When I was a child, my parents lived on the outskirts of the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. My friends included Hans, the son of a US Air Force major based at Kirknewton air base. Hans had a German name because his father had been born in Austria, emigrated to the US and became an American citizen.
For me, this summed up Nato, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. We lived near a British base filled with Americans – one of whom had a German accent – working with the Royal Air Force to protect us all from the Soviet Union and communism. Times have changed.
Three years ago, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a stirring speech reflecting this sense of change. Mr Scholz explained that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was a Zeitenwende, a “time shift” or turning point. He immediately increased defence spending with €100 billion ($104 billion) for the German military.
Now after the weekend election results, his probable successor as chancellor, Friedrich Merz, noted that the real Zeitenwende, from US President Donald Trump, affects all of Europe and beyond.
There has been some “walking back”, as they say in Washington, of Mr Trump’s assertion that Ukraine started the war with Russia. After all, that comment is as bizarre as suggesting America, not Japan, caused Pearl Harbour to be bombed in 1941. Mr Trump has somewhat moderated his rhetoric but in a fast-moving series of diplomatic (and somewhat un-diplomatic) statements the White House has left politicians, diplomats, military leaders and even historians struggling to come to terms with the enormity of the changes in Washington’s attitude towards the more than 75-year-old Nato alliance.
This is, indeed, a Zeitenwende, a turning point even more profound than Mr Scholz predicted.
Nato is arguably the biggest and most successful long-term international military relationship in world history, and it has been shaken to its core not by Russia but by America. Several politicians, distinguished military figures, academics and commentators in the UK and beyond appear to agree on at least on one clear outcome. Nato means “less America”, more Europe and therefore much less “North Atlantic” in future.
Some suggest there should now be a European Defence Force. European states broadly agree on three points. One, there remains a significant Russian threat to European security. Two, Washington is a far less reliable ally. And three, Europeans spending more on defence is the only option.
Yet, on the other hand, Russia has failed to defeat Ukraine after three years of fighting against a much smaller adversary. Russian combat losses – some estimates put them at 800,000 dead and wounded – are extraordinary. Russia’s economy is weak. A rouble is worth less than one American cent.
Governments in Scandinavia, Poland and the Baltic republics are already committed to modernising their defences. The three biggest European players – Britain, France and Germany – are co-ordinating responses and finding extra money. The French President and the British Prime Minister will this week separately meet Mr Trump, and those conversations will be very tricky. Nevertheless, there is a broad consensus that Europe has moved from 1945 and a “post-war” world to what unfortunately could be a “pre-war” world.
There is also a consensus that years of complacency about a “unipolar” world and a “Pax Americana” are long gone.
Last week, I spoke to a senior military figure, a British government adviser, about historical parallels to the state we are in. History is never an exact guide, but the past 30 years have been a complacent echo of the years that led to the First World War.
Americans felt separated from conflict by an ocean. The British spoke of “splendid isolation”. And yet the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip in June 1914 led to a series of dominoes falling into conflict as Austro-Hungary, Serbia, Russia, Germany, France, Britain and finally, in 1917, even the US was sucked into four years of horror. History never repeats itself. But humans unfortunately often repeat the same mistakes and delusional behaviour.
And so, the "time shift” may have shifted Mr Merz into the German Chancellery and a coalition is yet to be determined. The politics of Europe, especially in France, Germany and Spain, are in a state of flux. The same is also true of Washington, where – as I have suggested in these pages before – the confidence or otherwise of Wall Street may provide a key to the Trump presidency.
The German philosopher Friedrich Hegel wrote that the only thing humans learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. The US in 1917 learnt that it was not isolated from European conflict. In the 1930s, the US learnt that tariffs were bad for the world economy. In 1941, putting “America first” did not keep the US from being sucked into a European war. And Europeans have learnt that relying on others for Europe’s defence is a mistake.
In the words of US general George Marshall, we should remember that “the only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it”.
