This article was first published in Liberator (Issue 428) in April 2025.

America’s pivot away from Europe got noisier under Trump, but is a long term policy change. Time for a European Defence Union, says Sir Nick Harvey, CEO of European Movement UK.

After Donald Trump’s election victory in November, and well before the world started turning on its head after his 20 January inauguration, I urged anxious members and colleagues at the European Movement UK to judge Trump on what he does, rather than what he says. The lurid outpourings in his first term were (at least marginally) more extreme than his executive actions.

In these early months, however, his rhetoric has become so constantly unhinged that words may be causing as much chaos as any actions which might follow. He has talked of colonising Canada, seizing Greenland and the Panama Canal, turning Gaza into a plaza and expelling those living there, and ending military support to Europe dating back to WW2. Deeds like voting with Russia, Iran and North Korea at the UN seem almost as absurd as his words, potentially disproving my theory – though mercifully for now more symbolic than substantive.

In his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, Trump explains that before any negotiation begins, his tactic is to throw wild cards to confuse his counterparts. So, having promised he could resolve the Ukraine war in 48 hours, we see him destabilising Zelensky by threatening to remove military assistance on which Ukraine is dependent, while dangling before Putin the salivating prospect of an end to sanctions and rehabilitation to the international community and the G7.

It is devoutly to be hoped that his bombast about European security is likewise a tactic to soften us up before a serious drive to recalibrate the trans-Atlantic defence partnership. In fairness to Trump, he has a strong point that we in Europe have been too content to let America do the heavy lifting on our security since 1945.

Europe has built successful economies without investing adequately in the security which underpins prosperity. JFK was the first to say this in the early 1960s, when Europe’s economies had substantively recovered from the war and should have been ready to shoulder more of the burden. US Presidents have said it ever since. America’s strategic pivot on security – from their Atlantic to Pacific seaboard – was announced candidly by Obama, then pursued noisily by Trump, less noisily by Biden and would have continued whatever the result had been in November.

Helping ourselves to a complacent peace dividend after the fall of the iron curtain, collectively we have been slow to wake up and smell the coffee as to what America’s pivot means. Perhaps it has taken Trump’s shock therapy to bring us to our senses? The brutality of his treatment of Ukraine, contrasting so sharply with Biden’s stout support, has sent panic waves. His readiness to deny support and cover to European forces if they take on a peace-keeping role after a peace deal in Ukraine has left us gasping.

Even if America were to elect a more conventional President in 2028, things have been said which can never be unsaid, doubts cast which can never be entirely forgotten, certainties undermined which can never be restored with complete confidence. In truth, we have developed strategies, configured forces and made procurement decisions (not to mention contracts) based on the belief that America would always be a dependable partner and ally.

Some of this now looks rather foolish. The reality that we could not send a viable force into post-war Ukraine and protect and co-ordinate it without American help is embarrassing. Europe’s population, GDP and regular uniformed forces all comfortably outstrip Russia’s. But if you were designing a force laydown for Europe, it really wouldn’t look much like what we have. In truth, 30+ nations making largely separate decisions for decades, has resulted in duplications, incompatibilities and gaps.

The situation is not hopeless. There are co-ordination mechanisms and technical specifications, both within NATO and the EU, but all European nations have too readily put their own interests first. I doubt we could really muster enough troops between us to sustain a challenging peace-keeping mission across a country the size of Ukraine with a frontline as long as it now defends. But even if we can, basic force protection, supply logistics, air cover and real-time aerial and satellite intelligence (some of that enabling us to use the full capabilities of high-end kit we have bought from the US) would all depend on American support. At a conservative estimate it would take ten years to develop totally self-dependent European forces to undertake such a task.

So, Starmer, Macron, von der Leyen and other European leaders are right not to alienate Trump more than they absolutely have to, and at times must swallow their pride and bite their tongues. It is easy but naïve to characterise this as appeasement. In truth, even if we are to become effective in protecting our own continent, we remain dependent on America for now – so we must at least ‘string them along’. And we dearly hope that a more productive relationship than that, going forward, can yet be salvaged with the US – whoever is in office.

All of which leads inexorably to the question, where exactly does the UK sit in all this? We have warbled on for decades about our special relationship with America and since 2016 have chosen disastrously to distance ourselves from Europe. We have supported the US militarily, sometimes when we should not have (Iraq), and diplomatically – sometimes holding our noses while casting votes at the UN.

We have shared highly sensitive intelligence and invested in their hardware (and jobs). We have partnered with them in sustaining our nuclear deterrent. We could probably just about operate it on our own for a while – maybe less accurately targeted but, if anyone were mad enough to fire it, that would be of minor significance relative to the carnage which would follow. We have bought their F35 jets which, without American real-time intelligence updates, would function at only a fraction of their (expensive) capability.

But for all that, they see us as part of the European problem and simple geography does not lie: we are in Europe! European security is our security – whether in Ukraine, the Atlantic, North Sea or Arctic, and the Americans won’t always have flesh in our game. On ministerial visits to Washington, I was struck how politicians, Pentagon officials and uniformed officers all talked about NATO in the third person, as if American wasn’t in it. In Europe, we think of NATO as America – with a few of us giving minor support (90% America, 10% Europe if you like). Over there they think of NATO as Europe, with them patting us on the head (90% Europe, 10% America if you like). Talk of leaving causes barely a ripple.

Now we see PM Starmer playing a bold lead in Europe, partnering France in corralling a coalition of the willing. This is good news for our future relations with Europe and is well received by our partners – particularly we seem to be volunteering help without demanding anything in return. This is shrewd, as we have much ground to make up after our behaviour over the last decade (longer if one remembers Thatcher’s handbag). After Labour’s faltering start in office, it is also Starmer’s first decent shot across Farage’s pro-Trump and Putin bows.

On May 19^th there is a UK–EU Summit in London, the first in a hereafter annual fixture. The most likely headline to emerge is that we either have agreed – or at least agreed to agree – a strategic partnership, predominantly but not exclusively focused on security. This was promoted pre-Brexit by Theresa May and anticipated in the Political Declaration accompanying the Withdrawal Agreement. But once Johnson’s oven-ready deal had secured the 2019 election, the hopeless Lord Frost dropped the idea, compounding the initial folly of Brexit by ensuring the worst possible outcome. Many other countries have such agreements with the EU, notably Canada and Norway, but including many others beyond.

This should herald the start of a much deeper relationship – on security certainly, and hopefully on a wider front. It will also be key to British participation in any European Defence Fund (running into trouble at the time of writing – and of course, if we hope to draw out of such a pot, we will have to pay into it). Ideas of a Defence Bank, being promoted by LibDems Ed Lucas and Guy de Selliers, may come into the foreground, based more on the ‘coalition of the willing’ principle.

We also need agreements facilitating British involvement in the European Defence Agency and EU Common Security and Defence Policy missions – several other countries have both. In short, we see emerging a European Defence Union, of which we simply must be part. Of course, the EU must be at the heart of such a defence union, but does the defence union need to be at the heart of the EU? Perhaps its being rather more an adjunct to the EU would help circumvent Hungarian vetoes and several states’ neutrality (rows about defence funding are already showing this).

Where does this leave NATO? Ideally, a European Defence Union would operate inside NATO as its new European pillar. NATO structures and systems are well proven. If we must be outside, then let’s model it on NATO and ensure compatibility. Better though – and why should even Trump object to this? – sit it inside, but with operational freedom (and the hope that one day the sane people will recover control of the asylum).

Every time the British public hears its Prime Minister talking about, “we in Europe must… [etc],” and sees him actively rebuilding relations with our closest neighbours, the centre of gravity in UK public opinion over the Europe issue inches back in the right direction.

But Labour remain prisoners of their self-imposed red lines, which one might think recent events open a good case for loosening. Growth will prove an elusive goal without both borrowing and taxing more and restoring free access to our biggest export market – Europe.

We should acknowledge that even a decision taken today to apply to join the single market would take years rather than months to execute in practice. It would involve a 31-way negotiation between the UK and each EEA member. The customs union is an easier goal but has other complications (scrapping the few feeble deals we have made since Brexit, and abandoning a US trade deal, among them).

It would, however, sidestep freedom of movement, which is at the heart of Labour’s paranoia. We constantly hear that 90 Labour MPs look over their right shoulder at Reform in second place. Perhaps we can prize them out of their cul-de-sac by giving them a second headache – trouble over their left shoulder. Leaking votes to the Lib Dems on Europe will be a luxury they can’t afford. But it could at least give them pause for thought!