Idiot savants

As JD Vance lectured the 61st Munich Security Conference the delegates had no choice but to suck it up.

He might have been speaking on St Valentine's Day but there was clearly no love lost on either side. Not that Vance will have cared one jot for that; he was speaking from a position of power and was obviously determined to give it to the assembled European elite with both barrels. As with his boss, Donald Trump, we may dislike the messenger but we have to heed the message, like it or not.

And the message was, bluntly, you're on your own now, sort your shit out. Delegates looked stunned as they watched an eighty year-old world order go up in smoke. Trump's America is focusing its attention and resources on Asia, in response to a perceived threat of Chinese expansionism, and Europe is yesterday's story. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

The renewed bromance between Trump and Putin leaves Ukraine dangerously exposed and, by extension, Europe too. It appears, even before peace talks commence, that Trump has conceded Ukraine will never join NATO. This puts the ball firmly in the EU's court: it is in their gift to grant Ukraine membership of their club and Trump doesn't care one way or the other. The internal debate about this risks the EU imploding - and Trump doesn't care about that either. 

With Trump's return to the White House the UK's position in the world was looking increasingly parlous. No longer best buddies with the US and isolated in Europe its room for manoeuvre on the world stage appeared to be rapidly shrinking. Now, a new possibility opens up: that the EU looks to the UK not to rejoin its Union but to partner it in a new, pragmatic, pan-European defence initiative. (In reality, this may not be with the EU but with Germany following the signing of the Anglo-German Trinity House Agreement on 23 October last year.)

For, as a result of the pressure of mass migration and a much-weakened economy on Germany it is likely, if not inevitable, that the German government will veer to the right in the snap federal election on 23 February. Originally scheduled for 28 September, the election was brought forward due to the collapse of the governing coalition. Is it possible, in these circumstances, that Germany might itself become increasingly Eurosceptic and seek instead a Northern European coalition along with the UK and others? In other words, Gerexit? And should Marine Le Pen win the French Presidential election in 2027, Frexit could easily follow.

Given the UK's lack of appetite for rejoining the EU, and the Union's understandable unwillingness to accept la perfide Albion back into the fold, arguably the UK's best strategy is to wait and watch for the EU either to split, collapse or come cap-in-hand. With UK, German and French military capabilities being roughly equal overall, when taking into account differences in size of army, airforce and navy, their joint endeavours could go some way towards compensating for US isolationism, NATO weakening and EU wavering. Spending would have to increase significantly beyond 2.5% of GDP (5% in ten years has been posited), but this might be deemed a price worth paying in order to counter a belligerent Putin emboldened by a disengaged Trump.

Trump and his team may be triumphalist now but they should beware hubris. The Union of the US may yet fracture and the country descend into internicine strife, whereupon they are likely to find themselves friendless in the world as a result of Trumpian arrogance. Trump, Vance, Musk et al may delude themselves that they are unassailable, convinced that they have the upper-hand in enforcing a new world order on a reluctant European continent.

They may, in fact, be doing us all a huge favour.




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