Three years into Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the global system we have known since 1945 is finished. As historian Philip Ther has argued, we find ourselves at the end of a “great transformation” to a new world order. It started in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the suppression of the democratic movement on Tiananmen Square, and it was well advanced by the time Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time in 2022. Trump’s election victory in November 2024 can serve as a convenient end-point: it marks the start of “a new historical era of strategic chaos,” to borrow the words of former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
It is a world in which the old certainties no longer apply; in which the US president openly supports ethnic cleaning in Gaza, hoping to turn it into an investment opportunity; in which the alleged “leader of the free world” publicly ventilates imperialist dreams of taking over Greenland or Canada; in which the US administration openly intervenes in Germany’s election campaign, promoting a far-right, anti-democratic party; in which the globe’s second-largest trading nation ignores the free trade treaties it has signed and threatens tariffs on both close neighbours and distant friends.
It is also a world in which the US administration is cosying up to autocrat Vladimir Putin but dismisses as a “dictator” Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of a democracy fighting for survival. The most important country in Nato is attempting to impose a postwar settlement on Ukraine that makes Germany’s treatment under the much-maligned 1919 Treaty of Versailles appear lenient. In fact, the proposed minerals deal to “pay back” America’s artificially inflated wartime contribution to Ukraine’s defences forced commentators to reach for analogies closer to the darkest moments of European colonialism: the exploitation of Belgian Congo.
Given this state of affairs, more and more of America’s former friends begin to think seriously of contingency plans. Europe in particular might have to figure out how it will go it alone in future, or even negotiate a world where Uncle Sam is not friend but foe.
In principle, notwithstanding the many obstacles, there is nothing to prevent Europe (which despite Brexit still includes Britain as far as military arrangements are concerned) from looking after its own security. The twenty-seven EU countries spent some €326 billion on defence in 2024, up from €279 billion in 2023. Some analysist worry that these figures understate Russia’s spending power by ignoring differences in the local cost of materials and labour. Adjusted for what’s called “purchasing power parity,” the figures are nearly even: $462 billion by Russia compared to $457 billion by the EU and Britain combined. This balance is achieved by an average share of military spending of 1.7 per cent of GDP in the latter countries as opposed to 6 per cent in Russia.
It is difficult to see how Russia could keep abreast of any substantial lifting of expenditure in Europe to 3, let alone 5 per cent of GDP. Europe has 5.6 per cent of the world’s population producing more than 14 per cent of global GDP (adjusted for PPP). Russia, the self-proclaimed great power, produces only 3.5 per cent of the world’s goods and services. Its population has been declining steadily since 1995 and now stands at 1.75 per cent of the globe’s humans (compared to more than 4 per cent in 1955, during its superpower days).
It is entirely possible to imagine a future in which Europe is leveraging its economic power much more aggressively to look after its own security. If the United States continues to demonstrate that it can no longer be trusted, it might well be forced to do so.
A European defence framework would not require a European army, as Zelensky has daydreamed. It would merely require European-wide cooperation along Nato lines (even if the arrangement might no longer be Nato if the United States really withdraws from the continent). A small-scale model of such collaboration exists in the Baltic, and could be scaled up. Given the right investment, France and Britain could provide the necessary nuclear shield should the United States withdraw its own.
None of this will happen overnight. All of it will take time, money and political will. Given the state of politics and economies across the continent, it might never happen. But there is an increasing realisation among citizens of Europe that the United States is at best a “necessary partner” (51 per cent of respondents in a recent survey) rather than an “ally” (22 per cent). And in the same survey, taken before Trump took office, an increasingly vocal minority considered Uncle Sam a “rival” or even an “adversary” (11 per cent).
On Sunday, the man poised to become the next German chancellor, the convervative Friedrich Merz, stressed that achieving “real independence from the US step by step” was an “absolute priority” of his Europe policy. This statement came from a convinced transatlanticist. “Never in history,” wrote James Angelos in Politico, “has a German head of government had more affinity for the United States.” But even he has been shaken from his complacency. “We woke up from our dreams,” the former promoter of strong US–EU ties wrote recently to his supporters, “and had to learn to understand that our world is no longer what it was supposed to be.”
He is far from alone. Even outside observers now counsel the Europeans that “America is Europe’s enemy.” It is certainly becoming more and more likely that “the transatlantic alliance is over,” to use the off-the-record words of an unnamed British government official. In Brussels, too, worries are growing that “the US leadership is finding common ground with Russia in seeking to destroy the EU.” And it is quite possible that, after taking an ice bath and a sauna to help calm the nerves (as the Finnish president suggested), the Europeans will begin to “talk less and do more.” •
