It takes American rants and Ukrainian reality to wake up Europe

Analysis: America’s unwelcome attacks on Europe and undermining of Ukraine have been a rude awakening for leaders across the continent, writes Sam Kiley

Befuddled by the reality of their new relationship with Washington, it took a Ukrainian to spell out the truth to European leaders at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.

“I really believe that time has come,” said Volodymyr Zelensky. “The armed forces of Europe must be created.”

Driving home the point, Ukraine’s president added: “The old days are over when America supported Europe just because it always had.”

Nato members now know that they cannot rely on America. They will now have to reluctantly inch towards upping their defence spending and organising their defence of Europe – independently of the US.

“We need to prepare. We will have to face difficult days, make complicated decisions and even sacrifices which we weren’t expecting until now to ensure this security,” said the French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot.

There should have been nothing shocking about Donald Trump siding with Russia ahead of “peace talks” over Ukraine with Vladimir Putin, that will exclude Ukraine. Yet America’s European allies were reeling from revelations that were nothing of the sort.

In demanding Europe pay its way in Nato, Trump’s defence secretary and vice-president were merely amplifying what the president had successfully campaigned for in his last administration.

To have missed that Trump is, and has been, a Putin groupie, somehow transfixed to favour the Kremlin’s “tough guy” over his allies, is to have failed to read any of his zillions of social media posts, his starry-eyed behaviour at successive summits in the past, and his relentless boasts that he can end the war in Ukraine in a trice.

There has been frantic stiffening of Europe’s response to the envoys of Trump this week in Munich, with Sir Keir Starmer leading on rejecting Washington’s dismissal of Ukraine’s ambitions to join Nato.

He told Zelensky not to worry and that his country was on an “irreversible path” to joining the alliance.

But Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, said that Ukraine has to give up on reclaiming all the land captured by Russian invaders ahead of the US meeting with Putin.

Then JD Vance, the VP, launched an extraordinary attack on Europe’s apparent failure to protect free speech.

Vance went on to campaign against European immigration policies and then met with the leader of Germany’s far-right AfD party, Alice Weidel, but not the chancellor, Olaf Scholz. He did this nine days before Germany’s general election.

Rather understandably perhaps, the chancellor complained: “That is not appropriate, especially not among friends and allies. We firmly reject that.”

Weidel’s anti-immigration party has been labelled as “extremist” by some parts of the country’s security services and is polling at about 20 per cent nationally.

“Never again fascism, never again racism, never again aggressive war. That is why an overwhelming majority in our country opposes anyone who glorifies or justifies criminal national socialism," Scholz said.

Europe’s leaders have been surprised by the blatant interference in their politics – from the UK to Sweden, Romania, and Germany – in hard-line, undiplomatic speeches by American officials from the Trump administration.

They could have seen some of this coming if they had looked at what was happening in America.

In what critics are now openly describing as a “coup” or an attempt at “regime change”, Trump’s officials – led by Elon Musk – have launched attacks on the federal civil service, the FBI, and the CIA. It is demanding that service men and women be tested for their loyalty to the incumbent of the White House.

They have torn up contracts, written under local laws over which the US has no sovereignty, for the thousands of people employed by USAid overseas who have been suspended or dismissed.

Now the Trump administration hopes to export its ideology into Europe.

A former Nato general told The Independent: “It was always going to happen. He doesn’t understand the concept of national sovereignty when it applies to other countries. And there is a paradox between his desire to pull up the US drawbridge and withdraw, while still acting as a superpower policeman and fixing the world’s problems.

“The real issue is that neither he nor his advisers understand the complexity of geopolitics.”

It may be that what they do understand, they do not respect.