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Barry Gilheany ✍ Pax Trumpiana has been laid bare in the recent US National Security Strategy (NSS). 

Instead of explicitly identifying fellow superpowers Russia and China as potential threats to US strategic interests or indeed the other members of the BRICS club further into the future, it is Europe that attracts US ire. 

The NSS, a 29 page document which looks to be a definitive statement of foreign policy for Trump 2.0 and beyond, warns that economic stagnation, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates” and, above all, migration, raise “the stark prospect of civilisational erasure.”[1] What was more than implicitly suggested by VP JD Vance’s tirades against attacks on free speech and “wokeness” at the Munich Security Conference in January this year, becomes explicit by the NSS worries that soon some European countries “will become majority non-European”. In other words, spot the native White Christian in London, Paris, Berlin, Dublin or indeed in any European capital or major city. In case of any remaining doubt, consider Trump’s recent ramblings, but no less vicious for that, about why the US only takes people from “shithole countries” .like Somalia, and his pleading as to: “Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden … from Denmark?”.[2] So the Great Replacement Theory has moved from the margins of far right philosophical crankery to US policy.

But these are not merely rhetorical aspirations. In language reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s support for the counter-revolutionary Contra forces in Nicaragua in the 1980s and of George W. Bush’s neoconservatives’ ambitions for regime change in Iraq in the 2000s, the NSS makes explicit to support the “resistance” to civilisational decline. The “resistance” in question is far-right parties like the National Rally in France, the AfD in Germany, Reform UK[3] as well as bolstering the position of far-right nationalist outlier governments such as those of Viktor Orban in Hungary and Roberto Fico in Slovakia. In a few sentencers, the NSS trashes the ideas and values that have underpinned transatlantic cooperation since the Atlantic Charter by supporting forces fundamentally hostile to liberal democracy to undermine the US’s erstwhile allies.

Familiar but disturbing noises have accompanied the publication of NSS. The Kremlin loaded obsequies on it, calling it an “encouraging” change of policy that largely aligns with Russian thinking. “The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision” was the response of Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. Welcoming indications for the Trump administration “in favour of dialogue and good relations,” almost on MAGA cue, he warned that the supposed US “Deep State” could attempt to sabotage Trump’s vision.[4]

Elon Musk, no doubt smarting from the $120m (£90m) fine levied on his X social media bully pulpit, proclaimed his belief that the EU bloc should be “abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries”, The US deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, took aim at “the unelected, undemocratic and unrepresentative” EU which he deemed to be undermining US security”[5] . At this point, at the risk of stating the bleeding obvious (but not to the wilfully blind Eurosceptics who brought the rolling disaster that is Brexit), that that the EU is an association of 27 liberal democracies (with the exceptions of the illiberal refuseniks of Hungary and Slovakia) which elects national representatives to the European Parliament and whose duly elected governments nominate their countries' members of the European Commission and Council of Ministers. Lesson over!

For the generations who protested against America’s wars in Indochina in the 1960s and 1970s; against its support for blood stained Latin American dictatorships and counter insurgencies and deployment of Cruise and Pershing II missiles in Western Europe in the 1980s; and the invasion of Iraq and the its Global War of Terror in the 2000s, the idea of US disengagement from global security arrangements sounds like, at least to its temporally and ideologically trapped fringe fanatics, the ideal wet dream. And the first sentence of NSS pays some inverse obeisance to that desire:

After the end of the cold war, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the world was in the best interests of our country” But it is then followed by this bald statement of naked Trumpian transactionalism “Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.[6]

That sentence may be music to the ears of the nationalist far-right and Stalinist far-left but, for Paul Mason, it is shorthand for the whole NSS document’s central premise of the Putin-Xi Jinping vision of a “multipolar world” in which the US sphere of influence is the Americas and the Western Pacific and Europe is the battleground between three powers.[7] The demise of the rules based post 1945 international order may be welcomed by its detractors on the American isolationist right and on the anti-Atlanticist left who point to the numerous foreign policy inconsistencies and hypocrisies committed in the name of the West. However, the end of this order ushers in the following US strategic objectives:

  • An enhanced Monroe or “Donroe” Doctrine for the 21st century in which the US will claim the right to order the “Western Hemisphere” - i.e. the Americas, Caribbean, and the Western Pacific - to guarantee US security and access to critical minerals and reduce narcotraffic. This is already being played out in Trump’s sabre rattling over Venezuela and its attacks on small boats allegedly carrying narcotics in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific which have led to the deaths of at least 87 people; operations that defy any sort of legal criteria and which in relation to the double tap attack on the first boat on 2 September in which US forces hit its target once, then twice killing two survivors look to amount to wanton murder if, according to the Washington Post, the defence secretary had issued a verbal command to “kill them all”.[8]
  • To preserve freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific and secure US access to critical materials, while countering Chinese influence.
  • To prevent Iran dominating the Middle East while opting out of military commitments that keep the US “bogged down” in the region in forever wars.
  • To ensure that US technology and tech standards “drive the world forward” (euphemism for dominance)

And finally, the real NSS mission statement:

We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilisational self-confidence and western identity. [9]

In other words, the restoration of Judeo-Chistian supremacy or even the promotion of a Christian nationalism to a European continent in which the identity of individual nation-states has been squashed by a smorgasbord of immigration, multicultural cosmopolitanism and a gender ideology that collapses the essential differences between the sexes and their social roles.

The strategy goes on to sketch an entente cordiale with Vladimir Putin’s Russia which roughly aligns with Putin’s list of desiderata:

  • “A predisposition to non-intervention” – America stays out of conflicts wherever possible (except in its own backyard.
  • “Primacy of nations” – transnational institutions to be disregarded and rendered impotent to the point where international law doesn’t work.
  • “A readjustment of military presence” away from theatres whose importance to US national security.

America intends to “manage” European relations with Russia:

both to establish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.

In the context of Ukraine, NSS proclaims:

a core interest of the US to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilise European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and re-establish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.[10]

Behind these seemingly laudable objectives and pious hopes for peace, reconciliation and reconstruction after the war in Ukraine ends lies this sting in the tail; this disinformation speak that has been spewed out by every Putinist apologist on the European far right and Stalinist left since the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022:

The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes.11]

It is not necessary to launch into a comprehensive rebuttal of the chutzpah that that statement is riddled with in order to strip away the real contempt for European values that the entire NSS drips with. Suffice to say, that a government that has systematically ripping up every democratic safeguard, guardrail and convention pursuant to Project 2025 since coming to power is the least qualified US administration in history to lecture any other nation about democratic deficits, never mind its historic (historic being the poignantly operative word here) European allies. The real burning question for Europe is how to deal with this very public stab in the front.

Europe: What Is To Be Done

It should have been obvious if not from JD Vance’s “enemy within” speech at Munich, but certainly from Trump’s excruciatingly public dressing down of President Zelelensky in the White House that the Atlantic Alliance is sundered. It is certainly glaringly obvious to analysts such as Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia programme at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, who sees political meddling in Europe to back far-right nationalists was now “a core part of America’s national strategy” and has warned that “In a fragmented political landscape” where “a 1% to 2% shift can change elections”, it could work.[12]

Minna Alander of the Centre for European Policy Analysis opined that the policy document was “actually useful” as “it codifies in policy, in black and white, what has been evident all year long: Trump and his people are openly hostile to Europe.” He gores onto to warn that Europe’s leaders “cannot ignore or explain away the fact anymore” and that “any hope for things to go back to the old normal looks increasingly ludicrous.” For “Europe needs to finally seize the initiative and stop wasting time trying to manage Trump.”[13]

But have all of Europe’s leaders got the memo?

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer may have received it but appears utterly hamstrung to act on it. Starmer prides himself on solidarity with Zelenskyy but keeps shtum over Trump’s expression of solidarity with Trump. The PM knows that the defence of Ukraine necessitates the combination of Europe’s military assets but was put off by the entry fee to the major £130bn European rearmament effort causing the collapse of the deal which the UK government had wished to join.[14]

Starmer’s refusal to rejoin the EU’s Customs Union on the grounds that it would supposedly unravel the US trade deal negotiated earlier this year (and possibly to avoid attracting the ire of the Brexit voters in the Red Wall which are not coming back to Labour in any case and who may be experiencing buyer’s remorse) is another example of choosing the erstwhile “special relationship” with the US over that with Europe even though every signal from across the Atlantic indicates that the era of unconditional positive regard from Washington DC is over.[15] Starmer may well believe that his ‘adult in the room’ role as intermediary between the America of Donald Trump and Europe is a judicious one justifying the cringing spectacle of a second State visit by Trump to Britain but may well be rapidly running out of sync with the development of the Strongman era in international relations.

Mark Rutte, head of NATO, may be experiencing a similar bout of cognitive dissonance when warning that “Russia has brought war back to Europe” while remaining utterly silent on the switch by “Daddy” across the Atlantic from friend to foe. [16]

In a week when the new head of MI6, Blaise Metrewell, said that Britain was caught in “a space between peace and war” and described Russia as “aggressive, expansionist and revisionist, seeking to subjugate Ukraine and NATO”; it seems unfortunate, at the very least, that in relation to one of Russia’s hybrid war weapons, the cultivation and spread of disinformation, that Keir Starmer’s raid last year on the overseas aid budget has led to a 40% cut in funds for countering these nefarious activities in the Western Balkans. The cut was made to the Integrated Security Fund (ISF) which is designed to tackle the highest priority threats to the UK’s national security at home. Starmer recently described the Western Balkan region, encompassing Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia, as “Europe’s crucible – the place where the security of our continent is put to the test. Last year’s ISF funds were used in part to counter and respond to malicious cyber-attacks in the region and to bolster democratic institutions and independent media. The cut in government funding appears to have be a consequence of Starmer’s policy to reduce Official Development Assistance (ODA) for low and middle-income countries with the amount of ODA committed to the Western Balkans under the ISF reduced from £31.9m to £17m for 2025-26.[17]

In the words of Shelagh Daley, the policy team lead at Saferworld, an NGO that runs programmes in the Western Balkans, these cuts appear to represent “a deprioritisation of work on conflict prevention and peace building, even as conflict has increased globally, societies have become more divided, and basic freedoms are being curtailed. Furthermore, she states that:

it doesn’t seem coherent or strategic to be pulling away from programming that aims to address the causes of conflict and fragility when the risks to global security are so high.[18]

Europe Stands Alone

At this critical and transformative moment in European history, the old Polish rallying cry Nico o nas bez nas (nothing about us without us) must ring loud and clear across Europe. As the hopes that Trump will eventually get tough on Russia dissipate in the 28-point “peace plan” for Ukraine that is a Russian-American imperial and commercial at the expense of both Ukraine and Europe (just as the Palestinians were not even an after-thought in Trump’s 20-point real estate “peace plan” for Gaza), Timothy Garton Ash poses two follow on questions. First can Europe, together with democratically aligned countries like Canada, cooperate sufficiently to strengthen Ukraine and weaken Russia? Secondly, will it.[19] The answers are of existential importance for European democracy and international rule of law.

A good start was made with the agreement at the summit of EU leaders last week to borrow cash to loan 105bn Euro to Ukraine to fund its defence against Russia for the next two years albeit not with frozen Russian assets due to the opposition of a few member states, most prominent of them being Belgium where the bulk of the assets are held. Most US military essentials can still be purchased as for Trump, profit is superior to any ideological principle. Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Canada recently agreed to purchase another $1bn of US weapons for Ukraine. Should Trump cut the supply of US intelligence to Ukraine again in order to force it into a surrender agreement with Russia, it would be a major blow, but Ukrainian and European intelligence can already replenish some of the gaps.[20]

With a bold domestic reset in Ukraine involving maybe the creation of a genuine government of national unity and the rooting out of corruption and the dawning of more adverse economic conditions in Russia such as soaring inflation, interest rates above 16% and, crucially, the decline in the price of crude oil due to the damage inflicted on over a third of Russia’s oil refineries by long-range Ukrainian attacks, a possible scenario could emerge in 2026 and 2027 whereby negative messages from his generals and the central bank could push Putin towards a long-term truce with Zelenskyy.[21]

It would be at this stage that Europe faces a further challenge. If by 2030 Russia has succeeded in occupying and russifying an area of Ukraine larger than Portugal and Slovenia combined and can privately boast that rump Ukraine is a dysfunctional and demoralised unit, then Russia will have won. If by 2030, Ukraine remains largely sovereign capable of deterring any future Russian aggression; has a healthily functioning economy, democracy and civil society and is on track for EU membership, then Ukraine will have triumphed.[22]

Set against the intellectual pessimism around the myth of Russian invincibility; learned helplessness after eight decades of dependence on the US blanket for security; the procedural slowness of the EU; national egoisms and acute competition for public money in indebted states with gerontocratic population profiles among other obstacles to European cooperation, Garton Ash issues a rallying cry for optimism of will. The one thing that can convert “Europe” into “Europe can.” Not the Nietzschean Will to Power and not the Roussean General Will. Not the “can” of “can do” codology. But the courage to embark on a once in a generation collective effort before short-term party-political or parochial national considerations. Yes, Europe can if it wills it.[23]

Greetings of the Season to All Quillers.

References

[1] Jonathan Freedland, Donald Trump is pursuing regime change in Europe. Guardian Journal 13 December 2025 pp.1-2

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Shaun Walker, Kremlin hails Trump’s security plan as aligned with Russian thinking, Guardian 8 December 2025 p.14

[5] Jon Henley, US-EU relations. Threats to interfere in European elections ‘unacceptable.’ Guardian 9 December 2025 p.5

[6] Paul Mason, Trump’s declaration of war on Europe. The New World. Issue 463 11 December 2025 pp.10-11

[7] Ibid, p.10

[8] Jonathan Freedland, What words are left to describe Trump’s global rampage? The Guardian Journal. 6 December 2025 pp.1-2

[9] Mason, op cit

[10] Ibid, p.11

[11] Ibid

[12] Henley, op cit

[13] Ibid

[14] Freedland, 13 December op cit

[15] Ibid

[16] Ibid

[17] Daniel Boffey, UK slashes overseas aid for countering Russian aggression. The Guardian 20 December 2025 p.4

[18] Ibid

[19] Timothy Garton Ash, Only Europe can possibly save Ukraine now. But will it? Guardian Opinion 6 December 2025 p.4

[20] Ibid

[21] Ibid

[22] Ibid

[23] Ibid

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

Threats To Democracy 🪶 Be Careful What You Have Wished For 🪶 The US National Security Strategy And Europe

Barry Gilheany ✍ Pax Trumpiana has been laid bare in the recent US National Security Strategy (NSS). 

Instead of explicitly identifying fellow superpowers Russia and China as potential threats to US strategic interests or indeed the other members of the BRICS club further into the future, it is Europe that attracts US ire. 

The NSS, a 29 page document which looks to be a definitive statement of foreign policy for Trump 2.0 and beyond, warns that economic stagnation, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates” and, above all, migration, raise “the stark prospect of civilisational erasure.”[1] What was more than implicitly suggested by VP JD Vance’s tirades against attacks on free speech and “wokeness” at the Munich Security Conference in January this year, becomes explicit by the NSS worries that soon some European countries “will become majority non-European”. In other words, spot the native White Christian in London, Paris, Berlin, Dublin or indeed in any European capital or major city. In case of any remaining doubt, consider Trump’s recent ramblings, but no less vicious for that, about why the US only takes people from “shithole countries” .like Somalia, and his pleading as to: “Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden … from Denmark?”.[2] So the Great Replacement Theory has moved from the margins of far right philosophical crankery to US policy.

But these are not merely rhetorical aspirations. In language reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s support for the counter-revolutionary Contra forces in Nicaragua in the 1980s and of George W. Bush’s neoconservatives’ ambitions for regime change in Iraq in the 2000s, the NSS makes explicit to support the “resistance” to civilisational decline. The “resistance” in question is far-right parties like the National Rally in France, the AfD in Germany, Reform UK[3] as well as bolstering the position of far-right nationalist outlier governments such as those of Viktor Orban in Hungary and Roberto Fico in Slovakia. In a few sentencers, the NSS trashes the ideas and values that have underpinned transatlantic cooperation since the Atlantic Charter by supporting forces fundamentally hostile to liberal democracy to undermine the US’s erstwhile allies.

Familiar but disturbing noises have accompanied the publication of NSS. The Kremlin loaded obsequies on it, calling it an “encouraging” change of policy that largely aligns with Russian thinking. “The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision” was the response of Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. Welcoming indications for the Trump administration “in favour of dialogue and good relations,” almost on MAGA cue, he warned that the supposed US “Deep State” could attempt to sabotage Trump’s vision.[4]

Elon Musk, no doubt smarting from the $120m (£90m) fine levied on his X social media bully pulpit, proclaimed his belief that the EU bloc should be “abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries”, The US deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, took aim at “the unelected, undemocratic and unrepresentative” EU which he deemed to be undermining US security”[5] . At this point, at the risk of stating the bleeding obvious (but not to the wilfully blind Eurosceptics who brought the rolling disaster that is Brexit), that that the EU is an association of 27 liberal democracies (with the exceptions of the illiberal refuseniks of Hungary and Slovakia) which elects national representatives to the European Parliament and whose duly elected governments nominate their countries' members of the European Commission and Council of Ministers. Lesson over!

For the generations who protested against America’s wars in Indochina in the 1960s and 1970s; against its support for blood stained Latin American dictatorships and counter insurgencies and deployment of Cruise and Pershing II missiles in Western Europe in the 1980s; and the invasion of Iraq and the its Global War of Terror in the 2000s, the idea of US disengagement from global security arrangements sounds like, at least to its temporally and ideologically trapped fringe fanatics, the ideal wet dream. And the first sentence of NSS pays some inverse obeisance to that desire:

After the end of the cold war, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the world was in the best interests of our country” But it is then followed by this bald statement of naked Trumpian transactionalism “Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.[6]

That sentence may be music to the ears of the nationalist far-right and Stalinist far-left but, for Paul Mason, it is shorthand for the whole NSS document’s central premise of the Putin-Xi Jinping vision of a “multipolar world” in which the US sphere of influence is the Americas and the Western Pacific and Europe is the battleground between three powers.[7] The demise of the rules based post 1945 international order may be welcomed by its detractors on the American isolationist right and on the anti-Atlanticist left who point to the numerous foreign policy inconsistencies and hypocrisies committed in the name of the West. However, the end of this order ushers in the following US strategic objectives:

  • An enhanced Monroe or “Donroe” Doctrine for the 21st century in which the US will claim the right to order the “Western Hemisphere” - i.e. the Americas, Caribbean, and the Western Pacific - to guarantee US security and access to critical minerals and reduce narcotraffic. This is already being played out in Trump’s sabre rattling over Venezuela and its attacks on small boats allegedly carrying narcotics in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific which have led to the deaths of at least 87 people; operations that defy any sort of legal criteria and which in relation to the double tap attack on the first boat on 2 September in which US forces hit its target once, then twice killing two survivors look to amount to wanton murder if, according to the Washington Post, the defence secretary had issued a verbal command to “kill them all”.[8]
  • To preserve freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific and secure US access to critical materials, while countering Chinese influence.
  • To prevent Iran dominating the Middle East while opting out of military commitments that keep the US “bogged down” in the region in forever wars.
  • To ensure that US technology and tech standards “drive the world forward” (euphemism for dominance)

And finally, the real NSS mission statement:

We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilisational self-confidence and western identity. [9]

In other words, the restoration of Judeo-Chistian supremacy or even the promotion of a Christian nationalism to a European continent in which the identity of individual nation-states has been squashed by a smorgasbord of immigration, multicultural cosmopolitanism and a gender ideology that collapses the essential differences between the sexes and their social roles.

The strategy goes on to sketch an entente cordiale with Vladimir Putin’s Russia which roughly aligns with Putin’s list of desiderata:

  • “A predisposition to non-intervention” – America stays out of conflicts wherever possible (except in its own backyard.
  • “Primacy of nations” – transnational institutions to be disregarded and rendered impotent to the point where international law doesn’t work.
  • “A readjustment of military presence” away from theatres whose importance to US national security.

America intends to “manage” European relations with Russia:

both to establish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.

In the context of Ukraine, NSS proclaims:

a core interest of the US to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilise European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and re-establish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.[10]

Behind these seemingly laudable objectives and pious hopes for peace, reconciliation and reconstruction after the war in Ukraine ends lies this sting in the tail; this disinformation speak that has been spewed out by every Putinist apologist on the European far right and Stalinist left since the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022:

The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes.11]

It is not necessary to launch into a comprehensive rebuttal of the chutzpah that that statement is riddled with in order to strip away the real contempt for European values that the entire NSS drips with. Suffice to say, that a government that has systematically ripping up every democratic safeguard, guardrail and convention pursuant to Project 2025 since coming to power is the least qualified US administration in history to lecture any other nation about democratic deficits, never mind its historic (historic being the poignantly operative word here) European allies. The real burning question for Europe is how to deal with this very public stab in the front.

Europe: What Is To Be Done

It should have been obvious if not from JD Vance’s “enemy within” speech at Munich, but certainly from Trump’s excruciatingly public dressing down of President Zelelensky in the White House that the Atlantic Alliance is sundered. It is certainly glaringly obvious to analysts such as Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia programme at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, who sees political meddling in Europe to back far-right nationalists was now “a core part of America’s national strategy” and has warned that “In a fragmented political landscape” where “a 1% to 2% shift can change elections”, it could work.[12]

Minna Alander of the Centre for European Policy Analysis opined that the policy document was “actually useful” as “it codifies in policy, in black and white, what has been evident all year long: Trump and his people are openly hostile to Europe.” He gores onto to warn that Europe’s leaders “cannot ignore or explain away the fact anymore” and that “any hope for things to go back to the old normal looks increasingly ludicrous.” For “Europe needs to finally seize the initiative and stop wasting time trying to manage Trump.”[13]

But have all of Europe’s leaders got the memo?

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer may have received it but appears utterly hamstrung to act on it. Starmer prides himself on solidarity with Zelenskyy but keeps shtum over Trump’s expression of solidarity with Trump. The PM knows that the defence of Ukraine necessitates the combination of Europe’s military assets but was put off by the entry fee to the major £130bn European rearmament effort causing the collapse of the deal which the UK government had wished to join.[14]

Starmer’s refusal to rejoin the EU’s Customs Union on the grounds that it would supposedly unravel the US trade deal negotiated earlier this year (and possibly to avoid attracting the ire of the Brexit voters in the Red Wall which are not coming back to Labour in any case and who may be experiencing buyer’s remorse) is another example of choosing the erstwhile “special relationship” with the US over that with Europe even though every signal from across the Atlantic indicates that the era of unconditional positive regard from Washington DC is over.[15] Starmer may well believe that his ‘adult in the room’ role as intermediary between the America of Donald Trump and Europe is a judicious one justifying the cringing spectacle of a second State visit by Trump to Britain but may well be rapidly running out of sync with the development of the Strongman era in international relations.

Mark Rutte, head of NATO, may be experiencing a similar bout of cognitive dissonance when warning that “Russia has brought war back to Europe” while remaining utterly silent on the switch by “Daddy” across the Atlantic from friend to foe. [16]

In a week when the new head of MI6, Blaise Metrewell, said that Britain was caught in “a space between peace and war” and described Russia as “aggressive, expansionist and revisionist, seeking to subjugate Ukraine and NATO”; it seems unfortunate, at the very least, that in relation to one of Russia’s hybrid war weapons, the cultivation and spread of disinformation, that Keir Starmer’s raid last year on the overseas aid budget has led to a 40% cut in funds for countering these nefarious activities in the Western Balkans. The cut was made to the Integrated Security Fund (ISF) which is designed to tackle the highest priority threats to the UK’s national security at home. Starmer recently described the Western Balkan region, encompassing Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia, as “Europe’s crucible – the place where the security of our continent is put to the test. Last year’s ISF funds were used in part to counter and respond to malicious cyber-attacks in the region and to bolster democratic institutions and independent media. The cut in government funding appears to have be a consequence of Starmer’s policy to reduce Official Development Assistance (ODA) for low and middle-income countries with the amount of ODA committed to the Western Balkans under the ISF reduced from £31.9m to £17m for 2025-26.[17]

In the words of Shelagh Daley, the policy team lead at Saferworld, an NGO that runs programmes in the Western Balkans, these cuts appear to represent “a deprioritisation of work on conflict prevention and peace building, even as conflict has increased globally, societies have become more divided, and basic freedoms are being curtailed. Furthermore, she states that:

it doesn’t seem coherent or strategic to be pulling away from programming that aims to address the causes of conflict and fragility when the risks to global security are so high.[18]

Europe Stands Alone

At this critical and transformative moment in European history, the old Polish rallying cry Nico o nas bez nas (nothing about us without us) must ring loud and clear across Europe. As the hopes that Trump will eventually get tough on Russia dissipate in the 28-point “peace plan” for Ukraine that is a Russian-American imperial and commercial at the expense of both Ukraine and Europe (just as the Palestinians were not even an after-thought in Trump’s 20-point real estate “peace plan” for Gaza), Timothy Garton Ash poses two follow on questions. First can Europe, together with democratically aligned countries like Canada, cooperate sufficiently to strengthen Ukraine and weaken Russia? Secondly, will it.[19] The answers are of existential importance for European democracy and international rule of law.

A good start was made with the agreement at the summit of EU leaders last week to borrow cash to loan 105bn Euro to Ukraine to fund its defence against Russia for the next two years albeit not with frozen Russian assets due to the opposition of a few member states, most prominent of them being Belgium where the bulk of the assets are held. Most US military essentials can still be purchased as for Trump, profit is superior to any ideological principle. Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Canada recently agreed to purchase another $1bn of US weapons for Ukraine. Should Trump cut the supply of US intelligence to Ukraine again in order to force it into a surrender agreement with Russia, it would be a major blow, but Ukrainian and European intelligence can already replenish some of the gaps.[20]

With a bold domestic reset in Ukraine involving maybe the creation of a genuine government of national unity and the rooting out of corruption and the dawning of more adverse economic conditions in Russia such as soaring inflation, interest rates above 16% and, crucially, the decline in the price of crude oil due to the damage inflicted on over a third of Russia’s oil refineries by long-range Ukrainian attacks, a possible scenario could emerge in 2026 and 2027 whereby negative messages from his generals and the central bank could push Putin towards a long-term truce with Zelenskyy.[21]

It would be at this stage that Europe faces a further challenge. If by 2030 Russia has succeeded in occupying and russifying an area of Ukraine larger than Portugal and Slovenia combined and can privately boast that rump Ukraine is a dysfunctional and demoralised unit, then Russia will have won. If by 2030, Ukraine remains largely sovereign capable of deterring any future Russian aggression; has a healthily functioning economy, democracy and civil society and is on track for EU membership, then Ukraine will have triumphed.[22]

Set against the intellectual pessimism around the myth of Russian invincibility; learned helplessness after eight decades of dependence on the US blanket for security; the procedural slowness of the EU; national egoisms and acute competition for public money in indebted states with gerontocratic population profiles among other obstacles to European cooperation, Garton Ash issues a rallying cry for optimism of will. The one thing that can convert “Europe” into “Europe can.” Not the Nietzschean Will to Power and not the Roussean General Will. Not the “can” of “can do” codology. But the courage to embark on a once in a generation collective effort before short-term party-political or parochial national considerations. Yes, Europe can if it wills it.[23]

Greetings of the Season to All Quillers.

References

[1] Jonathan Freedland, Donald Trump is pursuing regime change in Europe. Guardian Journal 13 December 2025 pp.1-2

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Shaun Walker, Kremlin hails Trump’s security plan as aligned with Russian thinking, Guardian 8 December 2025 p.14

[5] Jon Henley, US-EU relations. Threats to interfere in European elections ‘unacceptable.’ Guardian 9 December 2025 p.5

[6] Paul Mason, Trump’s declaration of war on Europe. The New World. Issue 463 11 December 2025 pp.10-11

[7] Ibid, p.10

[8] Jonathan Freedland, What words are left to describe Trump’s global rampage? The Guardian Journal. 6 December 2025 pp.1-2

[9] Mason, op cit

[10] Ibid, p.11

[11] Ibid

[12] Henley, op cit

[13] Ibid

[14] Freedland, 13 December op cit

[15] Ibid

[16] Ibid

[17] Daniel Boffey, UK slashes overseas aid for countering Russian aggression. The Guardian 20 December 2025 p.4

[18] Ibid

[19] Timothy Garton Ash, Only Europe can possibly save Ukraine now. But will it? Guardian Opinion 6 December 2025 p.4

[20] Ibid

[21] Ibid

[22] Ibid

[23] Ibid

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.
Barry Gilheany US Foreign Policy US National Security Strategy

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