This article was first published on 3 April 2025 on David Gow’s substack at https://davidgow.substack.com/p/pox-americana.
By David Gow
US President Trump is dismantling the 80-year-old economic and security order and seeking to install a new American imperialist autarky. Time for Europe to remake itself.
Donald Trump has upended the post-Second World War global order of the past 80 years just a few weeks into his second term as US President. His apparent embrace of Vladimir Putin’s aggressively imperialist ambitions over Ukraine and his manifest hatred of and contempt for Europe have left the UK and EU leadership floundering like headless chickens and feeling very vulnerable in an unstable, hostile world that’s being carved up by Washington, Beijing and Moscow.
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And now he has just unveiled global trade tariffs designed to promote American autarky as in the 19th century, with the EU again in his sights (after China) as supposedly a body and market specifically set up to rip off the US. “This all spells the end of post-war Pax Americana, said former Estonian President Toomas Henrik Ilves in Scotland this week.
Senior Trump administration figures, even so, view Europe as a ‘third-rate backwater’. While the gross domestic products of the US and EU were similar in 2008, the American economy is now 50 per cent bigger. Led by Vice-President JD Vance, Trump’s attack dogs call out Europeans for “freeloading” on American largesse, enabling them to nestle parasitically under the USA security umbrella while feeding their bloated welfare systems.
This highly disruptive geopolitical environment provided the backdrop to an all-day conference on “the Future(s) of Europe”, organised last week by the Scottish Council on Global Affairs and held in private under Chatham House rules.
The discussions highlighted the often conflicting views among European analysts about how to handle Trump 2.0’s America: continuing friend, frenemy, or foe? Is the US-Europe relationship (still) based on shared values or crude transactionalism? If the latter, is the price too extortionist – namely the plunder of Greenland and Ukraine and their minerals?
Inevitably, the consensus at the conference was that Europe would have to raise its game in defence and security. That much is already a given whether we call it strategic autonomy after France’s President Emmanuel Macron or interdependency – defence spending as a share of GDP is on the rise, including in the UK. Security has replaced climate change as Europe’s top priority.
But there is no consensus in the wider Europe about how to respond to Trump 2.0: refuse to choose between the US and EU (doing so would be “childish” in the words of Italy’s Georgia Meloni); act as a bridge (Keir Starmer); warmly embrace the Maga agenda (Viktor Orban’s Hungary); think of the European Defence Union as an adjunct or, eventually, an alternative to Nato (Macron and Germany’s likely new Chancellor, Friedrich Merz); worry about greater exposure (central and eastern Europe).
Scotland’s role
Also, where does Scotland fit into this volatile picture? Defence, of course, is a reserved matter but the Scottish Government shares at least some responsibility for security with Westminster. Some senior figures within it, we heard, would like to expand that role after the motto: “Think like a state, act like a state.”
Russia’s growing presence in the North Atlantic alongside China and the US is heightening tension as is that of Russian ships in the North and Irish Seas. This potential threat prompted suggestions that Scottish-based naval vessels as well as maritime patrol aircraft based in Lossiemouth should be monitoring these waters where the Russian presence is likely to grow.
But it is the deployment of “soft power” like cultural diplomacy that most interests government officials. There is the fanciful idea that Scotland could offer its nascent Peace Institute as a forum for debating ideas on how to resolve global conflicts. The obvious issue here is what place is there for Scotland to offer such facilities which traditionally belong to international bodies or established nation states.
More tangible is Scotland’s energy potential – producing “green” hydrogen and co-operating with other countries in north-west Europe such as Ireland and Denmark in building infrastructure for distributing it, towards, say, Germany as it transitions away from fossil fuels.
There is undoubtedly huge interest in Germany in developing clean energy ties with Scotland as Europe’s biggest economy undertakes the modernisation of its sclerotic industrial base. The Bundestag recently approved a special, 500-billion-euro (£418bn), off-budget fund for infrastructure spending over the next ten years – a move that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
The EU as such is ramping up its security policy, including the new €150bn fund for defence loans – unavailable so far to the UK. But that latter issue may be resolved at the May 19 summit between the EU and UK that could trigger a defence pact which might in turn evolve into a European Defence Union as envisaged by Churchill (without Britain) in the 1950s. The as yet unanswerable question is whether this would be a wholly European arm of Nato or even replace the Atlantic alliance.
Certainly, Scotland would bring (British) assets to such an arrangement – 17 regular armed forces sites, seven Royal Navy operated sites and two key RAF bases, plus its shipbuilding facilities on the Clyde and Forth, and its growing presence in the space sector where it builds more small satellites than anywhere else in Europe. We may not build tanks but we do produce drones – arguably proving to be the key weapon in Ukraine War.
And, of course, Scotland is home to Faslane, aka HM Naval Base Clyde, with its Trident nuclear deterrent and new generation of hunter-killer submarines. This is likely to grow in importance, and controversy, in what experts call the new third nuclear age: one marked by multipolar foes but also allies such as South Korea, maybe even Germany, seeking their own deterrent. The Putin Doctrine that marks this new era includes scrapping, or putting on life support, international arms control treaties, with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at risk.
The key issue for Scotland is to secure presence and leverage in this debate on Europe’s future triggered by the Putin/Trump tandem plans to decide this together in their own countries’ strategic (and commercial) interests – not ours. We too must step up our game. Ilves, our Estonian colleague, said in this week’s talk on the ‘New Cold War’: “Russia is willing to change the rules of the game and so is the US so it’s up to Europe to remake itself again.” Is Scotland willing to join in creating the new Europe?
This is an edited/updated version of a recent article in The Scotsman (£)
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