This article was first published on 15 February 2025 on Kirsty Hughes’s substack at https://kirstyhughes.substack.com/p/what-comes-after-the-west-and-where
By Kirsty Hughes
The fracturing of ‘the West’ is not new. But its speed of collapse in the last few days and weeks is extraordinary.
Following Trump’s phone call with Putin just last Wednesday, vice-president Vance, defence secretary Hegseth, and Trump’s Ukraine envoy Kellogg have together been busy both aiming to dictate what happens in peace talks with Ukraine and telling the rest of Europe, apart from Ukraine, that they cannot have a seat at the negotiating table but must supply troops and support once a deal is done with Russia.
Beyond Ukraine, Vance joined Elon Musk in praising Europe’s far right, especially in Germany, with just a week to go before its election, meeting the AfD’s leader, and attacking European democracy. It may not be surprising, in one way, that the far right in power in the US would promote the far right in Germany and elsewhere. But still, it is extraordinary.
It’s the end of ‘the West’ and of the transatlantic alliance. And, as Philip Stephens writes: “The best to be hoped of the US is that a future president will reclaim some of that country’s democratic values. The American security shield is gone forever.”
The EU in a World of a few Great Powers
As many others have said, we are reverting at speed to a ‘great powers’ world of some sort. Trump in his first weeks in power has moved to undermine American democracy, antagonise allies, undermine international institutions and threaten and impose tariffs. It’s a deliberate fomenting of economic, political and democratic disarray, not least in Europe but elsewhere too.
If it’s a great power world of some sort, then Europe or the EU needs to discover rapidly how to behave more like a serious power than it has up to now. And that surely must start with insisting that the EU or some of its lead member states are at the talks with Russia.
President Macron today (15th February) has called a summit, probably for Monday of European leaders. We will see where that takes us. But speedy European positioning is vital – even if much of a more substantive response to Trump’s collapsing of US-European relations will take longer (a good overview of the EU’s potential responses, and weaknesses, is in this piece today by the FT’s Tony Barber).
President Zelensky told the Munich Security Conference, today (15 February), that Europe must build its own armed forces: “We must build the armed forces of Europe so that Europe’s future depends only on Europeans and decisions about Europe are made in Europe.” This won’t happen overnight. And while the UK’s foreign and defence ministers have said that the UK must do more for European security, Lord Dannatt, former army chief in the UK, has intervened to say that the UK will struggle to provide adequate forces to a potential Ukraine peacekeeping force after any peace deal.
There will be time to argue over how much more European states and the US should have done to back Ukraine in the last three years, and what the EU as a whole, and in terms of individual countries, should have done to resist the relative rise of the far right. But if the EU does not ensure it has a role and a say in Ukraine-Russia – and US – peace talks, then it will look weak indeed. And, for European security, a revived and US-supported Russia is obviously the last thing that the EU wants or needs.
EU Comfort Zones Crumbled
The EU has its own comfort zones that it has now been rudely pushed out of – and at speed. The EU has had its own divisions over Gaza – with Germany supplying arms, and Spain and Ireland leading in calling out Israel’s genocidal destruction of Gaza. That has deeply undermined the EU’s international position, now and in the future, both in terms of standing for democracy and human rights, and in calling for wider international support for Ukraine. The destruction of Gaza already represented, rightly, a major fault in ‘the West’s’ power and influence at a time of growing geopolitical instability long before Trump came to power.
And, in recent weeks, it’s been clear, and not surprising, that the EU is much more in its comfort zone when it comes to discussing humanitarian aid and how to rebuild Gaza than on calling out war crimes and genocide. But Trump’s extreme comments earlier last week saying Hamas must release all hostages by today, and his comments on ethnic cleansing of the entire Gazan population, have pushed the EU into a more difficult position – trying to be more strategically assertive while lacking much influence.
The EU has, in response, been discussing with Arab states other proposals for rebuilding Gaza. That’s a step forward. But the EU’s influence here is weak. The UK, also supplying arms used for the destruction of Gaza, has too called for a two state solution but with little influence either over the US or Israel.
Dealing with Trump’s actual and threatened tariff is, relatively speaking, somewhat more of a comfort zone for the EU. The EU knows how to act in trade wars and, so far, has sounded a lot stronger than the fawning approach the UK has adopted. But when the US threatens to damage its own and neighbours and allies’ economies, the geopolitics of the unfolding trade war is not simple either. Nor when the wider cost of living crisis is one of the causes of our discontented politics in Europe.
What Now?
Given the speed of events, we don’t know what will come next. But European states will need to be as united as possible. If renegade states, notably Hungary and Slovakia, within the EU are not on board with key European foreign policy positions in the coming days, then either these will have to be taken by groups of European states and/or ways found to sideline Hungary if it does block any needed EU decisions.
The UK will need to stand with the EU on Ukraine and not continue its instinctive weak, be nice to both sides approach. Starmer did, yesterday, insist that Ukraine has a clear NATO path. But he has no means of influencing Trump on that.
President Zelensky is showing more foreign policy nous than most European leaders. He’s standing firm, for now, on security guarantees and US access to Ukraine’s rare earth mineral resources. He knows he needs European support too – for the peace talks, for peacekeepers, for security guarantees, and too for future (needs to be rapid) EU membership.
The European Union knows that its comfort zones have crumbled. And it needs to get a new act together fast. Yet, with the worst possible timing, Germany’s election next week will see its current Chancellor and social democrats lose the election, and the far right AfD probably come second. These geopolitical times do not allow for slow talks on different possible governing coalitions for Germany after the election. Europe cannot afford that.
In the midst of this blow-by-rapid-blow crumbling of the geopolitical status quo, the climate crisis appears to have been left behind. But Trump, in withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, and promoting oil and gas, has ensured a deepening of that biggest and most fundamental global challenge. The EU has to stop backsliding on its climate plans and, there at least, be a serious global leader – and stop the creeping slide of its centre-right political parties to ever more climate-policy scepticism.
Events are not slowing down. The coming weeks are crucial. And while the old saying has it that the EU thrives in a crisis, the challenge here is going to be for the EU to play as strong and united and assertive a hand as it can, at speed, and when its own internal political conditions are far from their best. And the UK has to back the EU in this – it cannot afford to freelance somewhere mid-Atlantic.
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