After 75 Years and Donald Trump Europe Needs a new Masterplan

What worked worked in the past won’t necessarily work in the future

This article was first published in German in Die Welt https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article223915072/Verteidigung-Nach-75-Jahren-Nato-braucht-Europa-einen-neuen-Masterplan.html

Larger-than-life statesmen have never been welcome in Brussels. Charles de Gaulle, French president from 1959 to 1969, pined for a Europe of strong leaders, among whom he counted himself. However, Germany and the EU’s smaller founding members favoured a different Europe, of lawyers rather than leaders. Mostly they got it their way.

In Brussels flames of leadership are smothered in rules, the more prosaic the better: the shape of bread rolls, the contents of chocolate bars, the storing of cookies on web browsers. Until recently, if Europe needed leadership, Airforce One would fly it in.

It is this legacy that haunts Emmanuel Macron. He calls himself “made for storms”, born to save Europe from disaster. He longs for homebred rather than foreign leadership, for a Europe that is strong and sovereign, a global player no-one dares to cross.

But Macron’s sovereigntist aspirations ram into Europe’s self-image as a rules-governed, post-political bureaucracy. He upsets Atlanticists who fear NATO’s demise. He offends those who want to keep Russia out and Turkey in. Trump’s success lent Macron credibility. However, Trump is as good as gone.

“What was true 75 years ago is still true today”, the Foreign Affairs Ministers of the Benelux wrote in a joint article in November last year. “American leadership is necessary in addressing all of our current geopolitical and security challenges.” Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, German defence minister agrees. Merkel’s one-time successor believes “illusions of European strategic autonomy must come to an end”. Her old mentor spoke with eloquence about Europe taking its destiny in its own hands. AKK’s mantra is: who are you kidding. Let’s return to our comfort zone, the Europe of rules and lawyers. POTUS will handle the rest.

But if the ways of old are Europe’s new master plan, it is not likely to succeed. The belief that what has worked in the past will also work in the future always gets early applause. It offers the easiest, least offensive and cheapest way forward. But that has never stopped it from being wrong.

Macron, the Hegel-quoting visionary, is guilty of many sins: intellectual vanity, moving too far ahead of the troops, hubris. Calling NATO braindead was not smart. Arguably, Macron has done too little to rally others behind his plans, in particular in Eastern Europe.

But those who propagate the status quo ante, like AKK, are guilty of the opposite: they operate on tramlines and fail to grasp that history does not sit still, that 75 years on it demands adaptation and innovation. If Macron is Europe’s “think-tanker-in-chief”, as critics call him, AKK is auditioning for the role of Europe’s “procrastinator-in-chief”.

There is one thing that both should be able to agree on: in its current state Europe cannot do without US leadership and power, especially on security issues. The notion that it can is so obviously false it does not merit debate. Just think of Europe’s dependence on America’s nuclear umbrella, how helplessly it has acted in Syria, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh.

What is at stake, however, is the future. Macron’s big idea is not that Europe is sovereign; it is that Europe must become sovereign. This is neither a dream nor an illusion; it is a strategic goal and necessity. No-one proposes that NATO disbands tomorrow, or indeed ever; the proposition is to prepare for such a time that the US is no longer willing or able to lead, or does so in ways Europeans find unpalatable.

The briefest of examinations of US politics should suffice to understand this is not idle theorising. What will Europe do if ever the US cuts it loose? AKK’s answer is it won’t happen. “America needs Europe”, she asserts. Never will it let the continent down. One wonders what special insight in US politics Macron’s critics possess to recommend wagering Europe’s security on America’s four yearly election cycle. On recent form, it resembles Russian roulette.

Of course, also AKK affirms that Europeans “need to spend and do a lot more to keep the peace”. But it feels like and smells of boilerplate. What precisely does she or Germany propose? Financially things are “very tough”, Kramp-Karrenbauer warns, demolishing yet another illusion. Expect no money miracles from Berlin.

With Donald Trump, Europe found itself at the deep end, gasping for breath. Joe Biden has now thrown it a lifeline, an interlude of transatlantic calm in otherwise choppy seas. The EU should use it to reconcile the Europe of rules of the last 75 years with the Europe of leaders it will need to be in the next 75. Four years go by in blink. Imagination, not procrastination, is what the continent needs.