Europe before the US election: not prepared for Trump

If Donald Trump becomes US President again, things could become dicey for both Europe and Ukraine: NATO could collapse and Ukraine could find itself without US support.

A US President Donald Trump would undoubtedly be a pipe dream scenario for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but a nightmare scenario for Europe and Ukraine alike: their security would be at stake.

Take NATO, for example: It is doubtful whether the military alliance would survive a second Trump term in office. In order to destroy NATO, Trump would not even have to officially declare the USA’s withdrawal from the alliance, which he has long described as “obsolete”. It would be enough for the USA to leave doubts as to whether it would really defend its European allies in the event of an attack. “Then NATO would be dead,” confirms Christian Mölling, deputy director of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). “NATO is based to an extremely large extent on the Americans’ promise of protection.”

“Defenseless” without a US nuclear shield

During his first term in office, Trump almost caused the alliance to implode at the NATO summit in Brussels in 2018. However, it is questionable whether, if he is re-elected, he will again have advisors who can put a lot of effort into preventing him from leaving.

But if the USA collapses the nuclear or conventional protective shield that it has set up over Europe, Germany and its Eastern European neighbors will have a problem: Europe’s military dependence on the USA has not decreased at all since Trump’s first term in office.

Around 100,000 US soldiers are currently stationed in European NATO countries, 35,000 in Germany alone. Without the USA and its nuclear shield, Europe would be – as political scientist Mölling puts it NDR-Podcast “Armed Forces and Strategies” from – “defenseless”.

Hardly any progress Independence

But how is it possible that the Europeans have been vowing for years to stand on their own in terms of security policy – but despite everything they continue to prove to be so shaky? In a much-quoted beer tent speech at the end of May 2017 – i.e. during the Trump era – ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to impress on Germans: “We Europeans really have to take our fate into our own hands.” Neither Merkel herself nor her successor Olaf Scholz have significantly changed the fact that Europe’s fate still lies largely in the militarily strong hands of the USA – almost six years after the beer tent speech, almost nine years after the annexation of Crimea. And despite the “turning point”.

The European Union is certainly making attempts to grow together militarily: in the PESCO projects launched in 2017, willing states can join forces to develop common capabilities – such as an underwater drone. In parallel, there is an EU defense fund that can be used to finance joint procurement. But with both, the EU is only moving towards a real defense union at a rapid pace: the procurement pot is filled with eight billion euros – spread over years. “That’s not a big lever,” says Christian Mölling. For comparison: the European defense industry has an annual turnover of around 80 billion.

Verhofstadt is ranting about it “Declaration of bankruptcy”

How quickly the EU is reaching its limits in terms of security policy is already becoming clear when it comes to supporting Ukraine: He complained that he could no longer hear this sentence about helping the country “as long as it takes”. a few days ago the liberal EU MP Guy Verhofstadt. The reality is this: Russia has three million artillery ammunition available each year – two million manufactured itself and one million from North Korea. “But we’re not even able to produce a million a year.” In fact, it is completely unclear whether the Europeans will be able to keep their promise to deliver by March.

Verhofstadt immediately provided what he saw as the decisive reason for this defense policy “bankruptcy”: “There is no common defense, no common procurement. That is the true European disaster.”

In addition, the Europeans do not appear to be united when it comes to aid to Ukraine, despite all the incantations: Hungary has been blocking EU billions for weeks; On Sunday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz once again urged his European partners to invest more; The Germans, on the other hand, were far too hesitant to deliver weapons, especially in the initial phase, from the partner’s point of view. Unlike Great Britain and France, Scholz has so far refused to supply long-range cruise missiles such as “Taurus”.

Can Germany fulfill a leadership role?

This immediately raises the question of what fate Ukraine could suffer if the USA were to reduce its support to zero under a President Trump. Republicans have already been blocking an important billion-dollar support package in Congress for weeks. And there is no question for experts that Ukraine would no longer exist as a sovereign state if the USA had not supplied weapons – and, by the way, geodata – on such a massive scale since the start of the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said: ARD-Interview with Caren Miosga expressed the wish that the Germans would step in if the USA failed in its leadership role. So far, there are no signs that the federal government could or wanted to do this.

However, if Ukraine were to increasingly go on the defensive or if Putin even won this war, that would have serious consequences for Europe, warns political scientist Mölling. First, Putin’s imperialist hunger and with it the threat to Eastern Europeans is likely to grow. Which in turn means that Germany and Western Europeans would be more in demand to help and protect. That would cost a lot of money. Secondly, blame is likely to increase within Europe as to who is responsible for the lack of support: “It has a destructive character,” says Mölling.

This is still all a “what if” scenario. Donald Trump is not yet US President again. But it is a scenario for which neither the European NATO states nor Ukraine seem sufficiently prepared.