London and Paris
Cnn
–
It was a television ambush that many in Europe hope to arrest a war.
Donald Trump’s dressing of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the White House, was a love at first sight in the transatlantic alliance, dissipating persistent illusions in Europe on the question of whether their American cousin will be held with them to counter the Russian aggression.
Europe in shock, perhaps even frightening, may have finally resumed its minds on its self-defense needs in the Trump era.
“It is as if Roosevelt welcomed Churchill (at the White House) and began to intimidate it,” European leghaël Glucksmann told CNN.
During a month when the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth described Europe as “pathetic” for “freely free” on defense in a group group with administration officials (which inadvertently included a journalist for the Atlantic), the continent broke old decades in defense. Politicians are on the table that would have been unthinkable just weeks ago.
The biggest change has come to Germany, the largest economy in Europe. After the federal elections, the Chancellor pending Friedrich Merz won a vote in Parliament to eliminate the constitutional “debt” of Germany – a mechanism to limit the loan of the government.
In principle, the change of law authorizes unlimited expenses for defense and security. Experts expect this decision to unlock up to 600 billion euros ($ 652 billion) in Germany over the next decade.
“He changes the game in Europe, because Germany was the Lagge – especially among the major countries – with regard to defense,” said CNN Piotr Buras, a principal researcher of the European Council for Foreign Relations, an international thinking group.
By going beyond his debt phobia, Buras said that Germany had finally acted as if Europe had really adopted a “zeitenwende” – or a “turning point” – as described by the outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz in February 2022, only three days after the invasion of Russia on the scale of Ukraine.
Although the invasion rocked Germany, “only the Trump shock made them make this truly fundamental decision to suspend the brake of the debt,” said Buras.
“This is the real zeitenwende.”
In neighboring France, President Emmanuel Macron – who has long called for European “strategic autonomy” in the United States – said he was considering extending the protection of his nuclear arsenal to his allies, already sheltered by American bombs.
Macron’s comments earlier this month came after Merz pleaded for talks with France and the United Kingdom – the two nuclear powers in Europe – on the extension of their nuclear protection. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk welcomed the idea and even called on Poland to consider obtaining nuclear weapons herself.
Meanwhile, the States of Poland and the States of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia – all the neighbors of Russia – withdrew from the 1997 Ottawa Treaty on terrestrial mines, long considered an important stage at the end of the mass war. Lithuania has already announced the purchase of 85,000 terrestrial mines; Poland plans to produce 1 million at the national level.
Lithuania has also retired from the international treaty against cluster ammunition this month, becoming the first signatory to do so.
Military conscription also returned to the continent. Denmark made women eligible for a compulsory conscription of 2026 and lowered health requirements for certain roles, as part of a strengthening of the country’s armed forces. Poland has also announced plans for each adult man to take military training.
Even the famous neutral countries reconcile their positions. In the midst of discussions on how to maintain peace in Ukraine in the event of regulation, the government in Ireland – a military vairon focused on peacekeeping operations – has set up legislation to allow the deployment of the troops without approval from the UN, folding a possible Russian (or American) veto.
It is for a long time the uncomfortable – and often tacit – truth in Europe that its protection against the invasion finally depended on the American cavalry on the horizon. This support no longer looks so safe.
The pivot goes beyond who will fight to who will provide their arms. Some began to question the future purchases of the F-35 astronomical F-35 jets that several European air forces had planned to acquire.
Portuguese Defense Minister Nuno Melo said his country re-evaluated the expected purchases of jets preferably for European alternatives concerning the concerns of the United States in spare parts.
This is the first time that such concerns have been disseminated publicly at such a high level, especially in favor of jets which, on paper, do not offer the same capacities.
But, although Europe seems to have received the message, talking about a unified approach is premature.
When the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen revealed a plan to spend billions more in defense, called “Rearm Europe”, Spain and Italy fell. The plan has since been renamed “Reassation 2030”.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also excluded from the sending of Italian troops as part of a European contingent to maintain peace in Ukraine in the event of negotiated settlement – another key question on which the continent is divided.
The brand change indicates a line of demarcation in Europe: further from Russia, a country is, the less likely it is to put firearms before butter.
The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said this month that “our threat is not Russia which has passed its troops through the Pyrenees”. He called Brussels “to take into account the fact that the challenges we face in the southern district are somewhat different from those with which the eastern flank is confronted”.
Gabrielius Landsbergis, the former Foreign Minister of Lithuania, told CNN that he was “upset” by Spanish statements, and that a recent trip to kyiv – where air sirens explode most nights – made too easy to imagine scenes similar to Vilnius in the future.
“The more you go, the more difficult it is to imagine these kinds of things. All the problems, all decisions, they are relative,” said Landsbergis.
Although this geographic split can deepen the divisions, Buras, of the ECFR, said that the total European unity would always be “an illusion”.
“What really matters is what key countries do,” he said, pointing to Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Poland. “I want to be carefully optimistic, but I think we are on the right track now.”
When asked if March would remember the month that Europe woke up, Buras said: “Yes, we woke up – but now we have to dress.”