Don’t be fooled by Trump and Starmer – the special relationship isn’t going to keep Europe safe

Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to the White House appears to have gone as well as could have been expected. Donald Trump welcomed the prime minister warmly and they talked up the chances of a trade deal to avoid any tariffs on the UK. The tone was certainly much friendlier than at the recent Munich Security Conference, at which JD Vance harshly criticised the UK and other European allies.

However, on the central question of international security, Starmer did not get what he wanted – warm handshakes aside, there was no promise of a US security backstop for Ukraine.

European leaders have been shocked by the US pivot towards Russia. Europe is rapidly facing the prospect of losing US military and economic support for the first time in 70 years with an increasingly aggressive Russia happily watching on. This will demand not only a major shift in strategy and spending but also in psychology: how the continent sees itself, its allies and adversaries.

Trump’s US government has placed far more importance on resetting its relationship with Russia than working with European partners. In between the White House visits of French president Emmanuel Macron and Starmer, US and Russian delegations met in Turkey to negotiate a resumption of more normal diplomatic relations between the two. This does not bode well for Ukraine’s peace negotiations and European security concerns.

European leaders have no choice but to react. While Starmer continues to invest in the relationship with the United States, hoping to provide a bridge between the US and Europe, Macron and the likely next German chancellor Friedrich Merz are beginning to work on a plan B for European security.

They hope to benefit from the current alignment between the UK, France, Germany, Poland and other major security powers to build a better security system together. Fanned by fears of being abandoned by the US, the political will exists to accelerate European security reforms.

This is likely to include a faster turnaround for Germany’s Zeitenwende, the large-scale change in Germany’s security policy and defence spending announced by chancellor Olaf Scholz after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The current German government has laid some foundations by starting the process of reforming procurement policies, ordering additional equipment and starting a military recruitment drive.

It has also been beset by public arguments about what support for Ukraine would look like and what might constitute a red line for Russia. This has been embarrassing and done damage to Germany’s international standing.

The new government is likely to be far more careful about how to conduct such debates; Merz is already styling himself as a much more decisive leader on European security, far more similar to Macron than the current German chancellor.

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However, big challenges remain. European economies are struggling and higher defence spending either must come at the expense of other policy priorities, as seen in the recent UK aid cuts, or will have to be funded through additional debts.

Western European public opinion – despite everything that has happened – has not yet fully registered the extent of the threat from Russia and is unlikely to be thrilled if higher defence spending results in a reduction of their quality of life. This could further exacerbate the trend on display in France and, most recently, in the German parliamentary election of voters shifting towards more populist parties.

These are not the only disagreements on the continent. States like Spain, further away from the fighting in Ukraine, are more concerned with Nato’s southern border than with the threat from Russia. Losing US support could push them closer to European Nato but it could also further convince them that Poland and other eastern flank states are overstating the threat.

Meanwhile, the Polish government does not trust German security intentions and has been lobbying to host US nuclear weapons on its territory to strengthen its protection from a Russian attack.

While the Polish government has been able to develop a more cordial relationship with Trump, in part because its defence spending has increased sharply to more than 4 per cent of its GDP, it will struggle to convince the US to make such a significant investment. The US is in retreat from Europe – and does not seem ready for the row with Russia that would come from putting additional nuclear weapons on its doorstep.

Similarly, Merz has called on the UK and France to be prepared to replace the US’s extended deterrence guarantee for Nato, should Washington decide to withdraw its nuclear weapons from Europe. While President Macron has made a similar offer before, France reserves its nuclear weapons for national deterrence purposes only – joining the Nato nuclear planning group could be domestically unpopular.

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For the UK, as long as a new German coalition government does not include the right-wing Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), Germany will remain a strong partner on European security questions. CDU/CSU, SPD and Greens are all keen on cooperation and would continue to implement pacts like the Trinity House agreement on defence cooperation.

Given the unpredictability of the Trump administration, that is good news. The UK and European partners will have to act quickly on some of the key security and defence challenges. Their top three priorities should be better coordination for European Nato procurement; solving supply chain challenges for European defence companies; and, perhaps most importantly, strengthening European deterrence against Russia given the apparent unreliability of America.

If the UK and Europe can manage to move forward on these points over the next six to 12 months, they will be in a much stronger position to continue to support Ukraine and ensure their own security, regardless of US actions. Whether or not Europe can continue to rely on an unpredictable Trump administration for support, European countries have to rapidly plan for a future without the United States or risk Russia perceiving them to be weak and unprotected.

Dr Marion Messmer is a senior research fellow in the International Security Programme at Chatham House