What does European security look like without America?
This is Iain Martin’s weekly newsletter, exclusively for Reaction subscribers.
Sensible American friends are starting to get worried. Late last year it was possible to be relatively sanguine about the scope for a return of Donald Trump. Biden basked in the aftermath of the mid-term elections in which the Republicans had underperformed, largely because voters had rejected Trump approved candidates.
Now, Trump thrashes any of his rivals in the Republican primaries. Independent voters say they are “Trump curious” again, in part because the international situation is grim and Trump in his wild manner had a way of discombobulating or deterring autocrats by dint of being so damned unpredictable.
Absent a change in the dynamics of the race – medical emergencies, fresh candidates emerging, all possible though time is passing – there is a real chance Trump will get another go.
What does this mean for Europe?
It is a theme I’ve raised repeatedly in this newsletter. Now the potential problem is becoming more pressing by the month. Europe needs a plan on security in case Donald Trump becomes President again, winning the election taking place a year next week.
The advice from well-plugged in Americans is to not make the mistake of assuming Trump II will be the same as last time. Last time, for all the crazy antics on Twitter and elsewhere, Trump appointed some recognisably talented people in key positions. They didn’t all last, many resigned in disgust. Nonetheless, there were attempts made by serious people to make it work in the interests of the American nation. H.R. McMaster was National Security Adviser for a year, from February 2017 until April 2018. James Mattis served as Defense Secretary for almost two years from January 2017. While Trump trashed NATO in public, spending on European security and deployments increased. The Pentagon and others managed the Trump-inspired tensions, with the aid of Congress.
This time the expectation is that Trump on a revenge mission will from the start opt for individuals dedicated to the obliteration of what his supporters call “the deep state”. In the spirit of the January 6 insurrection we should expect an aggressive, less constrained administration – nakedly destructive, resentful of old allies, distrustful of established institutions.
This, obviously, is very dangerous for European security. While it is unlikely America could or would withdraw completely from Europe, where it is the main power in NATO, the organisation dedicated to our defence, there could at least be chaos and confusion about intentions, or scattergun withholding of funding, or an outright reduction in capabilities and commitment ordered by a Trump team.
European countries should avoid hysteria, and work through the practical challenges, is how one American veteran strategist put it to me recently. Define the individual challenges and work out a way through, in case the US is not there fully engaged, perhaps temporarily until another US President turns up, or in case the US involvement waxes and wanes between traditional engagement and populist anti-European isolationism for several decades.
On backing Ukraine, work out what it would take for a coalition of European countries solidly behind Kyiv to ensure the funding and re-stockpiling is in place. It’s not easy, with the bond markets warning governments to control spending, but without the defence and security of Europe all else is moot.
Anyone who has followed the EU’s doomed attempts to create a unified response on Israel-Palestine knows that the EU is not the body that can or will shape this, although of course it has a role to play on military procurement as a regulator and convener. And Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has turned out to be a robust transatlanticist.
Elsewhere, strengthening European security will have to be done within bilateral arrangements – via France and the UK’s close military relationship for example. British and Italian links are also increasingly strong, something Rishi Sunak has made a point of working on. Poland, with a growing economy and rapidly increasing military clout, is a key nation.
On the vital question of northern European security, the partnerships between Sweden, Finland, both now in NATO, and Norway are encouraging. The UK sponsored JEF initiative (the Joint Expeditionary Force) includes Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway, alongside the UK. Britain needs to make more of it.
As another American friend says: everyone, start thinking now.
His advice should be heeded, even if only as a precaution. Get a “plan B”. If there is a better idea, I’d love to hear it.
A ceasefire is a terrible idea
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is under pressure from members of his frontbench team and backbench MPs to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. It’s easy to say that neither relevant party here – the government of the legitimate state of Israel nor the terrorists from Hamas – is going to make its decision based on what Labour at Westminster says, but the truth is more complicated than that.
It suits Iran and its proxies for there to be a clamour in the free world, in cities such as London, demanding Israel be stopped from pursuing those who unleashed a pogrom on 7 October. There are plausible reports that the appalling demonstrations in London – why on earth are they still being given permission considering the genocidal nature of the chants? – are being stoked in part by Iranian agents.
So, it matters that Starmer sticks to not calling for a ceasefire. Not because he needs to keep on showing Labour has, as he says, changed. That is just internal party politics. What matters more is that there should at this perilous moment, with Jewish Britons feeling fear, be a unified message coming from the leadership of our main parties in Britain: Hamas committed a pogrom on 7 October. It is a genocidal organisation dedicated to the destruction of the democratic state of Israel. There is no guarantee Hamas could ever give that would be believed.
There can be no meaningful ceasefire with such an entity. It would only use it to restock, via Iran and elsewhere, and then with even more force kill as many Israelis as it can. Hamas is a terrorist organisation that must be defeated.
This is not to say Israeli’s military strategy (or plan, if indeed there is one, for after it has tried to eliminate Hamas in Gaza) is sound. Israel is right to aim to eliminate Hamas, but the Hamas leadership living in luxury elsewhere may well have unleashed hell hoping for a long war and a humanitarian crisis. Is it sensible to give them what they want? Or the campaign might be better targeted and aimed at ensuring Israel can fight, as it may have to, on several fronts. Beyond that, at some point there will have to be a credible post-Hamas plan for the many people living in Gaza who are not Hamas terrorists.
Praise for Pink
After numerous idiotic anti-Israel open letters from actors – stand aside everyone, here come the actors – it is refreshing to see a proper pop star issue a broadly sensible statement about the Middle East crisis. It should be compulsory reading for members of Labour’s shadow cabinet.
Pink – pop royalty with more than 60 million album sales – posted these ten points on her Instagram account:
1. The hostages need to come home.
2. Hamas is a terrorist organization that seeks to destroy Jews. They also murder and oppress women, the LGBTQIA+ community and political opponents.
3. Palestinians need a solution that honors their aspirations and their humanity.
4. Neither Palestinians nor Israels can exist peacefully under the threat of Hamas.
5. Protecting innocent civilian life must remain the utmost priority.
6. No one should celebrate the murder of women and children. Ripping down images of kidnapped children is inhumane.
7. Nuance and complexity are not rewarded on social media. Something going viral does not make it true.
8. The responsibility of traditional media to report the unbiased facts has never been more critical.
9. Prejudice and acts of hate toward any one group is unacceptable.
10. Any violent or hate-filled demonstrations taking place around the world are making the problem worse, not better.
Covid Inquiry
What is going wrong at Britain’s Covid inquiry? A lot. That’s the theme we tackled in the latest edition of the Reaction Podcast, where with Alastair Benn I interviewed expert Robert Dingwall on the mistakes Britain made in the pandemic. We discussed the numerous worrying ways in which the inquiry is going in the wrong direction.
What a rugby world cup
There are criticisms that can be made of the rugby world cup, which concluded with the final on Saturday evening. South Africa won by one point. It wasn’t, unless you are a South Africa fan, the best possible ending to the competition. The dream final – short of, for me, Scotland doing something transcendent – would have been a flair-filled northern hemisphere contest between Ireland v France.
There’s also the question of the TMO, the process for referring almost everything back to a team of referees sitting in front of a bank of screens who slow down the footage and then correct decisions, changing the course of the match. Even if the individual decisions are correct, the cumulative effect destroys the flow, serendipity and spectacle.
Perhaps modern rugby refereeing is a metaphor for our tech-driven future in which ever more of everyday life is subject to the machines and the scope for free-flowing interaction, mistakes and all, just being human, is diminished.
Those concerns aside… this was a joyful tournament hosted to perfection by the French.
What I’m watching
Last Orders, the 2001 film adaptation of the Booker Prize winning novel by Graham Swift, starring Michael Caine, Helen Mirren, Bob Hoskins, David Hemmings, Tom Courtenay and Ray Winstone. Caine’s character Jack Dodds has just died, and we see his life – the war, marriage, difficulties, happy times – in flashback. This is proper old school working class London, beginning in a boozer in Bermondsey where Jack’s friends gather to make a road trip to Margate, to scatter their old friend’s ashes. When Last Orders came out a couple of decades ago, and I saw it in the cinema, the world it depicted with the Coach and Horses pub, East End geezers, fading memories of the war and the 1960s, seemed current or familiar to anyone who knew London in the 1980s or 1990s. Twenty years ago there were many pubs and places – from Bermondsey to Belsize Park – where you could encounter characters such as Jack Dodds and his mates. Now that old London looks on film like a vanished, lost world. I miss it.
Last Orders is a touching, poignant, funny film that comes in at one hour and forty three minutes. I highly recommended it if you haven’t seen it, or if you have it’s worth a rewatch. Free to view on Amazon Prime now.
I hope you’ve had a good weekend.
Iain Martin,
Publisher and CEO,
Reaction