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February 14 2025 - 7:00am
Europe’s political and security elites are flocking to the Munich Security Conference to witness their American security umbrella being folded up and packed away. On Thursday morning, a car reportedly driven by an Afghan asylum seeker rammed into a group of trade union protestors injuring almost 30 people. This apparent terrorist attack underlines the continent’s existential problem: it is ruled by people who cannot ensure its safety, within or without its borders.
On the diplomatic front, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s declaration that “returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective” to be abandoned was merely an acceptance of objective reality. Following the failure of its 2023 counteroffensive, the Ukrainian war effort has been a slow retreat across the front, punctuated by attention-grabbing but pointless side-quests, grinding the country’s army and morale to the brink of collapse. A painful peace settlement was guaranteed, whoever won the US election.
The broader shock for European leaders, if shock is the correct word for a warning which has been repeatedly given and ignored, was Hegseth’s announcement that henceforth Europe’s security is in European hands. The aim of Hegseth’s speech, as he put it, was “to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.” He went on: “The United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.” It will instead push Europeans to “take ownership of conventional security on the continent.”
As the historian Vladislav Zubok (whose masterwork on the collapse of the Soviet Union displays striking resonances with the current moment) observes: “Trump’s great Eurasian foreign policy transformation has been launched today. We may see order-shattering changes soon and fast.” Against their will, and with much wailing and breast-beating, Europe’s leaders are being dragged to their own independence.
The specifics of this are unclear: does taking ownership of conventional security mean the withdrawal of US ground forces from eastern and central Europe? Apart from Ukraine, whose borders and future will now be decided not only above their own heads but above those of Europe as a whole, the hardest hit will be Poland and the Baltic countries, who consistently mocked Emmanuel Macron’s efforts at establishing European strategic autonomy in the belief that America’s protective shield will never be withdrawn.
Belatedly, the Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski has declared that “Europe must have autonomous military capabilities that should be developed using EU funding and industry.” The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas insists in a statement signed by Britain that “in any negotiation, Europe must have a central role.” The statement is also committed to Ukraine’s “territorial integrity,” a stance that, given the continent’s willed weakness, has rightly been termed “delusional.” On Wednesday, US Vice President JD Vance pointedly referred to Kallas as “Estonia’s former Prime Minister”, rather using her current title: for the great imperial powers, the EU may as well not exist.
For even the most hawkish European states, the role of patrolling the post-ceasefire frontlines in Ukraine is a non-starter. As the Polish strategic analyst Slawomir Dębski, a notable Ukraine hawk, correctly observes, “there is nothing realistic about expecting Europeans to stabilize an agreement with Russia by deploying their own soldiers to Ukraine when Moscow has no intention of keeping its word. That is pure fantasy.” Hegseth has made clear that any European troops will not be joined by US troops as Ukraine will not be part of NATO, and will not come under the Article 5 defensive umbrella.
The apparent Trump administration idea that the Ukraine problem can be palmed off to Britain may finally force Whitehall into measuring its bellicose strategic posture against its slender capabilities. Nevertheless, a troop deployment ought to be firmly resisted. The British Army cannot function except as an American auxiliary, and without the certainty of US support in the eventuality that Russia shells a British base or ambushes a patrol along the contact line, such a deployment is simply far beyond our denuded ability. As the analyst Anatol Lieven dismissively remarks on the Defense Secretary John Healey’s claim that Britain is “stepping up” to the role: “If any British official, politician, analyst, or journalist actually believes that this is a viable policy, they are criminal lunatics.”
Europe’s leaders were given plenty of warnings and plenty of chances to seize control of the continent’s own future. They failed, dangerously mismanaging Europe’s affairs, happy to prolong their role as pliant regional managers of a conglomerate of retreating empires. It is intolerable, then, that any of the failed securocrats gathering in Munich to hear the axe fall inside the conference center and the sirens wailing outside can long remain in charge of our destiny.
In Europe, and particularly in Britain, we have been saddled with a social contract which has collapsed, supporting a political system no one believes in, shielded by a security umbrella currently being removed. For our civilization’s survival, everything must change.
