The collapse of what we may soon have to stop calling “the west” is happening with frightening speed. Donald Trump is ditching democratic values, withdrawing from the defence of Europe and hatching an opportunist alliance with Vladimir Putin based on mutual favours between the two autocrats and their fellow oligarchs. Ukraine is the immediate issue, but there will be far more grief to come if Putin triumphs there. What happens next depends crucially on Friedrich Merz and his incoming government in Berlin.
The pattern of Trump’s actions is now unmistakeable. The undermining of Volodymyr Zelensky and the cessation of aid for Ukraine. The opening to Putin and the wholesale replacement of anti-Putin military and security officials in Washington. The tariff war with Canada and erstwhile European allies, and the disparaging of Europe’s leaders, institutions and values.
It is possible that the worst may not happen. The forces of liberalism and democracy, which with great difficulty kept a far weaker Trump in check in his first term, are not yet dead in Washington.
But the only sure path to salvation for Europe in this crisis lies in the projection of democratic strength and unity. In concrete terms, Europe’s democratic mainstream needs to hold off the populists; the EU needs to protect Europe’s economic space for free trade, growth and the rule of law; and a European subset of Nato, without the US, needs to be developed rapidly, and be capable of acting decisively without the US in the face of Russian threats, starting in Ukraine.
For these three things to happen, the united democratic leadership of Britain, France and Germany—Europe’s three greatest powers—is essential. And by virtue of its size and geography, and its position as leader of the Eurozone, the absolute linchpin is Germany.
The good news is that Merz, a tough conservative liberal whose political experience dates back to the 1980s, appears to realise this. His no-nonsense robustness, which lost out to Angela Merkel in Germany’s internal CDU politics in the 2000s, is precisely what is now needed. His early moves since last month’s German election—declaring a goal of “strategic independence from America” and agreeing a deal to inject hundreds of billions in extra funding into Germany’s military and infrastructure—are good first markers. So too his evident determination to make common cause with Macron and Starmer in the defence of Zelensky and Ukraine against a Trump-led capitulation to Putin.
It is also fortuitous that the EU, whose brief is economic not military, has a leader who grasps that Europe’s economic and military strength are interdependent. Ursula von der Leyen is a former German defence minister who has been steadfast in support of Zelensky.
Donald Tusk, in his second term as Poland’s prime minister after a stint leading the European Council in Brussels, will be a key ally, strategically and ideologically. Tusk, a liberal who entirely grasps the immediate challenge, has battled with communists and fascists in a long political career. As he put it before the meeting of Starmer’s security summit in London on Sunday: “500m Europeans are asking 300m Americans to defend them against 140m Russians… Europe today lacks the belief that we are truly a global force.”
Merz, who has been bogged down in coalition negotiations in Berlin, announced yesterday that the CDU and the SPD would together present a bill in parliament next week to relax Germany’s strict borrowing rules, allowing it to raise more money for its armed forces. This could not come soon enough. Each week of delay leaves a partial vacuum. And as Trump demonstrated alarmingly in the face of Joe Biden, there is no-one more capable of flooding a vacuum.
