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Last week, when the US president stopped waving a stick at Greenland, it was claimed once again that Trump Always Chickens Out. And perhaps he does. But who suffers in the end?
For the US, Taco is no more than a loss of face. For the rest of the world, it poses a strategic dilemma. After all, if the president can be counted on to renege on his threats at the eleventh hour, the incentive to hedge against America — an expensive business, that — is correspondingly weaker. Why not just wait him out?
In other words, it is the hope that gets you. It saps the motivation to become self-sufficient. This threatens to be the tragedy of Europe. Trump offers the continent just enough support to induce a level of complacency but not enough to make the place safe against its enemies. For all his spite, he has still not done what Europe fears most, which is permanently withhold military intelligence from Ukraine or quit Nato or confirm that he would not observe Article 5 if Europe were ever attacked. America’s forward air force base in Ramstein is still there after years of speculation about its future. These twinkles of hope are precious, but also an excuse for Europe to soft-pedal its transition towards being able to look after itself.
Take a moment to consider what Europe must do to become militarily independent. Huge sums must be raised, either from electorates that are mutinous enough as it is or from debt markets that European countries have already tapped to an alarming extent. Even if the cash comes, separate governments then have to join up their defence procurement to avoid the curse of duplication (or worse, incompatible kit) and to achieve the economies of scale enjoyed by a large single buyer such as the Pentagon. This might require some very proud countries to stiff their own contractors and buy from outside. Then, if the military power is finally on hand, Europe would have to agree about when and how to use it.
That is an almost implausible number of needles to thread. Although it is just about doable, it would take an acute sense of emergency among European leaders and voters. The trouble is that Trump tends to keep Europe and much of the world in a mental state just short of that — whether through deliberate calibration or impulsive flip-flopping would need another column to examine.
“Things are not quite bad enough” is an awkward argument to put forward, I grant. But the evidence of recent years is that rich and mature democracies struggle to make painful reforms unless under extreme duress. The Ukraine war had to break out before Germany decided to re-arm and Sweden joined Nato. This is the Catch-22 of politics, and perhaps of life: people don’t change until a crisis obliges them, and by definition a crisis is never to be wished for.
If hope is the problem, then it doesn’t stop with Trump. Pax Americana is “not coming back”, said the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, last week. It is prudent to act as though he is right, but there is just enough doubt to create moral hazard in Europe. If a Democrat were to become US president in 2028, Europe might be able to kick the can of rearmament down the road for another few years. It is hard enough as it is for a British prime minister or French president to raise taxes or squeeze welfare to fund defence. (A German chancellor can at least borrow.) Imagine trying it when the threat of military abandonment by the US has eased just a little. One claim of “America is back” from President Gavin Newsom in that lovely rasp of his, and the temptation to postpone hard decisions would surge through European capitals.
Even now, the idea that America has switched from total protection of allies to total desertion is something of a cartoon. The messier truth is that America’s commitment to Europe is hard to gauge under Trump, and therefore hard to plan around. Prepare for the worst, will be the advice to Europe. Tool up. Well, doing so depends on the consent of European voters, which itself depends on their seeing American protection as definitively a thing of the past. If there is the slightest doubt — and each case of Taco encourages it — their preference might be to take their chances rather than suffer the upfront hit of guns-or-butter policies to fortify Europe.
In fact, all the desirable geopolitical events in the coming years, such as a peace in Ukraine and a friendlier US, will make it harder to persuade Europeans that forgoing other things for defence is still an existential must. Some of the righteous momentum that got going when the war began almost four years ago could fizzle out. Such is the curse of good news.
The idea that hope is a kind of torment, that outright crisis is at least mentally clarifying, is such an eternal truth about life that you think it must have come from Shakespeare or Aeschylus. How odd that we owe the most famous expression of it to John Cleese and his 1986 road caper Clockwise. (“It’s not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It’s the hope.”)
That does not make it less true, however. In the absence of the most extreme pressure, Europe’s rich old democracies are inert things. The wolf has to be at the door. It is not enough to hear the occasional growl from afar.