Under Trump, 80 years of collective security have been dismantled in as many days

Editorial: The Atlantic Alliance used to believe it had liberal democratic values in common and a shared interest in collective security and free trade. That, thanks to the US president, is no longer true. Europe must adjust to this altered reality, or die

There is a case for saying that no one has done so much for European unity as Donald J Trump. If assessed on purely objective grounds he would be a shoo-in for this year’s Charlemagne Prize, an award given to “individuals or institutions for work done in the service of European unification”.

Mr Trump might spurn an award – and we know he thinks that the European Union was formed after the Second World War with the aim of “screwing America” – yet his actions since his election last November have pushed almost every European nation towards an ever-closer union and to cooperate on defence and security as never before.

It may be that the US’s tilt to the Kremlin, accompanied by the twin-track diplomatic and trade wars now being waged on friends and allies, will before long drive Europe to stand on its own two feet and be the independent force in world affairs that the founding fathers of the project of European unity dreamed about. At long last, Europe begins to assert itself. To borrow a famous phrase from a happier era of US-European relations, Europe, like president Barack Obama, is saying: “Yes we can.”

The “coalition of the willing” (or “coalition of action”, as French president Emmanuel Macron prefers to call it) is a concrete example of this emerging European consciousness. The project is to provide a safe and secure future for Ukraine, irrespective of what Russia or the US might desire. Russia is rightly distrusted, while there is still hope that the Americans can contribute in some way to keeping the peace in Ukraine – and in Europe more widely.

At the latest summit in Paris to push the project along, the assembled 31 nations agreed that the Anglo-French leadership of the coalition, with German involvement, can proceed further with planning the deployment of a “reassurance force” to help protect Ukraine. The chiefs of the defence staffs of the UK and France will now take their work forward with the Ukrainians to identify specific strategic locations for their deployment the day after the peace is agreed. There are echoes of 1914 and 1939 here, but in this case, it is in order to deter Russia and prevent another conflict, rather than to fight an existing war.

Perhaps providentially, the stubborn refusal of Hungary, a virtual Russian proxy, to play a proper part in European security through the European Union has liberated the “coalition of the willing” from having to work through the institutions of the EU and to gather a much wider, asymmetric alliance to protect wider Western interests.

The UK, Norway, Nato – and even Canada, Japan and Australia, as well as many other nations – are contributing what they can, militarily, financially and technologically, to stop another war in Europe. Some will be able to commit forces on the ground, at sea or in the air; others will support in other ways. But they are all doing so entirely voluntarily, as sovereign nations – and doing so because they understand that Ukraine’s fight for freedom is their fight for freedom.

Sadly, that is no longer the case with the United States, but the schism runs deeper than that. Europe and the USA no longer share interests or values as they once did. The Atlantic Alliance and the community of Western nations used to believe that they had liberal democratic values in common – and a shared interest in collective security and free trade.

That, thanks to Mr Trump, is no longer true. The war in Ukraine and the escalating global trade war are merely the most powerful manifestations of that. Indeed, we have reached the stage where not only is the US uninterested in upholding the international rule of law and rights of small nations, but wants to attack its own nominal allies: annex Canada and occupy the semi-autonomous Danish territory of Greenland.

All alliances suffer from frictions, rivalries and periodic crises. The long war in Vietnam tested the unity of the Western alliance. So did the Suez crisis. But what rebuilt Europe after 1945, kept Nato together and won the Cold War was those shared values and interests and a commonality of purpose, despite some strategic differences.

Now, the comradeship has been replaced by unilateral disdain. Shared principles have been supplanted by a transactional almost mercenary approach by the US – sending Europeans the bill for bombing the Houthis, bizarrely.

The US defence secretary Pete Hegseth and the vice-president of the United States, JD Vance, regard “the Europeans” as an unvariegated bunch of pathetic, cowardly, ungrateful freeloaders. The president’s peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, views with open contempt the efforts of Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Macron to make Mr Trump’s putative peace plan a lasting one: “There is this sort of notion that we have all got to be like Winston Churchill. Russians are going to march across Europe. That is preposterous. We have something called Nato that we did not have in World War Two," he said.

Mr Witkoff may have forgotten that at the Munich Security Conference only a few weeks ago, his US colleagues told Europeans that they had decided to downgrade Nato’s commitment to Europe – and the US now judged that the biggest threat to Poland, Germany, Sweden, Estonia et al was their decadent liberal values, rather than Vladimir Putin (ie not worth defending in Maga terms). The entire Trump administration, from the president down, are now not only siding with Russia but beginning to view Europe as an enemy – as with Mr Trump’s throwaway remark about selling only downgraded versions of the planned US F-47 fighter jet to current allies who may not be friends in future.

We cannot know where all this will end. Perhaps in 2028, order and sanity will be restored at the next US presidential election; perhaps not. What is tragically apparent is that 80 years of collective security have been dismantled in as many days. The world has changed. Europe must adjust to this altered reality, or die.