Can the Transatlantic Alliance Survive the Trump Presidency?

Hello, welcome to Roosie in London. I'm Neil Melvin and this is Global Security Briefing, the podcast devoted to providing insights on contemporary regional security developments around the world and on how the UK can best navigate the past changing international environment. For this edition of Global Security Briefing, I'll be looking at the quickly revolving and changing crisis in transatlantic relations and what this means for the security of the United Kingdom and wider Europe. The US-European relationship is once again in crisis. Donald Trump's ambitions to take control of Greenland risk plunging the alliance into a spiral of confrontation over the future of the island, raising questions also about NATO and the US commitment to its European allies. The latest crisis comes against a backdrop of nearly a year of instability in transatlantic relations as the Trump administration has threatened to unravel the previous US-European consensus on the future of Ukraine and relations with Russia, has imposed tariffs on Europe, questioned the values within European countries and expressed open hostility towards the EU. The deterioration of transatlantic relations comes at a time when Europe was already struggling to find an effective response to Russia's war in Ukraine and the conflicts in the Middle East after decades of declining spending on defence and a commitment to building an international order about shared rules and values. European countries now find themselves in one of the most uncertain and challenging security environments since the Cold War. While many countries are committed to increase their defence spending and efforts are underway to consolidate NATO and the EU as more effective organisations, the idea of European security that has animated the continent for seven decades is being challenged as never before. In this episode of Global Security Briefing, I'll therefore be asking, can Europe's established security order survive the current turmoil? What is the future for US and European cooperation on security and defence issues? How should European countries seek to adapt or even change existing approaches to European security? and what sort of European security should the United Kingdom aim to promote. Joining me to discuss this week's topic is Roussi Distinguished Fellow, the Right Honourable Sir David Lidington. David Lidington served as an MP for more than 27 years until he stepped down from the House of Commons at the 2019 general election. He spent more than 20 years in the Conservative Party frontbench, serving as opposition spokesman on home affairs, treasury, environment and agriculture, Northern Ireland and foreign affairs. He served as RUCI chair between 2020 and 25, and between 2010 and 2016, he was the United Kingdom's longest serving minister for European affairs. So David, it's really wonderful to have you on Global Security Briefing. Good to be here, Neil. So we're recording this episode on the 20th of January, So we can't but really begin with the whole Greenland story. We've got world leaders already gathering in Davos. It's going to dominate. It's been dominating the headlines, not just on Greenland, but on wider issues, as I think we'll touch on in the conversation later. Do you think that Donald Trump is actually going to end up with Greenland? Is there a way that this can be finessed and that the Europeans can find an alternative way to handle the whole problem? I don't think it's a question of how the European countries handle it. I think it's a question of what Trump actually wants at the end of the day. On any rational analysis, the United States is right to say that Greenland's importance in terms of Western security is going to increase as the Arctic ice retreats and Russian and eventually Chinese vessels have easier access to the North Atlantic and the northern approaches and around the UK, Iceland, Greenland. but the 1951 treaty between Denmark, Greenland and the United States already provides with the various updates there have been since then for the United States to increase its military deployments on Greenland. In fact if you look at relatively recent times the US used to have about 10,000 troops deployed in Greenland it's now down to what 200, 300 something like that and just one base rather than the 10 or so that they had before so they can within existing treaty requirements up very significantly their military presence in Greenland. And the Danish government and the Greenland government have made it more than clear that they would be very happy to talk about negotiating additional security partnerships and economic development arrangements as well. So if Trump wants the practical defence of Western and United States security, that is attainable within the current NATO and international treaty framework. If, on the other hand, he wants to plant a US flag to say that just as President McKinley, whom he has openly praised and appears to revere, seized Hawaii, which was then an independent kingdom in the Pacific during his presidency, so Trump is going to add to United States territory, is something he talked about as far back as his inaugural speech 12 months ago, then it's difficult to see what can persuade him. And the implications for the reliability of the United States as an ally for the cohesion of the transatlantic alliance that has been part of our lives and central to our security arrangements for the past 80 years really does get called into question. As you say, the Europeans have very much tried to play a straight bat, to use a cricket metaphor, to respond to the security agenda that he set out. But if it's actually sovereignty that he asks for, is there anything in that space? I mean, Europe has very many creative experiences of shared sovereignty. And you think of Andorra in the medieval period, Holland Island between Finland and Sweden. We haven't really opened up yet for a discussion, perhaps because obviously this is a very sensitive issue for Denmark and for Greenland, about whether there may be something in that shared sovereignty space, kind of a win-win for everyone, or is that just too complicated and too drawn out? As some Republicans say, you don't invest in something unless you own it. Well, it's Trump who's saying that, looking at it with the mind of the New York real estate developer. And I have to say I'm deeply sceptical about whether any of these ideas of shared sovereignty go anywhere. For a start, I think there's no sign whatsoever that Trump, if he's serious about sovereignty, rather than this being a negotiating position before he cuts a deal on the substance of security arrangements and economic development, then he's not going to be satisfied with joint sovereignty. You mentioned Andorra. I can't quite see President Trump being content with being the equivalent of the Prince Bishop of Urgal, acting as a sort of co-sovereign of a principality. There are very good duty-free shopping opportunities. More to the point, there are 57,000 Greenland citizens. And ultimately, it's they who should have the say in sovereignty. So far, every indication from the results of their general election within the last 12 months, from opinion polls in recent weeks that have tested Greenlandic opinion has been that they do not want to become part of the United States, let alone some sort of imperial possession or protectorate of the United States. And just as we in Britain have been adamant in saying that the people of Gibraltar, the people of the Falkland Islands, the people of Ukraine, a much bigger level, are entitled to determine their own future and nobody else, that same principle of self-determination should apply to Greenland as well. If that's the logic, then we do seem to be approaching the rock and the hard place moment. And of course, much is going to depend then on whether the Europeans do indeed see it, as you described, and see it as a collective interest, that the countries who are far from Greenland and may even be far from Denmark in the European space would nonetheless have to stand with Denmark and Greenland and its allies, but also bear the costs of that in terms of the tariffs or possibly even worse in terms of bringing in the security question which the US has to play. And the US side clearly seems to think they have all the cards in this. Do you think that Europe can stand up to the US on Greenland and maintain that unity? Well, I think in the short to medium term, the tactic that European leaders, at least the main countries, so Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Metz, George Maloney are deploying are the right ones. The reality is that Europe is still very dependent for its defence and security upon the United States. And we can deplore the fact that that's still the case, that there's not been rearmament, that there needed to be. But that is the reality. And it will take, in my judgment, a decade, perhaps for Europe to substitute its own resources for the capabilities where we now rely on the Americans. So that's the reality of life. Now, plus, of course, the ability of European powers to buy weapons to the United States to supply Ukraine is a really important collective interest. So I think the approach of trying to persuade Trump and to persuade the key advisors to Trump, that they can get what they say they want in terms of US defence and security, in terms of economic development and control over mineral resources in Greenland, by legitimate means using current treaty arrangements and using NATO cooperation to attain that. They don't need to go down this unilateral route. That would be by far the best outcome of the talks that are now going on. What I would like to feel more confident about than I am is that European leaders were prepared, even if it's in private for the time being, to face up what seems to me to be the reality that the United States, certainly under Trump, and I suspect this is a long term trend, is no longer looking to European security and defence as something that is core to United States national interest. we're going to have to do a great deal more for ourselves. That's going to have to mean looking at different models for European defence and security cooperation without the Americans if we have to, better if we can keep them in, but we may have to defend ourselves without the United States being willing to help in the future. And we need to get on a plan for the spending and the institutional arrangements and the decision-making practices for that to be a feasible reality in the future. That takes us actually very nicely into what I wanted to cover going forward. And this is exactly that moment in European security, because we've been a bit overtaken by the Greenland issue. But I think when I initially asked whether you'd be available to come on to the podcast, it was against the background of these wider changes that have been happening in European security. And it's not just about the Trump administration. Of course, the Russia war against Ukraine has asked major questions of Europe. Europe has struggled perhaps to become key actor in many areas where it used to play an important role, for example, the Middle East. And it's an overwhelming sense that Europe is becoming increasingly marginal to some core questions as the world becomes more geopolitical and geoeconomic. Now, last summer, we had a conference at Russia on Europe's changing security architecture. And you gave a very interesting speech there where I think you picked up on some of these themes that we are at this important moment, not quite clear whether it's an evolutionary moment or a revolutionary moment, perhaps, on the European side. We've had six months since you gave that talk. How do you see things have moved on now? I mean, what would you say are the major trends that are emerging or the key issues you think that are playing out across the European security question? It seems to me that the key issues are first that Russian aggression in Ukraine and Russian attempts at subversion and sabotage across the rest of Europe have continued unabated, and Putin's determination to press ahead seems absolutely uninhibited. The Ukraine conflict speaks for itself, but if you look at what has happened, we've seen Russian fighter aircraft overflying Estonia. We've seen Russian drones over Poland, over Germany, over Belgium, over France. We have had Russian surface vessels or Russian aircraft testing British and Irish airspace, testing waters around the Scandinavian countries. We've had the Yantar spy vessel mapping out where internet cables come into the United Kingdom and Ireland. The pattern is very, very clear. Secondly, I think we have seen, dismayingly, an acceleration of a mood in the White House to separate the United States from what we've always thought of as a leadership role in a Western democratic alliance. I think the idea that President Trump really takes seriously any idea of him being the leader of the free world is now nonsense and demonstrable nonsense. The things that I have found deeply shocking in the last year have been the decision by the United States, the United Nations, to vote with Russia, North Korea, Iran and a handful of other countries against a European nation resolution that called out Russian aggression against Ukraine and used the term aggression And that was more than Trump could do with it He was with a tiny number of countries He was with Putin. He was with Kim and a tiny number of other Russian allies. Even China abstained on that occasion. We've seen the cutoff, even temporally, of US intelligence support for Ukraine. And that was deeply, deeply troubling. And now we're seeing the demand for territorial aggrandizement in Greenland. So I think that we're seeing something new happening in the United States. What is true is that the US has justice on its side in saying that for far too long, the European democracies have been happy to use the American's language, freeload, on the American taxpayer, with the United States covering about 60% of the total NATO expenditure. Now, if you add up the collective GDPs of the European democracy, so all the EU countries, United Kingdom, Norway, Iceland, they pretty much match in GDP terms and population terms the United States. And we should be paying our fair share, doing a lot more. And the warnings have been given right back to President George W. Bush's day when his defence secretary, Bob Gates, who warned European countries they could not continue always to count on the United States doing the lion's share of defence and security expenditure for NATO. And those warnings were repeated under subsequent presidents, under President Obama, under President Trump's first term, under President Biden. And I think Europeans have been far too complacent about this. And I think what we're now seeing is a profound shift in American politics and American priorities. For 80 years, since the 11th of December 1941, which was the day Hitler declared war on the United States of America, the US has seen European security as absolutely core to its own thinking about United States, national interest, defense and security interests globally. I think we're now moving to the sort of pattern that we saw in the United States in the first half of the 20th century and in the second half of the 19th century, when the US was no particular friend to Britain or to any other European country, that it looked to its own national interest. We came close to conflict with the United States during the American Civil War over rows about cotton supplies from the Confederacy to the Manchester cotton mills. Theodore Roosevelt built the US Blue Water Navy in part as a response to Royal Navy supremacy over the oceans worldwide. We had, after World War I, an isolationist nationalist congress stopped President Wilson from taking the US into the League of Nations that Wilson had been the author of. And in the 1920s, 1930s, through into the 1940s, we had a very strong isolationist movement. And even Franklin Roosevelt was elected on a platform saying, I'm not going to get your boys involved in any foreign wars. So that tendency has always been there in US politics. And I think we're now seeing that emerge again. So let's assume for the sake of this conversation that we have three years of President Trump and comes the end of his term. And he has succeeded by, let us say, a Democrat or by somebody, a Marco Rubio figure, somebody who's a more traditional conservative Republican. I still think the American electorate is going to be pretty nationalist, is going to be saying, well, you put our interests first, and whoever wants to be president is going to be looking at voters in the swing states, the Pennsylvanians, the Wisconsinians, the Michigans, and tacking to take those priorities into account. And whoever is the next president, and whoever's in the next Congress, are also going to be looking across the Pacific, and they're going to be seeing China as the key challenge to US economic, financial, as well as geopolitical supremacy around the world. And they are going to focus on the Indo-Pacific region, I think, more than the Atlantic region, and say, well, you Europeans should be doing more. So we really are having to run to catch up right across Europe at the moment. And we should have heard the alarm bells ringing a lot earlier than we have done. And what troubles me, I think what Britain announced in its defence review, comprehensive interview, was sensible, serious. But all the signs are the Treasury in London is still keeping the Ministry of Defence on a drip feed as far as spending is concerned. And I'm hearing from defence companies, they're increasingly worried and angry about the slow pace at which there's any move. And the chief of the event staff has pretty much intimated that the next few years are likely to see some really difficult decisions facing the chiefs here in terms of what they can afford to pay for. And I fear that not just in Britain, but in other European capitals too, the first instinct of a lot of the security establishments are going to be saying, we can manage this as we did with Trump version one, but let's see it through the next three difficult years. And then we can somehow resume the comfort of our old relationship. I would like to think I'm being excessively pessimistic, but I actually think that there's not going to be a normal to snap back to. I think that Trump's a particularly vivid and brutal expression of a longer term, deeper trend in US priorities and US thinking. And we really in Europe have to adapt to that very quickly. And the responsibility falls above all the big European players, so Britain, France, Germany, Italy, to get on and show leadership there. I want to just perhaps drill down a bit on this, how you understand the US and what it's doing. I think you seem to sketch out a number of different scenarios for the US. One was a sort of more isolationist country, which I think is what we perhaps thought with the MAGA movement when he came in. Then there was this idea that actually it was going to be about spheres of influence. And there's been all these maps appearing with the US and Western Hemisphere, Russia, Eurasia, and China, Asia. But it's also clear that the US, that doesn't really seem what the US wants. Since he's come to power, he's bombed Iran, he's bombed Syria, he's bombed Venezuela, he's threatened Greenland. So US military power actually seems to be just a global force, but unconnected now to alliances in a way. And it doesn't seem to be contained even in the Western Hemisphere. So I wondered, I mean, seeing the rising US actually, and there has been this discussion in the UK discussion a bit, we've seen perhaps Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to Washington made this case most strongly in an article in The Spectator, that we're misunderstanding the US, that we have to look beyond President Trump and what he's saying, that actually this is a US repositioning itself for global struggle with China and all comers. And the Europeans, we're lagging behind in understanding that. We're playing the ball, not the player, if you like, of global international politics these days. I think what you've said is true of some of the people around Trump. I think it's a mistake to look at President Trump and assume that there is a coherent strategy to what he's doing. I think that if you look at the different reactions, he's had different events around the world. I mean, if you look at what he has said and written on the subject of the Nobel Peace Prize, for example, I'm afraid there is an awful lot of egotism and personal interest of various kinds that is tied up with his own sense of priorities. I think the idea of spheres of influence, you can see already, is just not going to work. I cannot see any United States president sitting back and saying, well, yeah, we're going to let all of East and Southeast Asia fall within a Chinese sphere of influence. And the reality is, of course, that Chinese economic and technological influence is spreading very, very rapidly in Latin America, in Africa, and actually most of the rest of the world. I mean, they're now, of course, for most countries in the world, China is now a more important trading partner than is the United States. So this is some pretty existential issues for the US, but even more for European countries about trying to ensure that we have a choice of suppliers of technology looking to the future. We don't simply have no choice other than those that China is willing to provide. And, you know, the Chinese make no secret of the fact that their ambition is to dominate the supply chains for all the key 21st century technology, quantum, AI, zero carbon, autonomous vehicle, synthetic biology by the centenary of the revolution in 2049. And we shouldn't complain so much about China. We should have more energy to acting in a way that gives us choice of technology suppliers in the future. So I don't think this influence works. But I think that what you're seeing is a nationalist approach within the United States is how I would describe it. And particularly with Trump and the MAGA people, the Stephen Millers, the J.D. Vance's who are sort of close to him, is a sense that they can do without allies. they rather despise the notion of treaties and multilateral organisations. And the United States has all this power, economic, military, technological, financial. Well, why should we feel constrained about how we use it to pursue our own national interest? Now, I can argue, I'm not an American, but I would argue that actually, that might work in the short term. In the long term, you find that other nations then start to look for alternative arrangements and your global influence and your ability to rally support when you have a problem. For example, the US did most obviously after 9-11 is more limited than it once would have been. You erode that capital stock of goodwill and fellow feeling. But I think that's the world in which we are. And I say I think a future president may well be more tempered, less mercurial than President Trump. But I think that more nationalist tone in American politics and that looking first to the Indo-Pacific rather than the Euro-Atlantic sphere is likely to continue. So I think, frankly, however you interpret the approach that this president or future presidents will take, the message to European leaders remains the same, which is we're going to have to shoulder much more responsibility ourselves. That means leaders are going to need to face up to some very difficult conversations with their electorates in European democracies about the need for defence and security to be an overriding priority. and that meaning that sadly we will have to at least defer some of the good things that we would like to be able to accomplish on the front of domestic policy because unless we get defence and security right you can forget about everything else and unless we get defence and security right then our ability to deter adversaries and through deterrence limit the risk of all-out conflict in the future is itself diminished. On that very point then it's a plan a to deal with Trump seem to be to double down on the existing institutions to sort of have this European pillar in NATO to step up defence spending. The EU is going to play a much greater role in developing the European defence industry and we have seen those things happening. But at the same time, we now see questions about whether NATO can survive the Trump years. I mean, whether we can survive the Greenland crisis. The EU seems to struggle because of the consensus principle. We've seen this on the sanctions. And we see it again now on Greenland, actually, with reports Hungary's holding up a common position on that. I think you had some very interesting thoughts at that conference last summer when you spoke really about how European leaderships then are now starting to work together in formats like the E3, which we've seen particularly on Ukraine. We've seen sub-regional groups like the Nordic group, and we see that again on the Greenland question. They seem to be very in lockstep on this. Do you think we're starting to see a new architecture of leadership around defence and security as there's an uncertainty about the US? I mean, the US in a way has allowed a multilateral Europe to flourish, but without that US leadership, we're going to see a different kind of European security architecture. I think it's starting to evolve. It's evolving, in my judgment, far too slowly and cautiously. I think that anyone who's attended as many EU council meetings as I have knows that the Foreign Affairs Council of the European Union is not the place you go to for rapid decisiveness over an international crisis. The consensus principle is written into EU law. And while in the Lisbon Treaty, there are the so-called passerelle clauses that make it possible for them to move to qualified majority voting rather than unanimity on foreign and security policy. I just don't believe there was ever going to be a French president or a German chancellor who would consent to them losing an effective right of veto over a European act. It the very idea that you could have the EU vote by majority outvoting France to make a military commitment somewhere despite the views of the most significant military power within the EU It just crazy So it not going to happen And there are a lot of valiant countries in Europe, countries like Denmark, like Estonia, that made a huge contribution to the NATO Article 5 support for the United States in Afghanistan. So they're willing to play their part, but they're small. And they have both small armed forces and small systems of government that don't have the capabilities that the system of government, for all its faults in Britain or in France or in Germany, do possess. So it's going to be the big players that are bound to take the lead. And one of the changes I notice is I think the smaller European countries, for the most part, I mean, Victor Orbán's a bit of an exception, but for the most part, they're willing to accept that the big military powers should take a lead and that the fears of a sort of directorate are less than they once were because of the gravity of the crisis we now face with Russia and with US going lukewarm. So my view is whether we call the current arrangement E3, E3+, or Weimar+, we need to build on that. Now, we used to have something called the Western European Union, which was a military alliance that was subject to NATO broadly, but it brought the European members of the Western alliance together. And then that was dissolved by mutual consent, because it was felt that a combination of NATO on the one hand, and the development of European Union foreign security policy on the other made it obsolete. Now, actually, I think looking at the world as it is, I think we probably need a new European treaty and a new European security architecture. I would argue very much anchored within NATO because NATO has the habit of working together since the 1940s. It's got the practice of joint operations, joint training, the whole principle of interoperability of weapon systems and armed forces methods of working and deployment that you'd be very foolish to give up. It's a network of command headquarters in different parts of Europe, secure NATO communications, and so on. It would be pointless to try to duplicate all of that. So I would say have a new European security treaty, which all the European democracies would be invited to join, that in an ideal world, I would see the European Union collectively, as well as individual states, becoming a party to that European Security Treaty, because like it or not, when I was here at Minister Iman, we used to object to most efforts to collectivise on an EU basis, anything to do with defence and security. We said, don't duplicate NATO. I think since we left, they have taken things much further. And the Ukraine crisis has led to things like EU budgetary expenditure on defence material to supply to Ukraine. And that was not something that we thought about during the time we were members of the EU. So the EU Commission needs to be involved because their budget is involved, because their single market responsibilities for the European defence industry are engaged, because the EU does have competence over things like sanctions policy and trade restrictions that are important soft power backup to the use of hard power in a crisis. So I would bring in all the member states and I would bring in the EU collectively as well. So they're bound in. And one of the consequences, of course, of the Ukraine crisis has been actually the much better, smoother working relationship between NATO and the EU. And both Stoltenberg and now Rutter have developed, I think, a very good working relationship with Ursula von der Leyen and now with Mrs. Kallas as well as the new foreign policy chief in the EU. And that's very, very welcome. So a new treaty. And then I think that then provides this treaty structure anchored in NATO with a link to the EU and its capabilities as well, within which coalitions of the willing can be assembled. It's not going to work if you go for a mechanism where you require unanimity, or where you require everybody to be obliged to act at the same time. But I think where it works is if you basically have the UK, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, probably, perhaps Spain, say, yeah, we're going to be involved, you will then find that quite a number of the smaller countries want to row in as part of that as well. And those coalitions of the willing can be assembled to deal with whatever crisis we're dealing with. Now, whether that's Russian incursions into Moldova, or whether that is attempts to ferment disorder in the Western Balkans, or whether it's a humanitarian crisis some way, no, God forbid, but, you know, a Rwanda-style genocide happening that European countries ought to be involved with, then you would have the structures and the tools and the habits of working together for European countries at least to decide whether they wanted to take action, to know they had the capability to take action without the United States if it was necessary. And I would always argue the more we do for ourselves in Europe, the more likely it is that whoever's running the US is going to still want to remain connected because we will be seen to be playing our fair share in common defence and security arrangements. But there's no reason why that new European pillar of the Atlantic Alliance should not also negotiate some sort of partnership with Canada, should not also negotiate some sort of partnership with Japan. So I think that once you've got that treaty and those institutions in effect, you can develop those into the future. I think that is the best way in the world we're moving into to look after our long-term security. It's not all going to be easy because if you look just at defence industry, you see all the problems that there have been over British participation in the SAFE initiative of the EU, where the gap between what we're prepared to pay and what Brussels is demanding is vast and has proved unbridgeable so far. And if you hypothesize and say, well, for there to be an effective European defense, then some national defense industry champions are going to have to do without certain contracts that they perhaps had expected to get, because this would need to be organized on a cooperative basis around the European democratic world as a whole. That starts to raise some really difficult political questions. But in my mind, that just reinforces the need for there to be institutional arrangements where these decisions and dilemmas are confronted. Because at the moment, people will just retreat into an understandable position of putting their own national interest first. And the risk is if you do that, you get away with very little in terms of effective European defence and security. You paint, I think, a very attractive future in a way. I mean, it sounds very pragmatic, but I do wonder whether some of those issues you've got to at the end, the obstacles, are going to be much bigger and more protracted than we imagine now. And of course, time is not on our side. So starting a 10-year negotiation on the future of European security is going to be difficult. But just a couple of points. I wonder on NATO. I mean, if the US is still in NATO, I think the risk for Europe is going to be that actually the US will block a lot of this because particularly under Trump, where he doesn't want challenges to Russia. He wants to work with Russia, wants to work with Russia in other places, not just in Europe. So a US in NATO is going to be quite a difficult challenge. I mean, can we deter Russia through NATO with the Americans there under the current circumstance? I think it's quite difficult to imagine at the moment how we could have a real conversation because the Europeans will be talking about deterrence and maybe confrontation. And the United States, obviously, would not be on the same page. And then, as you say, on the EU side, the safe discussion highlights that very clearly. I mean, it wasn't just that it was a high figure, but it was a deliberate figure to block the UK. I mean, France and others in the commission clearly came out with a figure that they knew was impossible, particularly because we know that Canada got in for a few million euros rather than six billion euros as the UK was set before us. So there does seem to be a European geopolitics, not of the past, but nonetheless, there is a competition amongst European countries. Who's going to lead this? Who's going to set this? And I was just, even before this podcast, I was reading about Germany and France having very different positions on the Greenland question. Even obviously, President Macron is going out very hard. This is Europe's moment. We must stand up, must use the trade bazooka. We can't let the Americans roll over us. And the Germans are taking a much more conciliatory, trying to keep the Euro-Atlantic community together. So I just wonder, can we actually navigate from the old order to this new sunny uplands that you're talking about? Or is actually, are we going to get overtaken and perhaps something much more ad hoc, crisis driven and actually probably reflecting diverse national interests may begin to emerge? And that to me is what the mini lateralism that we see emerging seems to reflect in many ways. Let's talk about Russia, first of all. Your first question to me, Neil. First of all, we in Europe should not talk ourselves down on this. I think it's true to say that nuclear deterrence against Russia only works if the United States is involved. And it's hard to see in any time in the foreseeable future how you have a European nuclear deterrent, even assuming all the political obstacles to that could be overcome, that is going to be effective against Russia. But it's also pretty clear from Ukraine that Putin does not really want to use nuclear weapons. He threatens from time to time. And it's clear also that the Chinese are very clear that they do not want the Russians to set that precedent. But if you look at conventional weaponry, and you look at economic strength, the European democracies combined have a GDP roughly 10 times that of Russia. Russia's GDP is smaller than Italy's. So we shouldn't be overawed by this. And the Russian armed forces that I think most of us, including a lot of real experts in the defence and intelligence world, expected to steamroll up Ukraine within a matter of days, have been bogged down now for nigh on four years against valiant Ukrainian resistance. So I think that effective action by the European countries in their own defence can deter Russian adventurism. And the more we are seen to do for ourselves, I think the stronger the chances that the US is going to stand behind us, and if not this president, I think he's very mercurial, then whoever comes in his wake, a Republican or Democrat, I think is more likely to stand with us if we're doing our fair share. I think when you look at the internal politics of Europe, yeah, it is difficult. Look, I was in the House of Commons for nearly 28 years. I mean, I know plenty about how national and parochial interests do affect this. If you're a member of a national parliament representing a constituency where there is an important defence industrial complex, a tank factory or aircraft factory or whatever, yeah, you're going to be shouting at your bosses in your governing party about this. But the way to address this is through developing the habit of working together. And that is, it's, there have been, as with SAFE, there have been some, I think, examples of real pig-headed, short-sighted approaches to European defence security. And if we're saying that the threat from Russia is existential, and that the risk of not being able to rely on the US in the way we have for the past 80 years is real, then to be quibbling over the entry fee for British participation in SAFE is crazy. The fact that we have two competing European fighter aircraft programmes in development when it's very hard to see how there's a market for two seems a crazy way in which to proceed. But it may be, you're right, Neil, in your pessimism, that this cannot be made to work, in which case European countries will end up having to submit to basically what the United States or Russia, particularly if you're in Central Europe, tell you they want you to do. But perhaps I'm being very old-fashioned about this. I mean, my belief is that the job of political leaders in serious countries is to identify what is in their national interest and to try to set out solutions to address successfully the policy challenges that they face, and then to use all the tools of communications to persuade their electorates about the necessity of the course of action which they want to take. And if you look at the greatest leaders in post-war European history, so if you look at the likes of Adenau and Erhard in Germany, or you look at De Gaulle in France, or you look at Margaret Thatcher in Britain, all of these leaders, they were people who were fierce opponents of what they wished to do. But what I think they all had in common was a set of beliefs about what was in the national interests of the countries which they led and a determination to use persuasion and political will in combination to try to get the outcomes that they wanted And no political need gets everything that they want But I think all those three in their different countries made a massive difference. And in a different way, you could say that the founding fathers of the European Union, the Monets and the Sparks and Gaspers and so on, set in train a process of institutional development that has been of profound significance to the way in which European democracies have developed since the war. On the leadership question, perhaps turning more to the UK side, I mean, Prime Minister Stalmark has been walking a tightrope. I mean, he's got on the one side the legacy of the Brexit years with the European relationship. Now he's got the very embedded UK-US relationship, but a Trumpian administration. And he seems to be trying to continue the UK's longstanding position of being the bridge between the two not having to choose. Do you think this is still a sustainable position for the UK, given all of these changes that we see? Are we going to have to decide that we're going to go with Europe or we're going to go with the US at some point, you think? I think that there's a difference between what a British Prime Minister should say in public and what the British Prime Minister should do, as well as say in private in these circumstances. When you've got someone like Donald Trump, and when you've got the reality of the fact that we and the rest of democratic Europe are still very dependent on the US for our defence and security, then you have to use flattery, you have to use the channels that are available to you. You've probably got to have conversations with the United States now of the kind that we have with the Chinese, where British prime ministers, Labour or Conservative, tend not to shout through megaphone at Chinese leaders, but they do bring up the difficult subjects and the disagreements in private conversation with them. And I think that's probably how we have to deal with President Trump at the moment. I think that what is missing is a sense that, to my mind, the government has grasp the urgency of the need for action underneath the rhetoric to get us and to get democratic Europe as a whole into the space where we can, if necessary, and I stress if necessary, defend ourselves and our interests without that reliance on the Americans that we have at present so that we don't have to despair if the US under whoever's leadership were to decide that they don't want to come to the assistance of European democracies under threat from Russia or anybody else. And if you look at what J.D. Vance said at the Munich Security Conference last year, I mean, it seems to me he has a more worked out, more ideological view of the United States interest or lack of interest in Europe than his president has. And if we were to get another three years of Trump and then eight years of a president advance, then I think we would see the current direction of travel by the United States accelerating. And so I just think European countries, including Britain, have to act on the basis that we will need to develop much greater capacity to act without the United States if that is forced upon us. But clearly the optimum outcome is that the United States remains committed, remains involved. And we're more likely to achieve that if we're taking steps that would also have the effect of making ourselves better able to act independently if that were necessary. On that issue, why we're not acting, it's not true that all of us aren't acting. I mean, you can see the big uptick in Germany. In fact, the podcast last week, we were covering the German rearmament. But the UK does seem to be struggling. I travel around Europe quite a lot and I hear a lot of enthusiasm for the UK. People seem to like the UK vision, the commitments, the sort of signing agreements, particularly with the Nordic countries. There's a lot of trust, I think, up in the UK as a partner. But there is increasing skepticism that beyond the words, there's not much happening. There's a lot of commitments being made, but no real investment going in. What do you think is holding the UK back? Is it the Labour party? Is it lack of societal preparedness? Or how do you see a pathway to break through this political deadlock we seem to have? I'm afraid when you're looking at something as significant as a shift in national priorities to put defence at the top of the list in the way it has not been since the end of the Cold War, so you're going right back to 1990, 1991, then that can only come from number 10. And that has to involve a willingness to face up to, in the case of the current government, to their own party, but also to the wider general public as well. And that challenge would be there if it were a conservative government, as well as if it is now a Labour government, and say that we have to rearm in a significant way. And that means we're going to have to sacrifice some of the other domestic policy priorities that we want to do. So we might have to do things on pensions in a triple lock. We might have to do things on welfare spending. We might have to do things in not increasing money available for health or for education the way we'd like to do. We might have to put up taxes, be another way of addressing this, because we're going to need this for defence and we're going to need to do this quickly, up front. We cannot wait until 2035 to be hitting the new NATO target for defence expenditure. And the problem is, I look at the current government's projected spend. I applaud the increase that's been announced in defence spending, and I rate John Healy, I have a lot of respect for him as defence secretary. But I look at how that money is proposed to be phased in, it really only starts to flow in after to the end of the current parliament, so beyond the next general election, and picks up in the, frankly, hypothetical world of the early 2030s, when certainly most chance of the exchequer would be able to say, well, I won't be around to have to take those decisions at that moment, about what you give up in order to have the money for defence. And I get that the Treasury, institutionally, is deeply sceptical of the ability of the Ministry of Defence to manage its procurement budget and to manage spending efficiently. And that scepticism you found amongst Conservative chancellors, you now have with the present Labour Chancellor. And the MOD has got to improve its own act very, very significantly. And you talk to the current defence sector and you talk to other people who've been active in senior positions in defence, and they will admit that that is something that does need to be addressed. And I think Healy is putting in place some measures to try to improve things on that count. Things like the National Armourish Director, I think, are a good step. But where's the defence industry strategy, which we're promised in the autumn and which we're still waiting for? So I think what I'm missing is the political leadership that is saying to the British public as a whole, and in passing to Labour members of Parliament and Labour Party members, look, defence is of overriding importance. that means it has to come in front of other priorities and it might mean it's a my own party also it might mean that you've got to accept at least for a time we're going to have to raise taxes have an extra defense premium on tax rates and we promise that that will be hypothecated for defense and that's something the treasuries under whoever's in government doesn't like hypothecated taxes but you have to say if we're putting for the sake of argument another paid an income tax for five years, that is all going to go to defence because we absolutely desperately need that. And you have to have political leaders who will go out and make those really difficult, unpopular arguments to the public and try to persuade the public to follow that leadership. It won't be the first time. I'm old enough to have to remember in the 1980s when we had the deployment of American cruise and Persian missiles to Europe. And the idea that cruise missiles would be stationed in the United Kingdom aroused a lot of opposition at the time. And what I remember is Margaret Thatcher as prime minister and Michael Heseltine as defence secretary went out and made that case again and again and again that the deployment of these missiles would actually make us safer, not more vulnerable, because it would add to the deterrence of any potential attack by the Soviet Union against the UK or UK interests. I don't think they were right, but my point is they won that argument because they had the political courage to get on the front foot and go out and make the case. And Prime Minister is a different political party from me, But I would support him going out to make that case to the British people now, because I think the case is solid and real and urgent. And I think he would find he would get a lot of cross-party political support were he prepared to show greater boldness and greater urgency. Perhaps then as a last question, a return to this issue, I think that's run through a lot of your comments, is the need for a new kind of political leadership in Europe at the national level, but also this vision of a transformation of European security and the role of European states in their own security is going to happen. where do you see that coming from we've got a situation we just talked about the difficulties in the uk and of course perhaps you'd also acknowledge that the prime minister he has a large majority but he doesn't necessarily have a large majority within his own party for defense spending there's still a strong commitment to public sector we've got president macron who has got a dreadful situation at home and is on his way out but with a perhaps a far right alternative waiting to come in. And we have Chancellor Mertz, who's still perhaps struggling to find his footing exactly on the European scene. We saw him stepping out a bit at the end of last year on the frozen assets, but actually not being able to deliver that and being knocked back a little bit. Do we need a new generation, do you think? Can you see a way forward at the European level for the current leadership to actually begin to move on these questions? I think that the present leadership should try, would be my view. And yes, the difficulties that you describe are real. And for Germany and for many, many other European countries, of course, the realities of coalition governments, where even the prime minister or chancellor cannot simply take a decision and impose his or her will upon the rest of the government, when you've got rival political parties trying to work out a compromise in partnership together. But I don't think that we can simply say, well, let's wait three years to the next British election or two years to the next French presidential election or less than two years now. And then it will be sorted out. There will always be somebody else's election that is coming up. And so the French constitution gives President Macron certain powers over defence and security matters. They accrue to the Elysee rather than to the Matignon. So I would say, look, let's try and make a start with what we've got, because we are seeing the habit of consulting together, working together amongst the key leaders in the big European powers already taking root. And that needs to be developed further. And I see no reason why, for example, the discussions about some new treaty and European security architecture could not be initiated now. As you said yourself, Neon, challenging me, that you're not going to get agreement on the legal draft of a treaty overnight, but you've got to get it started at some point. So I would urge the current leadership to get on and do that. And if you look at a country like Poland, where there have been massive, bitter differences between the two leading political parties in Poland, there has still been common support for an extraordinary process of rearmament in Poland. I remember Alex Sigorsky saying to me, the Polish foreign minister, saying that we know what Russian occupation is like and we would rather eat grass than have that ever happen to us again. You look at Finland and Sweden, where you have countries where compromise and coalition are absolutely integral to how they do govern, particularly Finland. And yet you have examples there of societal resilience, of what the Finns call total defence, which is, I think, in itself a formidable deterrent against attack. in part, not just because the resistance would come from citizenry as well as from the professional forces, but because society would be able to recover relatively quickly from the sort of sabotage, cyber attacks and so on, to which all of us are vulnerable. This brings us to the end of today's discussion on the future of the Transatlantic Alliance. I would like to thank this week's guest, Sir David Livington, for sharing his views with us. Global Security Briefing is available on all major podcast platforms, please like and subscribe. For further information about the work of the international security team at RUSI, please follow us on X at ISS underscore RUSI and on LinkedIn at international security RUSI. And also find out more about the IS team's research on regional security issues around the world on the RUSI website. But from now, it's goodbye from me, Neil Melvin at RUSI in London. Bye.