No one was surprised that, at this year’s Munich Security Conference, US Vice President J.D. Vance repeated Donald Trump’s longstanding demand for Europe to take greater responsibility for its own security. But Vance’s accusation that the biggest threat Europe faces comes “from within,” together with the administration’s abandonment and economic shakedown of Ukraine, makes it clear that the issue is not burden-sharing, but betrayal.

This was obvious to Tobias Bunde, Professor of International Security at the Hertie School in Berlin and Director of Research at the Munich Security Conference. Despite Vance’s insistence that the US and the EU are still “on the same team,” Bunde explains, conference participants were largely convinced that the US is “abandoning transatlanticism and everything it stood for.” If there is any “silver lining” to the US behaving like a “nineteenth-century great power,” he concludes, it is that European leaders have finally been “shaken….out of their complacency.”

It should not have taken this long, says Joschka Fischer, a former German foreign minister and vice chancellor. While Trump’s revisionism might not “make any sense,” since it has “placed the US on a path to self-weakening or even self-destruction,” it was “foreseeable.” In any case, now that Vance has made it “brutally clear” how alone Europe will be from now on, EU leaders must “spare no cost” developing hard power.

For Philippe Legrain, Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics’ European Institute, the “big question” now is how to finance the necessary military spending, at a time when “Europe’s economies are weak, public finances are stretched, and many voters are loath to accept cuts to other government spending.” While higher taxes or cuts to welfare spending may ultimately prove unavoidable, the “politically obvious” and economically sensible solution, for now, is to borrow – and Europe has at least three ways to do so.

According to Daniela Schwarzer, a former director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, Europe should not fear going it alone. On the contrary, Europe has everything it needs to “catapult itself forward in technology, the digital economy, defense, and other critical sectors.” But it will take “collective political will” to tackle the large, long-term project of securing Europe’s sovereignty, including by systematically rethinking its approach to security.

Sławomir Sierakowski, Founder of the Krytyka Polityczna movement, agrees that Europeans have “all the resources, talent, and instruments they need to secure their sovereignty and restore peace and stability.” But rather than responding to the challenges ahead “with the usual search for unity,” European leaders should focus on building a “coalition of willing EU member states and other countries that Trump is pointlessly alienating, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and South Korea.”

At least one European leader understands the stakes, writes Mark Leonard, Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Whereas some are “still trying to have their cake and eat it” – defending Europe while working with the US – incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has “launched what amounts to a full-frontal attack” on the US. Moreover, as an “über-Atlanticist and fiscal conservative,” he might be the “only German politician who can credibly bury the debt brake” – crucial to enable Europe to rearm and its largest economy to finance investments in infrastructure, renewables, and digitalization – and “pave the way for a truly independent Europe.”

In fact, even before Trump was elected, Merz was sounding the alarm about Europe’s continued dependence on the US. Rather than continuing to seek “comfort in the past and confidence in the solitary US leadership” that defined the post-Cold War era, he argued, Europeans must define a shared “sense of purpose” and “forge their own decisions.”

MUNICH – Each February, members of the transatlantic strategic community head to Munich to discuss the state of international security, making the Munich Security Conference a not-to-be-missed event on the foreign-policy calendar.

This was true even during US President Donald Trump’s first administration, when it seemed as though very little was still binding the West together. After watching the debates at the 2019 conference, when key figures talked past each other and failed to find common ground, I coined the term “Westlessness” to describe the new state of play. Not only was the rest of the world becoming less Western, but so too were many Western societies.

Eager to reverse the tide, those attending the Munich conferences in recent years took great pains to signal Western unity and determination, as if to suggest that Westlessness had been just a passing phenomenon. Joe Biden’s election to the US presidency led Europeans to believe that America was back, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine a year later gave the West a new sense of shared purpose. But by the time that the 2024 gathering arrived, Western self-doubt had returned; and at this year’s conference, Westlessness returned with a vengeance.

Following the news of Trump’s call with Putin and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments acceding to Russian demands before negotiations had even begun, the audience in Munich anxiously looked to Vice President J.D. Vance for clarity on the new administration’s transatlantic security strategy. But the speech that Vance gave did not seem to be about security at all. Instead, he used his time to scold Europeans for their alleged departure from “shared values,” condemning Europeans’ interpretation of freedom of speech even as his own administration uses lawsuits and other threats to crack down on America’s free press.

With Germany’s federal elections just a week away, Vance then condemned European governments’ unwillingness to rein in “out-of-control migration” and lambasted German liberal-democratic parties for refusing to work with the far right. “I’ve heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from,” he noted. “But what has seemed a little bit less clear to me and certainly, I think, to many of the citizens of Europe, is what exactly it is that you’re defending yourselves for.”

To those in attendance, these remarks looked like a direct attack on the values at the heart of the North Atlantic Alliance. Vance offered up the illiberal-nationalist alternative to the liberal-internationalist order that has underpinned intra-Western relations – and debates at the Munich Security Conference – for many decades.

The Europeans in Munich duly pushed back. Shocked to find themselves being lectured to by a government that is waging war on the rule of law and freedom of the press at home, they rejected Vance’s attempt to interfere in their domestic political affairs. “We do not only know against whom we are defending our country, but also for what,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius replied. “For democracy, for freedom of expression, for the rule of law, and for the dignity of every individual.”

These are the principles that once bound the West together. While members of the broad transatlantic community often disagreed (sometimes vehemently) about specific policies, their shared commitment to these values always allowed them to mend fences and overcome whatever crisis was at hand.

But now the ballroom in the conference hotel, not much larger than a basketball court, must accommodate two fundamentally incompatible worldviews. The Trumpists and their European critics each maintain that the other side has deviated from the norm. As Vance sees it, the biggest threat “is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within.”

Despite Vance’s insistence “that we are on the same team,” the majority view at the conference was that the United States has become a free agent. Just a month after Trump’s inauguration, it has already abandoned its role as a benign hegemon and the leading power within a global community of liberal democracies. To Europeans’ shock and dismay, America is behaving like a nineteenth-century great power, seeking territorial expansion and pursuing deals with other powers to carve out spheres of influence.

Four years after Biden announced that “America is back,” Europeans see America abandoning transatlanticism and everything it stood for. Trump’s America is not only making deals with the liberal West’s enemies. It is also openly supporting illiberal, anti-democratic forces within the West.

If there is any silver lining, it is that America’s volte-face has shaken European leaders out of their complacency. They agree that they must come together to increase defense spending and reduce their dependence on the US. If they follow through, we could well end up with a rejuvenation of the transatlantic partnership between two equal powers.

But this outcome is unlikely. The Trump administration’s support for illiberal, anti-European, and pro-Russian forces within Europe will make it far more difficult for Europeans to focus on their own security together, even though that is ostensibly what the Trump administration wants.

In this respect, Europeans can agree with Vance: the greatest threat to the West is indeed coming from within.

BERLIN – When Donald Trump won the US presidential election last November, European elites apparently thought that the United States would become a little more isolationist, a bit more nationalist. But otherwise, continuity would prevail. Trump would demand that Europe pay more for its defense, but NATO – and the all-important US security guarantee for Europe – would survive.

Today, following senior US officials’ flurry of appearances at major European summits, we know that this was a grand error. Trump wants nothing less than a complete rupture with the rules and alliances that generations of US policymakers painstakingly and successfully built in the decades after World War II. From now on, Russia, not the European Union, will be America’s close partner. It is no longer the solidarity of democracies that counts in Washington, but the agreement of autocratic rulers of global powers; might once again prevails over law.

This is obvious in Trump’s approach to the war of annihilation that Russia is waging in Ukraine. Trump wants to end the war as quickly as possible in close cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, excluding Ukraine and its European allies. Ukraine and Europe will have to bear most of the political and material consequences, but they will have no say in negotiating the terms.

So, this is what Trump’s vision of international order looks like: back to spheres of influence, with great powers dictating the fates of smaller countries. It is a vision that delights Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, because it aligns perfectly with their authoritarianism and neo-imperial ambitions.

To be sure, Trump’s revisionism has placed the US on a path to self-weakening or even self-destruction, starting with the destruction of the West. After all, NATO made the US strong and contributed decisively to the West’s victory in the Cold War. What national interest could the US possibly be advancing by laying the Alliance and Ukraine at Putin’s feet?

None of it makes any sense, and yet all of it was foreseeable. European leaders knew who and what they would get with a second Trump presidency, and that Trump was serious about transforming American democracy into an oligarchy and establishing a new, authoritarian world order. They knew that Putin in the East and Trump in the West would be a strategic nightmare scenario. Yet they did almost nothing to achieve greater political unity and stronger defense capabilities in anticipation of precisely this outcome.

As a result, Europe is completely unprepared. In the face of the historic shift Trump seems determined to carry out, Europe presents a pitiful picture, seemingly as hapless and hysterical as a henhouse when a fox enters. Europeans must ask themselves how they got here – and what to do now that the Trump administration has made its extremism plain. Nothing less than Europe’s security and freedom are at stake. It should be obvious to all that “business as usual” is a recipe for disaster.

Europe has the money, the technological capacity, and the people and companies needed to secure its future. But it must act now. The EU’s large and medium-size states must cooperate closely. The European Commission must redefine debt rules, and, together with the member states – and ideally involving the United Kingdom and Norway – finally create a combat-ready European army and a common European defense industry.

Europe is running out of time – and fast. Hesitation and procrastination were yesterday's world. The choice is clear: Brussels or Moscow, freedom or submission. For Europe, the answer can only be Brussels, only freedom. In his speech at the Munich Security Conference, US Vice President J.D. Vance made it brutally clear to Europeans how powerless they are and how alone they will be from now on.

Putin’s war in Ukraine and Trump’s impending betrayal of Ukraine demonstrate how dangerous European powerlessness is for all of us. In the future, peace and freedom on the European continent will have to be based primarily on our own strength and deterrence capacity. That is why Europe must act immediately. In Trump’s world, there is no substitute for hard power. Europe must spare no cost developing it. Or do Russian tanks have to roll toward Riga and Warsaw first?

LONDON – Europe urgently needs to rearm. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the broader threat that President Vladimir Putin’s regime poses to Europe, requires nothing less. US President Donald Trump’s administration has also now made clear that neither Ukraine nor America’s NATO allies can count on continued US support. Perhaps this particularly brutal wake-up call will finally jolt European governments out of their complacency.

If so, the big question is how to finance the requisite increase in military investment at a time when Europe’s economies are weak, public finances are stretched, and many voters are loath to accept cuts to other government spending. The scale of the challenge is indeed daunting. Russia’s economy is on a war footing, its army is battle-hardened, and it has a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons. Even though Europe’s economy dwarfs Russia’s, a recent report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates that, after adjusting for purchasing power, Russia’s military expenditure last year ($462 billion) was higher than Europe’s ($457 billion).

Europe’s big powers have struggled to meet NATO’s previously agreed peacetime target of spending at least 2% of GDP on defense. France and Germany managed barely more than that last year, while the United Kingdom reached 2.3% of GDP. These figures are woefully inadequate for an age when war has returned to the continent and Europe must provide for its own security.

Trump wants NATO’s European members to raise their defense spending to 5% of GDP, while NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte acknowledges the need for “considerably more than 3%.” Poland has already upped its military spending to over 4% of GDP, with the aim of reaching 5%, and other frontline states such as Estonia and Lithuania are not far behind it. Now the rest of Europe must follow suit.

But how should they finance the effort? With European economies stagnant and many Europeans struggling, governments are not keen to raise taxes or slash welfare spending. While such measures may ultimately be necessary nonetheless, the politically obvious solution for now is to borrow. This would make economic sense, too, since higher defense spending is, in fact, an investment in Europe’s future.

True, high government debts, EU fiscal rules, and domestic political constraints make increased borrowing tricky for many countries. But there are at least three options for mitigating these factors. The first is to exclude investment in defense from the bloc’s fiscal rules, which broadly limit government borrowing to 3% of GDP. Last year, the European Commission launched an “excessive deficit procedure” against Poland, which rightly argued that its increased borrowing was necessary to protect the country – and the rest of Europe – from the heightened Russian threat.

Fortunately, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen seems to have come around to the Polish position. She is proposing to activate the Stability and Growth Pact’s escape clause (which allows higher borrowing during crises) to permit increased defense investment. While Germany and other fiscally frugal countries have previously objected to granting such additional flexibility, that may change after the German elections on February 23, given the country’s belated awareness of its vulnerability.

Since Germany itself has low public debt and a small budget deficit, EU fiscal rules would not prevent it from borrowing more to upgrade its feeble defenses. But it is shackled by its own constitutional “debt brake,” which then-Chancellor Angela Merkel introduced in 2009, and which the country’s powerful constitutional court aggressively enforces. Again, though, there could be greater openness to amending this measure after the election.

Fiscal rules are not the only constraint, however; so, too, are bond markets. France’s public debt already exceeds 110% of GDP, and its minority government has struggled to pass a budget that would trim its bulging budget deficit (6.1% of GDP). The country’s precarious political situation has further increased the premium that it must pay relative to German debt. Indeed, the interest rate on French debt briefly exceeded that of Greece last year.

A second option, then, is for European governments to borrow collectively to finance a one-off investment in defense capacity, as French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested. There is a precedent for this: the EU’s €750 billion ($782 billion) COVID-19 recovery fund. Another round of joint borrowing to the tune of €500 billion (3% of EU GDP) could amplify member states’ defense spending, help to rationalize European defense procurement, and potentially bolster European defense firms.

The hitch is that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is openly pro-Putin, while four other EU countries (Austria, Ireland, Cyprus, and Malta) have maintained their official neutrality vis-à-vis Russia. Moreover, fiscally frugal northern European countries have hitherto been reluctant to sanction further EU borrowing.

One potential workaround is for a coalition of willing governments to set up a special purpose vehicle separate from the EU, which could issue joint bonds backed by guarantees from participating governments. This would not only bypass recalcitrant EU members; it would also allow for participation by non-EU defense partners such as Norway and the UK. The relatively new UK Labour government might find this especially attractive, given its own domestic fiscal constraints.

Finally, the third option is to expand the scope of European Investment Bank lending. While the EIB can already finance dual-use (civilian/military) projects, such as those producing drones and satellites, 19 EU governments recently suggested that it should also be permitted to finance wholly military spending, such as investments in tank and ammunition manufacturing.

However it is financed, Europe needs to rearm now. Upping defense spending to avert Ukraine’s defeat and deter broader Russian aggression is much less costly than fighting an all-out war. Otherwise, as Rutte warns, Europeans will need either to learn Russian or to move to New Zealand.

BERLIN – This month, Europeans came to understand that their closest ally, the United States, is no longer interested in the kind of trustful cooperation that has defined the transatlantic relationship for eight decades. By disrespecting allies, attempting to strong-arm Ukraine, and meddling in European domestic affairs, the US has transformed itself from Europe’s most important partner and Ukraine’s most ardent supporter into something resembling an adversary.

To be sure, as US President Donald Trump begins negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine’s fate, no one (not even the Americans) really knows what strategy the US is pursuing. But last weekend’s Munich Security Conference made it clear that Europe can no longer ignore America’s longstanding grievance over the distribution of defense spending within NATO. Nor is spending the only issue. As the US shifts its focus to Asia (and to itself), there is a large political and military leadership role for Europe to fill.

The scale of the US strategic shift is apparent in its approach to Ukraine. Trump has positioned the US as a mediator between the aggressor Russia, and the victim, Ukraine. Previously a strong supporter of Ukraine, the US is now bullying the beleaguered country into negotiations while extorting it to give up control of its critical minerals. While the Biden administration worked as closely as possible with European allies to coordinate support for Ukraine, sanctions against Russia, and preparations for Ukraine’s reconstruction, the Trump administration sees no role for Europeans in the negotiations.

Europeans learned plenty about the new administration’s geopolitical stance from US Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech in Munich, where he cynically voiced support for Germany’s pro-Russian far right just a week before federal elections. If this political interference proves successful, the US will have weakened not only Germany but the entire European Union.

After suffering a brief deer-in-the-headlights moment, European leaders have started moving to preserve stability and sovereignty on the continent. The informal emergency meeting in Paris on February 17 was an important first step in a longer process that now must accelerate. Incidentally, the Paris meeting took place just a week after the city hosted the AI Action Summit, which gave Europeans an opportunity to discuss technological competitiveness and attract new investment. As different as the two meetings were in content and structure, both speak to the same challenge: Europe must take its sovereignty into its own hands.

While Ukraine represents the most immediate challenge, securing European sovereignty will be a much larger and longer-term project. Europeans must systematically rethink their approach to security. If Ukraine and Russia do reach a deal, it will fall largely on Europeans to ensure that it holds, since the US wants to reduce its commitments and is no longer a reliable partner. In this scenario, Europeans would need to strike a balance between enforcing the peace in Ukraine and preserving the capacity to defend other territories bordering Russia – such as in Scandinavia or the Baltics.

In the longer run, Europeans will be much better off if Ukraine becomes an essential yet controllable part of European defense. With its battle-hardened army, innovative defense sector, and remarkably resilient and creative population, Ukraine could be a significant source of strength for Europe if it can be stabilized and integrated.

Willing and able Europeans must not delay in deepening security and defense cooperation on the continent. That means developing a new continental security concept to allow burden shifting within NATO, which will remain the best framework for collective defense even if the US steps back or leaves the alliance.

The countries represented at the emergency meeting in Paris and at a second meeting two days later can serve as the core to move things along. France, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and the Baltic states (which face the most direct threat) all seem ready. So, too, does the United Kingdom, which should be considered an integral part of the group, given its strong support for Ukraine, key role within NATO, and status as a nuclear power.

Yet as crucial as NATO will be, the EU also must step up its own efforts to defend its borders and preserve liberal democracy at home. Though the EU will not transform into a Defense Union or create a European army, it can do more to provide critical public goods. Promoting energy security and domestic innovation will be essential in the years ahead. Shared strategies, with joint funding, can position Europeans as much stronger players in these highly contested sectors.

Europeans need to rebuild their muscles, not only because old alliances are crumbling, but also because the geopolitical landscape is shifting. The situation in the US should push Europeans to strengthen relations with other important partners such as Japan, South Korea, and Australia, and to be more confident in managing their own relations with China.

Munich made clear that the long era of postwar Atlanticism is over. A powerful reversal is underway, and it would be wishful thinking to hope that the damage done by the Trump administration can simply be repaired in the future. Europe must build on its strengths and assume responsibility for its own security within NATO.

The EU, the UK, and Norway have more than 500 million people and collective purchasing power greater than that of the US. And despite domestic political tensions, they have the institutional stability that navigating this moment of crisis requires. Europe has the resources to catapult itself forward in technology, the digital economy, defense, and other critical sectors, and Munich showed that it must waste no time in doing so.

WARSAW – Europe has just held a rapid-fire series of high-profile summits. Following the Paris AI Action Summit and the Munich Security Conference, European leaders gathered for two emergency meetings in Paris to address the disturbing signals coming from the new administration in the United States. In each case, a central question was how Europe can catch up with America and China technologically and militarily.

By now, it is obvious to everyone that US President Donald Trump’s administration intends to treat Europe with contempt, and that Europeans must take responsibility for their defense and security fully into their own hands. The Americans are not only sidelining European governments to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine; they have also thrown their support behind European far-right parties and accused European liberals and democrats of betraying Western values.

Is there a method to this madness? Could the overture to Russia be an attempt to repeat US President Richard Nixon’s strategy of breaking the alliance between Communist China and the Soviet Union? We know that Trump is obsessed with China, and that Russians themselves have good reason to fear Chinese dominance. If sacrificing some part of Ukraine would allow Trump to strike a blow against his bête noire, he would surely seize the opportunity.

But this Nixonian maneuver is unlikely to succeed unless Trump secures Europe’s participation, and that seems unlikely. Paralyzed by fear since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, Europe has forgotten that it can say “no.” But the Trump administration has shaken European leaders from their slumber. They are now taking an inventory of their strengths and exploring their options. Ukraine is not up against a wall yet. With increased support from Europe, its battle-hardened, highly innovative military can continue to resist Russia’s aggression.

Moreover, the Trump administration has not done much of anything yet except talk. Its real focus is on the home front, where it is busy gutting its own state capacity by mass firings. Trump’s war on the civil service – presumably the prelude to installing a skeleton crew of political loyalists – will inevitably cost America money and reduce his ability to carry out his policy agenda.

The European Union, for its part, should not respond with the usual search for unity. Given the parties in power in Hungary, Slovakia, and elsewhere, that is neither possible nor necessary. The better strategy is to build a coalition of willing EU member states and other countries that Trump is pointlessly alienating, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. This seems to be what French President Emmanuel Macron has in mind, judging by his recent statements. Many of his past warnings are now coming true. He remains one of the only leaders, alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is not ruling out sending troops to Ukraine or the surrounding area. And lest we forget, France and the UK both have nuclear weapons.

Lost in the coverage following the rupture with the US is the fact that Western Europe is more fearful than Eastern Europe. We are arguably more familiar with crises, but we also are not the ones in Trump’s crosshairs. We do not have a huge trade surplus with the US, and we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on US-made weapons. Unlike the Netherlands (ironically the home of NATO’s new secretary-general), which spent around 1.7% of its GDP on defense in 2023, Poland spends almost 5%.

Judging by the flurry of recent speeches and statements from Republican officials, one might think that there are actually two Republican parties. On one hand, there is the old party that always sought to raise defense spending, strengthen US military alliances, and confront autocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin. On the other hand, there is the party of Trump’s MAGA movement, which seems to believe that national greatness requires dismantling the American state and abandoning longstanding alliances, all justified with primitive blood-and-soil rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

While it feels as if the entire world has changed overnight, the truth is that nothing really has happened yet. If Europeans would only open their eyes, they would see that they have all the resources, talent, and instruments they need to secure their sovereignty and restore peace and stability. They do not need an invitation to the table. They should take inspiration from Ukraine, which has single-handedly halted Russia’s march of aggression through sheer willpower.

This is no time for Europeans to panic. On the contrary, Trump has given us what we need the most: a reason to get our act together.

LONDON – Could February 23, 2025, become known as Europe’s Independence Day? It might as well be if the winner of Germany’s election, Friedrich Merz, has his way.

It was striking that Merz, the quintessential German Atlanticist and fiscal hawk who many considered hopelessly stuck in the 1980s, should celebrate his victory by knocking away one of the fundamental pillars of German conservative politics since Konrad Adenauer, the country’s first postwar chancellor. “My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” he said in his first post-election interview.

Some other leaders are still trying to have their cake and eat it: talking about defending Europe while working with the United States. Not Merz, who has launched what amounts to a full-frontal attack on Germany’s closest ally, even going so far as to accuse the US of election interference, on par with Russia.

Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, US-Europe relations have been mired in a fundamental paradox. On one hand, Europeans are trying to demonstrate to Trump that they are willing to do more in exchange for US security guarantees. On the other hand, the US whose protection they seek is trying to force a NATO ally to give up its own territory and pressing Ukraine to consent to its own economic rape and plunder. Demanding that a desperate, war-ravaged country sign over half of its revenues from critical minerals and rare-earth metals in perpetuity is a shakedown that would make even a mob boss blush.

Perhaps this is why Merz has gone where angels fear to tread, insisting that Europe will need to find a way to move from total dependence on the US to some sort of independence.

At my think tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations, we have launched a “European Security Initiative” to explore what this might look like. Before Trump’s election victory, we talked about how we can defend Europe with less America. But Europeans are increasingly wondering how to defend themselves from America.

Merz seems to be clear-eyed about the fact that becoming the leader Europe needs doesn’t just mean recasting Germany’s relationships with France and Poland, but also working out a completely different relationship with the United Kingdom. Once UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer returns from what will surely be an intensely frustrating first trip to Washington, he might see things this way as well.

But, to have any chance of success, Merz will also have to overcome the self-harm of German economic ultra-orthodoxy. Scrapping the constitutional “debt brake,” introduced by his predecessor and party colleague, Angela Merkel, is necessary not just to enable Europe to rearm but also to finance urgently needed investment in infrastructure, renewables, and digitalization.

Merz has been adamant that mainstream parties in Europe need to rethink their approach to immigration. But he has been much less clear about how to do that in a way that reflects Europe’s demographic challenges. Ultimately, what is needed is a set of policies that re-establishes control over borders and population flows, limits the negative impact of those flows on the most vulnerable members of society, and simultaneously considers the workforce necessary for economic growth, innovation, and public services.

Looking at green policy and the environment, the question for Germany and Europe will be how to avoid a zero-sum tradeoff between reducing emissions and reducing prices. The only answer is to create an environmental policy which is also an industrial policy.

But how? A fundamental question behind all these issues, from immigration and the green transition to trade and defense, is how to make interdependence less risky. How do you give people who have been left behind the sense that the government will keep them safe in a dangerous world, without walling ourselves off?

The independence Merz is promising will force Europe to rethink many of its relationships, including with China, Israel, India, and, of course, the US. And we will need a political class that is able to see things clearly and make radical changes. Merz will not be alone in leading Germany to a new consensus. He will almost certainly need to lead a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), which may actually help him to bring his party to a different place – especially on the debt brake. Germany’s coalitions have often been a source of government weakness, but in this case a grand coalition of the main center-right and center-left parties could be a source of strength.

Merz is an unlikely candidate for this shift. His main critique of Merkel when they were both vying for the Christian Democratic Union’s leadership was that she had strayed dangerously far from CDU orthodoxy. But just as it took an SPD chancellor, the outgoing Olaf Scholz, to start increasing defense investment and cut the country’s ties with Russia, Merz, the über-Atlanticist and fiscal conservative, might be the only German politician who can credibly bury the debt brake and pave the way for a truly independent Europe.

BERLIN – A short trip to Germany instead of the planned state visit. A four-way meeting in the Chancellery instead of the conference in Ramstein to coordinate future aid for Ukraine with some 50 participating states, including numerous heads of state and government. With Hurricane Milton in Florida preventing US President Joe Biden from adhering to his planned itinerary, the entire European political scene was thrown off course.

There is no other way to describe the events of the last 14 days. Worse yet, what happened – or, more accurately, what didn’t happen – in Germany exemplifies the desolate state of European foreign and security policy at a critical moment.

Why did the Ramstein conference have to be canceled? Was it only because the American president couldn’t be there? Were the Europeans not strong enough to host a conference without the participation of the American president, or, if necessary, with the US Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense present?

The just-completed German-United Kingdom defense pact suggests that where there is a will, action can be taken. But Europe needs more than such narrowly tailored bilateral agreements, no matter how positive they can be.

The reason is abundantly clear: Ukraine is desperately waiting for more help. The third winter of the war Russian President Vladimir Putin launched in February 2022 is just around the corner, and the country’s situation is getting worse by the week. That Ukraine will get “all the help it needs, and it will get it for as long as it needs it,” has been the routine refrain heard in most European capitals, especially from the German government, for two and a half years. But this claim is simply wrong, no matter how many times it is repeated.

The history of aid to Ukraine is a history of constant dithering and hesitation, of stalling and tactics. When nothing else helps, the American president is called upon to break the political logjam.

But Biden spent much of this year, before his withdrawal from the presidential race, on the campaign trail. Now he is on a farewell tour. A new president will be elected on November 5, and if his name is Donald Trump, there will be no slipstream for the Europeans to hide in. The canceled Ramstein conference would have been the perfect opportunity for Europe to at long last take the lead.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz should have shown what the Zeitenwende (“turning point”) which Scholz declared following Russia’s invasion means for Europe as a whole. Together with France and Great Britain, he should have made clear statements to Putin: If you did not end your war of terror against Ukraine’s civilian population within 24 hours, they could have said, the range limits on the weapons being supplied to Ukraine will be lifted.

If that were not enough, it could have been added that Germany would supply Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine to help destroy the Russian army’s supply routes into the country. France and Great Britain are already supplying cruise missiles with the range needed to hit the Russian army’s supply lines and are apparently prepared to go down this path.

Fear and the desperate hope of being able to portray himself as a “peace chancellor” shortly before Germany’s federal election next year have become Scholz’s dominant motives. But “fear is the mother of all cruelty,” as Michel de Montaigne, the sixteenth-century French philosopher, put it. French President Emmanuel Macron has no doubt read Montaigne and understands that warning.

Instead of acting decisively at Ramstein, Scholz had a nice coffee with Biden, shortly before the US president was awarded the special level of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. But that award ceremony was a moment that united Great Britain, France, Germany, and the US merely in nostalgia, not in defining the decisive action and sense of purpose which Europe needs today.

Indeed, the ceremony recalled nothing so much as how Germany’s government behaved in the years before the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification, before the division of Europe was overcome, before the war in Ukraine. The old Europe of the Cold War sought comfort in the past and confidence in the solitary US leadership that defined the era. Europeans forging their own decisions were rarely even an afterthought back then. For example, did no one even think of inviting Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to the meeting in Berlin?

Biden’s flight back to Washington following the aborted Ramstein conference and the diminished meeting in Berlin’s Chancellery may take on an almost symbolic significance in the future: the last Atlanticist US president for a long time bidding farewell to Europe. And the Europeans, without leadership and without the slightest idea of what lies ahead, waving goodbye to him, dreamily reminiscing about earlier times.