Trump’s new world order has become real and Europe is having to adjust fast
Downtown Munich is best-known for chic shops and flashy fast cars but right now its streets are bedecked with posters advertising next generation drones.
“Europe’s security under construction” boasts the slogan on an eye-catching set of sleek black-and-white photographs, festooned across a scaffolding-clad church on one of this town’s best known pedestrian boulevards.
Such an unapologetic public display of military muscle would have been unimaginable here just a few years ago, but the world outside Germany is changing fast, and taking this country with it.
The southern region of Bavaria has become Germany’s leading defence technology hub, focusing on AI, drones and aerospace.
People here, like most other Europeans, say they feel increasingly exposed – squeezed between an expansionist Russia and an economically aggressive China to the east, and an increasingly unpredictable, former best pal, the United States, to the west.
According to a recent Eurobarometer poll, more than two-thirds of Europeans (68%) feel their country is under threat.
This autumn, Germany’s Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance warned for the first time since the Cold War that war is no longer “unlikely”. While emphasising that this is a safe country, it also recommends that Germans keep food supplies of three to ten days at home. Just in case.
Germany is the number one single donor of military and other aid to Ukraine, now that the US has halted any new direct aid. Opinion polls suggest voters here want to feel better protected at home too.
The question for this country, along with others in Europe is whether traditional alliances with the US, in Nato and the EU can suffice, or whether they should be diversifying into ad-hoc coalitions alongside other like-minded nations such as Australia, South Korea and Japan?
By 2029, the German defence budget will be higher than the UK and French equivalents combined, Nato’s Secretary General Mark Rutte pointed out to me.
He described the €150bn they say they will spend on defence as “a staggering amount”.
It’s something the United States notices and appreciates, he said. Donald Trump is far from the first US president to insist that Europe do more for its own security, though his tone has been noticeably more threatening than that of his predecessors.
The precarious state of transatlantic relations was the main focus of the Munich Security Conference (MSC) this weekend. It’s the world’s biggest annual defence meeting, bringing leaders, security experts and defence industries together.
While it’s easy to dismiss speech-heavy get-togethers like this as wind-baggy talking shops, in the turbulent times we live in, they can make a difference – especially the informal private huddles between global decision makers, far away from the glare of the cameras.
The most eagerly – and for some the most anxiously – anticipated speech at this year’s conference was that of the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who represented the Trump administration here.
European leaders and top diplomats were seriously on the edge of their seats. But why was a simple 30-minute address given so much importance?
It’s because Europe-US relations have never been so frayed as they are now, over the last 80 years since World War Two. And this isn’t a bust-up between buddies that will easily blow over.