Starmer’s OnLy Choice: Europe

The British prime minister should abandon the illusion that Britain can act as a bridge between the US and Europe and opt for full-blooded European strategic autonomy, with the UK at its heart.

This article was first published 9 March 20205 on David Gow’s substack at https://davidgow.substack.com/p/starmers-only-choice-europe.

By David Gow

Keir Starmer says choosing between the US and Europe is “absurd.” He’s wrong. Refusing to face the facts is deluded. The actions and attitudes of Donald Trump in 48 days into his second term as US President spell out the end of the 80-year-old peace settlement (warts and all) on our continent. That presents the UK with a stark, unavoidable choice.

Trump is tilting towards Russia, maybe because he wants to detach it from its alliance of convenience with China, America’s most serious challenger and greatest concern. Perhaps because he sees huge commercial prospects for the US and himself in its damaged economy. Or because Vladimir Putin possesses genuine kompromat on him. That alone renders Starmer’s refusal to choose unviable. But there’s more, far more.

There is not a scintilla of evidence, so far at least, that Trump is putting any pressure on Putin to engage in meaningful peace negotiations with Ukraine. Au contraire. He, his vulgar, brutal Veep, and the entire posse of fawning, cowardly courtiers executing his foreign policy – step forward “Little Marco” – give every sign of acceding to his every demand. These demands include Ukrainian capitulation, dismemberment of its territorial integrity (et tu, Alaska?) and removal of President Zelensky, with his replacement by a Russian puppet in the manner of Yanukovych. The logical end-point of that appeasement is Moscow’s complete absorption of a once sovereign Ukraine into a restored Rus.

Trump and his barbarian cohort no longer see much merit in the Atlantic Alliance/Nato and the notion that they would ride to the rescue of, say, Latvia via the famous Article Five beggars belief. This is a US President who openly talks of taking over – by “economic force” – a fellow Nato member/neighbour, Canada, and turning it into the 51^st federal state. And occupying, “one way or another,” Greenland, an autonomous part of Denmark. What’s next? Allowing Georgia, Moldova and, ultimately, Poland to be under complete Russian control?

Such dire prospects are openly acknowledged by Starmer’s fellow European leaders/putative members of the “coalition of the willing” he summoned up a week ago. French President, Emmanuel Macron, has been cheerleader for Europe’s “strategic autonomy” for several years – albeit without much tangible success before last week’s EU summit decision to raise €800bn to “rearm Europe”, and even that is a paper plan. Donald Tusk, Polish premier, has, meanwhile, put in train plans to raise his country’s defence spend to 5% of GDP (double Starmer’s target in relative terms), reintroduce military training for all (male) adults and even acquire nuclear weapons.

But the most pivotal moment – a second Zeitenwende – has come with Friedrich Merz’s decision as chancellor-in-waiting to prepare for a huge German rearmament. It’s hard to over-estimate the import of this move for a country that has grown up on coming to terms with its barbaric past (1933-45) under the genocidal Nazis and the post-Cold War peace dividend (1990-). Such a notion was anathema when I was the Guardian’s German correspondent 30-odd years ago; Volker Ruhe, then defence minister, and his senior military experts/planners spent many hours in conversation explaining why it was unthinkable for the Bundeswehr to oversee the return of soldiers in zinc coffins, let alone act “out of area” (Nato). Merz, a conservative Atlanticist, could prove to be the architect of radical change in post-1945 Germany.

Starmer’s choice

The British prime minister, by contrast, is shaping up as a very traditional c(C)onservative thinker in foreign and security policy, let alone on socio-economic issues. He is desperately clinging to the Churchillian notion of the UK acting as a bridge between the US and Europe when, if not his predecessors before him, Trump has detonated that phantasmagorical structure. Starmer has (deservedly) won praise for his handling of Trump since January 20’s inauguration but it has come at the cost of grotesque obsequiousness which won’t guarantee special treatment in future, notably on tariffs.

Starmer should match Trump’s tilt to Russia with a British turn to Europe – and one that is whole-hearted. I accept that rejoining the EU is not on the immediate agenda, probably not in my lifetime, but reset certainly is – and that should go way beyond current tentative moves to embrace spearheading a European Defence Community and/or Union in the likelihood that Nato disappears if and when Trump pulls the US out. “I think we are already witnessing a new era, an era where we cannot take for granted US security guarantees,” Ben Wallace, former Conservative defence secretary, told the BBC at the weekend.

Would that the current UK administration showed such clear-sightedness. Notably that it would not be “the end of the world” if MAGAland left Nato. If Europe means what it says about Ukraine, it should turn its warm embrace for Zelensky into more military hardware, stepped-up intelligence sharing and readiness to commit “boots on the ground.” That Europe must mean the UK too. We cannot appease Putin. Nor Trump for that matter.

The European Movement in Scotland is committed to promoting the essential European value of free speech. Consequently, we regularly publish articles by leading academics, journalists and others discussing issues germane to Scotland’s place in Europe. Such articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Movement in Scotland.