Trump, Putin and why Europe and the UK need each other

Well, there you go. The Prime Minister has laid out her 12 objectives or conditions for a Brexit deal and it will no doubt prompt weeping and wailing from some of the usual suspects about how poor little Britain has committed national suicide, and there will be no deal, and then we’ll be sorry, and we will all be murdered in our beds, only there’s no point worrying about that, what with us having committed national suicide.

Actually, Theresa May has mapped out a perfectly sensible course, unless you think Britain leaving the EU is the end of the world.

What was most interesting about the May speech is that it shows that the British Deep State – or the part of it that is co-operating with May rather than trying to block Brexit – is starting to think and function properly again after the botched renegotiation last year and decades of pursuing a policy on the EU that was rendered redundant by the voters on June 23rd.

In essence, May has grasped that the UK has leverage in negotiations to come that it is increasingly clear are going to be asymmetric and about more than just trade. The UK is the leading non-US power in Nato. Even if it is depleted after defence cuts (which will need to be reversed) the UK is a serious presence and spends more on defence than countries sheltering under a US umbrella that it seems is suddenly full of holes. This is understood in Poland and (hopefully) Germany. The UK also has the leading listening, intelligence and security capability in Europe.
That matters, a lot, when the subject of Western security, long taken for granted, is back, thanks to Putin’s predations and the anti-Nato pronouncements of President-elect Trump. There is also the threat from Islamist fascist maniacs who want to kill citizens in Berlin, Birmingham and Barcelona, or anywhere they can.

How to proceed? There is a little time, although not much. NATO is sensibly deploying more troops to the East, and there is an understanding that Western European intelligence co-operation against Russian cyber warfare needs to improve, as Moscow gets ready to have more fun with other people’s elections, this time in Europe.

Donald Trump’s declaration that Nato is obsolete should not be taken as an indication that Nato is finished entirely, of course. Trump tends to take these positions that reflect his emotional impulses and need for attention. To that end, his daft statement that Merkel (a democrat and ally) and Putin (a demagogue and destroyer) are equivalent seems to have infuriated the Germans. It is surprising that they are surprised. This is Trump. Did they think he was going to morph into James Baker or Ronald Reagan after his election?

But there is a tussle in the new administration. Trump’s terrific pick for US defense secretary, General Mattis, is a supporter of NATO. The fight in the administration is clearly going to intensify (with Mattis the good guy) and it is unclear who will prevail. Will Mattis even stay for long? Will Congressional Republicans go round Trump and reassure NATO allies? Senator John McCain (a war hero mocked by Trump for his trouble) has already proposed a $500bn increase in defence spending, and Congress controls spending. It may be a year or two before we know the outcome of this struggle for power and the direction of US policy.

Europe must use the limited time available intelligently.

But if you think the EU is the ultimate answer to the defence of Europe, then you need your head examined. It is about as much use as a chocolate teapot in military terms. And while it plays a role on security it is eclipsed by Nato, and in intelligence-sharing by the Anglosphere arrangement involving the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Nato may have to be reconstituted with less US help, of course. Or an entirely new defence and security compact that involves all countries in Europe may have to be devised. There are precedents, happily. France and Britain forged closer defence links in the early years of the Cameron government, which is sensible. The two countries are natural allies, although the French hatred of NATO always resurfaces in the form of a push for an EU army, in which the UK can play no part, not being in the EU and thinking it a duff idea.

Brexit is not happening in isolation. It is part of a bigger story, the collapse or at least substantial reordering of the Western system that was formed to fight the Cold War, and at the fall of the Wall in 1989 proclaimed victory and declared hegemony. Trump’s nonsense, plus the troubles of the EU, plus Brexit, plus Islamist fascism require fresh thinking and a new dispensation.

At the forefront of our thinking should be the following realisation. The EU and Europe are not the same thing. Europe has been around for several thousand years. The EU is a rickety structure conceived a mere 70 years ago. In its current format (centred on the single or internal market) it is less than 30 years old. In that time, since the Single European Act of 1986 it has devised a currency that has brought misery to tens of millions of people in southern Europe, stoked populism and rebellion with its addiction to open borders, and showed itself incapable of controlling and defending Europe’s external border. Oh, and my dishwasher is broken yet again, which is the result of EU eco-rules that mean the heating elements are underpowered, which Hotpoint offers to replace for 130 quid, offering us a guarantee it will then work for 90 days. No thanks.

I digress. If you were giving the pro-EU European political class that devised this shambles an annual appraisal at the instigation of the HR department it would not make for happy reading. “Seems unwilling to listen to reason… poor attitude to feedback… attached to romantic notions of own brilliance against evidence… needs a rethink on performance or will have to be transitioned (out the door).”

One wonders – as a European – what it will it take to prompt a rethink in Europe’s capitals on European co-operation. Not even the decision to leave by the EU’s second largest contributor – the UK – seems to have done the trick. Perhaps Trump and Putin ‎will.