Ahead of Trump’s summit with Putin, President Macron’s plaintive cry that Europeans will “necessarily be part of the solution because their security depends on it” rings hollow. What would the Europeans bring to the table in Alaska? They have no plan of their own and even if they had one, they have no means to implement it. And what is more they do not have the political will to do so.
When US and Russian leaders met to discuss carving up Europe, at Potsdam in 1945, the British prime minister was in the room. That was because Britain was a major military and economic power that had more than shouldered its burden of the fighting in the Second World War.
Nothing like that can be said of Britain or any other European country today. All have downgraded themselves to the role of spectator. It’s too late to be pleading that “our security depends on it” when they have wilfully neglected their own security for decades. Every Western European nation, including our own, has been running down its armed forces almost to the point of irrelevance, very often papering over their true weakness with carefully spun readiness reports.
Even at the end of the Cold War, when Britain had four fighting divisions on the books, we were only able to deploy one very small one to the Gulf in 1991, and that was done by cannibalising the other three. By the time we came to Afghanistan and Iraq, Britain was never able to field sufficient forces for the task it gave itself, and had to be bailed out by the US in both theatres. The situation today is even more dire – and we have the strongest armed forces in Europe.
Across the continent, those politicians who see the need for powerful armed forces always complain that defence is not a vote-winner, and so funds needed to boost combat capabilities are spent instead on welfare, education, health, climate change, immigration subsidies and overseas aid. But a political leader’s job is not to follow public opinion; it is to shape it. Very few have actually been trying to make the case for defence.
Ahead of Trump’s summit with Putin, President Macron’s plaintive cry that Europeans will “necessarily be part of the solution because their security depends on it” rings hollow. What would the Europeans bring to the table in Alaska? They have no plan of their own and even if they had one, they have no means to implement it. And what is more they do not have the political will to do so.
When US and Russian leaders met to discuss carving up Europe, at Potsdam in 1945, the British prime minister was in the room. That was because Britain was a major military and economic power that had more than shouldered its burden of the fighting in the Second World War.
Nothing like that can be said of Britain or any other European country today. All have downgraded themselves to the role of spectator. It’s too late to be pleading that “our security depends on it” when they have wilfully neglected their own security for decades. Every Western European nation, including our own, has been running down its armed forces almost to the point of irrelevance, very often papering over their true weakness with carefully spun readiness reports.
Even at the end of the Cold War, when Britain had four fighting divisions on the books, we were only able to deploy one very small one to the Gulf in 1991, and that was done by cannibalising the other three. By the time we came to Afghanistan and Iraq, Britain was never able to field sufficient forces for the task it gave itself, and had to be bailed out by the US in both theatres. The situation today is even more dire – and we have the strongest armed forces in Europe.
Across the continent, those politicians who see the need for powerful armed forces always complain that defence is not a vote-winner, and so funds needed to boost combat capabilities are spent instead on welfare, education, health, climate change, immigration subsidies and overseas aid. But a political leader’s job is not to follow public opinion; it is to shape it. Very few have actually been trying to make the case for defence.