel Miami has also grown internationally. In 2023, it was reportedly visited by more than 79,000 people.But Trump has made rapid and determined cuts to all museum ­projects tied to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, ­affecting the Smithsonian Institution, which has closed its DEI office. The National Gallery of Art also closed its office of belonging and inclusion, while exhibitions across the ­country have been cancelled. The biggest impact may well be on cultural ­tourism associated with LGBTQ+ communities and climate activism.Trump at one point intended for 2026 to be a bumper year for American tourism, with a ­“special one-time festival” planned for “­millions of people from around the world” at the Iowa State Fairground to mark 250 years since ­independence.The level of ­international advance booking will be watched.Likewise, a new status for London, Berlin and Paris as “refuge cities” for American artists is being predicted.British and European ­institutions might also soon have to make room for American artwork. The Washington Post has reported that large collections of public art have been left without professional ­security or conservationists.View image in fullscreenEconomicsShould the UK government decide to untangle the economy’s many ties with the US, it would need to tread carefully. America is the single ­largest market for Britain’s exports, ranging from the most sophisticated components in US navy submarines to artisan scented candles.Official figures show total trade in goods and services – exports plus imports – between Britain and the US was £294bn in the year to 30 September, 2024. The stock of investment by US companies in the UK stood at £708bn in 2023, or 34% of total of foreign direct investment.Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, is hoping to sign a limited trade deal with his counterparts in Washington that covers digital services and commits both countries to secure supply chains for vital goods.But a deal with any scope or ­judicial oversight will need Congress to agree, and that is far from certain to happen.UK manufacturers could begin to wean themselves off US raw ­materials and components, but the presumption must be that they traded with the Americans in the first place because they provided the best products. Exports could be directed back at the EU, though without rejoining the single ­market and customs union, the benefit would be limited.It would be a harder job switching services exports away from the US. The common language may often divide the two nations, but in ­practice the sector is a huge boon.In Brussels, officials believe any kind of trade deal with the US is off the agenda.As Donald Trump is only too well aware, the EU has a large trade ­surplus with America. In 2014 the surplus was about €100bn. By last year the gap had grown to almost €200bn. For this reason, the EU has already adopted a more ­confrontational stance.The British Chambers of Commerce says almost two-thirds of factory owners that export to the US are worried. European ­manufacturers have revealed similar concerns in recent surveys.Some are comforted by figures showing the US has a trade surplus in goods with the UK and how, in practice, trade and investment relationships exist well away from the White House and remain robust.However, businesses thought the same about Brussels after the vote to leave the EU. It didn’t happen and a breakdown in relations ensued.That said, rekindling relations with the EU can be part of the answer. Reset talks are under way and there is a leaders’ summit on 19 May that should address at least some trade barriers. The UK might find that food exports become easier and it gains access to a wider range of raw ­materials and ­components by rejoining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention.Still, the US will remain a major trading partner and upsetting the Trump White House could have huge consequences.View image in fullscreenDefenceDonald Trump’s abandonment of Europe’s defence and disdain for Nato marks one of the most ­profound and influential breaks with longstanding US policy, even for a supremely disruptive leader.Many US presidents have grumbled about European over-reliance on American deterrence in recent decades, with predecessors including Barack Obama demanding allies spend more on their own armies.But their frustrations were rooted in concern that European defence cuts undermined an ­alliance that almost everyone in Washington – across the political divide – saw as critical to American global leadership.Trump, in contrast, appears to be seeking European spending to replace or supersede Nato, not strengthen it. He says Washington’s defence priorities are now deterring China in Asia and fighting organised crime at home.In his first term, he touted the idea of withdrawing America from the alliance, which was formed in 1949 for protection against the Soviet Union. This time he has opted to undermine it from within.The president himself has ­publicly contemplated ignoring Article 5, the core mutual defence clause at the heart of the transatlantic ­alliance, which requires Nato ­countries to come to the aid of any member that is attacked. It has only been invoked once – by the US after the 11 September attacks on Washington and New York in 2001.Trump said the US might ­condition any support for other members on military spending, and questioned if US allies would come to the country’s aid if in need. His administration is considering giving up the Nato command role inaugurated by war hero president Dwight D Eisenhower and held by America ever since, NBC reported last week.Europe was already scrambling to increase defence spending and ­coordination when the US halted military aid shipments to Ukraine, and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv earlier this month.Trump’s decision came after a spectacular on-camera showdown in the Oval Office with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But his willingness to cut loose a force that Washington has trained, armed and backed, and which is fighting a major US rival, stunned even some of his own political allies.European governments who have also spent billions on Ukraine’s defence, and have been dealing with covert Russian sabotage and spy operations across the continent, were not informed in advance.The flow of weapons and aid has now resumed, but the message was clear. Major European military powers, including the UK and Germany, are now reportedly racing to put together a five- to 10-year plan for a managed transfer of European defence, to stave off any more abrupt moves from Washington.Trump’s unpredictability has been heightened by his choice of ­leaders for key security roles, ­including a former Fox television host, Pete Hegseth, as defence secretary, and Tulsi Gabbard, who has a long ­history of pro-Russian views, as director of national intelligence.Security experts warn that ­turmoil in the leadership and ­management of intelligence agencies may also lead to a less visible but highly ­damaging defence decoupling – of the relationship between America’s spies and the secret services of its allies.View image in fullscreenDiplomacyThe votes in the United Nations marking the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ­provided a bleak snapshot of the yawning diplomatic divide between Donald Trump’s America and the country’s traditional allies.On February 25, the US joined international pariahs Russia, Belarus and North Korea to vote against a resolution condemning Russia as an aggressor state and calling on it to remove its troops from Ukraine.The wording rejected by Trump’s diplomats had been put forward by Ukraine, whose defence the US has funded, and the European Union, Washington’s partner in that effort. It passed in the general assembly with backing from 93 countries.The isolationist bent of Trump’s politics extends beyond the ­economy and defence, into international diplomacy. He has ordered the US to withdraw from a host of global organisations and initiatives, from the World Health Organization to the Paris climate agreement.The process of taking the world’s second biggest emitter of planet-heating pollution out of the accord to tackle global ­emissions will take about a year. As with the UN vote on Ukraine, that move puts the world’s most ­powerful democracy in unusual ­company, with Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries outside the deal.Trump imposed sanctions on officials at the International Criminal Court over arrest warrants it had issued for the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, who was the country’s defence minister at the time.His predecessor Joe Biden had also criticised the court, but such a direct attack on an institution ­established with broad international support was unprecedented.Several former British ambassadors to Washington warned this month that there has been a seismic and perhaps permanent shift in the so-called “special relationship” between the two countries, meaning that the UK will need to seek out other allies.“It’s difficult to find either a conceptual area in ­international relations or a particular geographical area where our interests are really converging at the moment,” Nigel Sheinwald, the ­ambassador from 2007 to 2012, told a ­parliamentary committee.“On more or less any big ­foreign policy issue that we’re dealing with today, we don’t agree with the United States… whether that is the Middle East, whether it’s Iran, whether it’s climate change, China, but above all on Europe itself,” Sheinwald said. More

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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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      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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      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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      No matter how distasteful we find Trump and Vance over Europe, they speak a blunt truth | Simon Jenkins

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      It’s tough being rightwing these days. You have to find something nice to say about Donald Trump. That is hard. He thinks Kyiv started the Ukraine war and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is a “dictator”. But what about JD Vance? The US vice-president thinks that Europe’s “threat from within”, which is putting “free speech … in retreat”, is worse than any threat from Russia or China. These men are deranged. What more is there to say?The answer is quite a lot. John Stuart Mill warned that “he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that”. We must try to understand the case they are making, whether we agree with it or not.Yes, these men are mendacious and hypocritical. Trump claims that Zelenskyy “refuses to have elections” and that he is “very low in the polls” despite recent polling showing that he still has a majority of Ukrainian support. As for the threat to free speech “from within”, the Associated Press is banned from White House briefings for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”, and Trump’s friend Elon Musk thinks CBS’s “lying” journalists “deserve a long prison sentence”.Trump/Vance have cut through half a century of consensual waffle about the US’s God-given destiny to lead the world to goodness and freedom. Whether the issue is peace and war, immigration or tariffs, they claim to seek the US’s self-interest and nothing else. Why should Americans fork out billions each year to defend a Europe that fails to defend itself? Why should they arm distant nations to fight their neighbours, or tip staggering amounts of aid into Africa’s basket cases?If the rest of the world has screwed up – while the US has stayed free and rich for two and a half centuries – that is the world’s problem. Americans have spent a fortune these past 50 years trying to improve life on Earth and, frankly, it has failed. To hell with diplomatic etiquette.As for Ukraine, enough is enough. Putin is not going to invade the US, nor has he any intention of invading western Europe. If Europe wants to pretend otherwise, champion Vladimir Putin’s foes, sanction and enrage him, it can do so alone.Nato was a Hitler/Stalin thing. It was just another device to make the US pay for Europe’s defence. Not any more. The US, says the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, “is no longer the primary guarantor of security in Europe”. Bang goes plausible nuclear deterrence.In reality, these talking points are not new, though they have not previously been expressed so brutally by an administration. In various guises, they have lurked beneath the surface of US isolationism for more than a century. To win an election, Woodrow Wilson swore that the first world war was “one with which we have nothing to do, whose causes cannot touch us”. Franklin Roosevelt promised the same of the second. He promised American mothers “again and again and again, your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars”. Neither kept his word.US public opinion can be patriotic when a war is on, as during Vietnam. But otherwise it has been persistently anti-interventionist. Kennedy might have pleaded global sacrifice and to “ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man”. But that was largely fine words for foreign consumption.What Trump/Vance are now saying to western Europe is get serious. The cold war is over. You know Russia has no desire to occupy western Europe. This proclaimed threat is a fantasy got up by what a wise president, Dwight Eisenhower, called the US’s military-industrial complex, long practised at extracting profit from fear. If Keir Starmer really wants “to give priority to defence”, he can slash his own health and welfare budgets to pay for it. But is he really that threatened, or does it merely sound good?Joe Biden was meticulous in the degree of help he extended to Kyiv. Now is the inevitable moment of extrication, but it will require a very difficult ceasefire to precede it. Without a substantial guarantee from Washington, it is hard to see anything other than eventual defeat for Kyiv. Ukraine could yet prove a rerun of the US in South Vietnam.With a minimum of delicacy, Trump/Vance have decided to expose the mix of platitude, bluff and profiteering that underpinned much of the cold war. Nato’s victory in 1989 suggested the need for a shift to a more nuanced multipolar world, one that was never properly defined.Trump/Vance are right that a realignment is badly needed. They have chosen the worst possible moment and the worst possible way to say it. We can be as rude to them as we like, but they will have US democracy on their side.

      Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist More

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      Hold your breath and look to Germany: its election could decide the fate of Europe – and the UK | Martin Kettle

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      Even in less stressed times, Britain always pays too much attention to the US and too little to Germany. In today’s torrid circumstances, that imbalance is perhaps excusable. After all, Donald Trump, it now turns out, really means it. He is more interested in US plunder and profit from places like Gaza, Ukraine and Greenland than in upholding a just peace or good order.Even so, the inattention towards Germany needs to end. Britain’s politicians, like German politicians, are rewiring their worldviews amid a political gale. But Germany, though no longer a great power, is nevertheless a great nation. Indeed, it may be more than ever the essential European nation now, after the Trump administration’s very public trashing of the entire Atlantic alliance seemed to leave Europe to its own devices.The German general election, this coming Sunday, is an event with consequences. Primarily, of course, those consequences will be felt in Germany itself, with its extended economic stagnation, its anxieties about migration and borders, its traditional fears about borrowing, its nervousness about military commitments, and its sudden lurching anxiety that the US is ready to allow Russia to threaten the lands on its eastern frontier.Germany’s inherent importance, though, means the election will also help determine whether Europe – not just the EU – is able to cope with Trump’s second term. Will that Europe be able to deliver the defence and security to protect not merely Ukraine, a daunting enough task, but the Baltic republics, Poland and the other former Soviet satellite states too? Can it reform its faltering economic model? These are reverberations that Britain cannot avoid, even if it wants to.Needless to say, the German election has received only a fraction of the attention that this country’s political class lavishes on a US election. Equally predictably, much of that very limited amount of attention is absorbed by a fixation – one that is shared to a degree by the German media – with the populist anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. As a result, however, the likely victor on Sunday, the centre-right CDU-CSU coalition under the probable next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has barely been scrutinised at all.This contest is occurring against a backdrop of economic failure, not success. The German economy shrank in 2023 and again in 2024. It seems likely to stay in recession again this year. It adds up to the longest period of economic stagnation since the fall of Hitler in 1945. Whoever emerges as chancellor after Sunday will face choices very similar to those confronting Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.The reasons for Germany’s decline are not hard to understand. Germany’s dependence on Russian energy meant prices soared after the invasion of Ukraine. Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition government, in power since 2021, has scaled back that dependence – renewables now produce 60% of German energy – but not eliminated it. German car exports have become more expensive, while China has surged ahead in the production of cheaper electric vehicles. A tariff war with the US now looms.All this has provided a system shock to a country still strongly conditioned by its craving for postwar stability. “We have used up our old success, and not invested in new things,” the commentator Theo Koll told the UK in a Changing Europe podcast this week. “We have for a long time lived in a kind of ‘Gore-Tex republic’ … we wanted it nice and cosy inside and all the unpleasant things had to be outside.”The rise of the AfD, amid the perception that irregular migration is out of control, is the single most visible sign that the old political era has ended. It has been quickened by violent killings where migrants are suspects during the election campaign in Magdeburg, Aschaffenburg and, last week, Munich. The latest Politico poll of polls puts the AfD on 21%, double what it secured in the previous federal election in 2021, running second to the CDU-CSU on 29%, but ahead of Scholz’s SPD on 16% and the Greens on 13%.By that token, though, a victory for Merz’s CDU-CSU on 23 February would be genuinely significant. It would be significant even though 29% would be a decline from the 42% that the parties took under Angela Merkel in 2013. It would show, in Europe’s heartland, that the line can be held against populism of the right. This is not a trivial lesson, especially after the debacle of the French assembly election last year.It would also be a vote of confidence, albeit a relatively weak one, for one of Europe’s few remaining big parties of the centre right. Once-powerful parties like the French Gaullists can only look on with frustration and envy – to say nothing of Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives. Not least, it would also be a rebuke to those like Elon Musk and JD Vance who have actively promoted the AfD from abroad.Yet it would also pose two big questions. The first, and more immediate, would be the coalition that Merz would construct and the content of its programme. Everything here depends on which parties qualify for the Bundestag and on how many seats each wins. Merz has repeatedly ruled out governing with the AfD, so his main coalition partner could be Scholz’s diminished SPD or, less likely in view of Merz’s commitment to growth, the Greens.If the polls are right, however, whatever Merz comes up with is likely to be a weak coalition. This would give him relatively little leeway to drive reforms of the kind he advocates – familiar themes to UK readers, like benefit cuts, ending business red tape and raising defence spending. He is, though, open to loosening the constitutionally enshrined “debt brake”, which is blocking much-needed public investment. It is likely to take until Easter before we know the full coalition picture.The other, intimately related, question would be about Germany’s borders. Merz triggered huge protests when the AfD backed his bill allowing Germany to turn asylum seekers and other migrants back at the border. This prompted a rare rebuke from Merkel, that Merz had abandoned a historically resonant firewall against far-right support. Yet border controls matter for any state that seeks to ensure the security, including the social welfare, of its citizens, and Germany is not the only country where voters are demanding greater effectiveness.Sunday’s election is a critical European moment, and would be even if Trump did not exist. The key question is not, at least at this stage, about the rise of the extreme right. It is about the continuing viability of the centre right, or the adaptability of what Merkel, from early in her career as party leader, dubbed “the new social capitalism”. The current recession has put this vision to an unforgiving test. Merz will be judged by the outcome, if he wins power. It is a moment that matters for Germany – but also for us.

      Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist More

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      A Trump-Putin carve-up of Ukraine is indefensible | Letters

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      I look with horror and outrage not only at the patronising and hypocritical words of JD Vance in Munich (JD Vance stuns Munich conference with blistering attack on Europe’s leaders, 14 February) but also at the apparent attempt by Donald Trump to effect peace between Ukraine and Russia without including either Ukraine or Europe more generally (Trump says he has spoken to Putin and agreed to negotiate Ukraine ceasefire, 12 February).A peace that prevents any more bloodshed can only be a good thing, but it cannot be a carve-up in which Vladimir Putin achieves the victory that Ukrainians have so gallantly deprived him of on the battlefield. Or in which Ukraine is impoverished and emasculated by a greedy US and irredentist Russia.Moreover, if Europe and, by extension, the UK, are to be excluded from negotiations on the future of Ukraine and the continent, under no circumstances should British or other European troops be used in a peacekeeping role.The idea that Trump thinks he can cut a deal with Putin, rob Ukraine of her mineral wealth and then leave Europe to pick up the pieces is disgraceful beyond belief. We should not fall for it.It is unacceptable that British lives be risked for the knavery of Trump and his acolytes. If the US wants European troops on the ground, we get a place at the negotiating table. No ifs, no buts. No taxation without representation: is that not a founding principle of US democracy?William SeafordNewport If Donald Trump is determined to upend post-1945 international structures, as seems likely given his vice-president’s speech, then both sides of the Atlantic need to contemplate the full meaning of a transactional approach to security. Maybe British politicians will stop kidding themselves about the so-called special relationship, which has only ever been special to the Americans when it suited them. At the same time, perhaps someone can inform Trump that it is a mistake to evaluate defence alliances like real-estate deals.Should the president pay a visit to the UK, as Keir Starmer seems to hope, I suggest he be taken to visit the Iraq and Afghanistan memorial in Victoria Embankment Gardens, London, where he’ll be reminded of the 626 UK military personnel who died in furtherance of American wars in those countries between 2001 and 2014. Given the popular reverence for veterans in the US, the Maga movement might find our military sacrifice is one of the few aspects of the North Atlantic alliance it can’t easily dismiss.If Trump then still ditches Europe in favour of deals with Putin, it needs to be made clear that self-interest works on both sides. The US won’t be able to expect its former allies to fall in line behind it in the same way it has commanded since the end of the second world war.Mark CottleMaesygwartha, Monmouthshire As Simon Tisdall pointed out a year ago in the Observer, the UK cannot maintain its Trident nuclear deterrent without the active support of the United States. There now appears a high risk that the US will want to be able to veto the use of Trident by the UK and/or to extract a high price for any continued support. Isn’t it time to think about mothballing Trident and redirecting that funding to conventional defence capacity in Europe?Simon RewLondon More

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      As the US retreats, Europe must look out for itself – so is Macron’s nuclear offer the answer? | Simon Tisdall

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      The startling contempt for Europe’s intensifying security concerns displayed by Donald Trump and his henchmen has brought an old, controversial question back to the fore: should Britain and France pool their nuclear weapons capabilities and create a Europe-wide defensive nuclear shield to deter Vladimir Putin’s Russia, if the US reduces or withdraws its support?Trump has not so far explicitly threatened to cut US nuclear forces based in Europe. But speaking last week, the president said he wanted to halve the US’s defence spending, especially on nuclear weapons. Trump often denigrates Nato, keystone of European security. Last year, he encouraged Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to member states that, in his view, spend too little on defence.Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, warned Nato defence ministers in Brussels that defending Europe was no longer a strategic priority, and raised the prospect of US troop withdrawals. In an insulting speech at the Munich security conference, he minimised the threat posed by Russia. Americans would not be taken for “suckers” by Europeans, he said.These unprecedented assaults on US-Europe ties have raised real fears of a damaging, possibly permanent rupture with Washington. It is against this volatile background that France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has called an emergency summit in Paris of European leaders, including Keir Starmer. The meeting is expected to focus on Ukraine, its future defence, and Europe’s anticipated exclusion from US “peace talks” with Russia due later this week.Yet an even bigger issue overshadows the summit: how to better organise Europe’s collective defences in the context of reduced, unreliable or nonexistent US support and overt nuclear threats from an emboldened Russia. Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, has predicted that Putin could attack at least one Nato country within the next five years. Frontline Poland and the Baltic republics voice similar fears.Nato’s chief, Mark Rutte, has urged all 32 member states to expand defence spending. Many, including Britain, appear poised to do so. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, dismayed by what looks to many in Kyiv like US betrayal, told the Munich conference it was time to create an “army of Europe”. That reflects ideas long promoted by Macron, a passionate champion of more integrated, expanded, self-reliant European defence – and reduced US dependence.It is Macron who is leading the debate about a pan-European nuclear shield. The French leader gave new prominence to the idea in a 2020 speech at the École de Guerre in Paris, when he suggested a “strategic dialogue with our European partners … on the role played by France’s nuclear deterrence in our collective security”. Macron repeated the offer in 2022 and again last year.France is not proposing to place its independent deterrent, the force de frappe, which comprises about 290 warheads and operates separately from Nato, under the control of other countries – or the EU. What Macron is saying, like François Hollande and other French leaders before him, is that there exists a “European dimension” to France’s nuclear defence planning. If, for example, Berlin were threatened with nuclear destruction, that would be seen as a threat to Paris, too.“French leaders have three main worries,” an analysis published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) stated. “Firstly, there is a high risk that Trump could withdraw from Nato, or at least significantly reduce US conventional forces in Europe … Secondly, he may also reduce the number of US nuclear weapons currently deployed in Europe, though not much evidence currently supports that prospect.“Thirdly, and most importantly, a US president who loathes or dismisses many European countries is unlikely to risk American lives for Europe.” This latter argument has circulated in France since the days of Gen Charles de Gaulle, who created the force de frappe: namely that, if push came to shove, the US would go nuclear to save Boston but not Boulogne, Bratislava or Bognor Regis.Macron’s proposal raises numerous, complex questions. Among them, who could order the actual use of “Europeanised” nuclear weapons? Who would pay for such a force, especially if necessarily modernised and enlarged? Would such a move make matters worse, by accelerating US disengagement?The view from Germany, a necessary partner in any such project, is mixed. The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and anti-nuclear parties such as the Greens strongly dislike the idea (as do French leftwing and far-right parties). But Friedrich Merz, Scholz’s likely successor, is reportedly interested. Manfred Weber, a leading German conservative, told the Guardian last year that doubts about Trump meant it was time to take up Macron’s offer. Weber also urged the opening of a “new chapter” with London.The need for British involvement has also been raised by Christian Lindner, another senior German politician. “The question is: under what political and financial conditions would Paris and London be prepared to maintain or expand their own strategic capabilities for collective security?” Lindner wrote last year. “When it comes to peace and freedom in Europe, we must not shy away from these difficult questions.”The IISS study raised similar issues. “As the only other nuclear power in Europe, Britain is a natural partner for France in any exploration of how to strengthen European deterrence … [They] regularly exchange data about nuclear safety and security … The British and French nuclear arsenals combined come to around 520 warheads, numerically equivalent to China’s current deterrent force. This alone could send a stronger message to Russia.”Development of a joint UK-French nuclear umbrella, under the auspices of the European Nato allies and sidelining the US, is politically explosive for Starmer. It would raise questions about sovereign control, not least from the Eurosceptic right. It could be seen by many in Labour as fuelling nuclear weapons proliferation, bringing nuclear war closer. Putin, who has threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, would view it as a provocation. So, too, for different reasons, might Trump. It would be a good test of how independent of the US the UK deterrent really is.But as the defence analyst Joseph de Weck argues in Internationale Politik Quarterly, times are changing fast. Governments urgently need solutions to Europe’s rapidly deepening security crisis. “Europeans may simply not have the time for gradualism in security integration any more,” De Weck wrote. Extending French and UK nuclear guarantees to the whole of Europe, including Ukraine, is an idea whose time has come.

      Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator More