Latest / Prof James Ker-Lindsay / 005. Can Europe Break Free From US Dominance?

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005. Can Europe Break Free From US Dominance? · Prof James Ker-Lindsay

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Not only is Europe not getting itself out of its dependence on America, it's actually increasing that dependence.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to me, James Kerlinsey.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: In each episode, my guests and I go beyond the headlines to bring you a central commentary on international relations and global affairs.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: For decades, European security rested on a relatively simple assumption.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever disagreements emerge across the Atlantic, the United States would ultimately guarantee Europe's defence.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: However, that assumption has now seemingly collapsed.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: As the Trump administration has dramatically distanced itself from Europe and seems unwilling to push back against Russia, Europe has been forced to think much more seriously about its ability to manage its own security.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: As defence spending rises, there's been talk about new European security structures and new international partnerships.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: But has Europe finally started to get its act together?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And are we witnessing the emergence of a genuinely more independent European foreign and security policy?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: To discuss all this, I'm delighted to be joined by Dave Keating, a leading commentator on European affairs based in Brussels and the author of The Owned Continent, How to Free Europe from American Military, Economic and Cultural Dependence.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, hi, Dave.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining us again.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'd like to start by sort of saying when we spoke last year, I mean, we were relatively new into the Trump administration that there was a profound sense of pessimism about how Europe was responding to this.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was almost as though Trump would do something which would really upset Europe.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Europe would say, well, we have to do something, and then they would perhaps sort of go to a NATO summit.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: They'd sort of, he would produce sort of maybe more positive words, and Europe would sit back and say, phew, uh, we dodge that.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to do anything.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, we are a year on from that, and I think it seems that a lot has changed.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: What has been your sense as somebody who who works very much on the inside in Brussels, um, in following what European leaders have also been saying on this about the US response to defense, security, and the United States a year on from when we last spoke?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would say since we last spoke, and by the way, it's great to be back here with you again.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Since we last spoke, I would say the vibes have changed, but the actions haven't really.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Europe still isn't doing what needs to be done to make itself independent from the United States.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and in fact, in some ways, it's making itself more dependent, which is extra frustrating.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, we have all of these speeches from our national and EU leaders uh saying that Europe needs to stand on its own two feet, Europe needs to be more independent, and then they don't do anything.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're actually not seeing any action.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the realm of defense is really the main one to point to here because, you know, people were trying to say, I think I'm sensing a lot of cope out there in Europe right now with people wanting to convince themselves that behind the scenes lots is happening to make Europe independent from the U.S.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, trust me, I'm a journalist based in Brussels.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I cover these things day in and day out, and these things are not happening.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take defense, for instance.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: People keep wanting to point to the increased military spending as a percentage of GDP demanded by Donald Trump at that NATO summit last year, as an example of Europe becoming independent of the US militarily.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: But that is just the spending.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: European countries could spend 10% of their GDP on their defense, but if they don't actually develop a European command and control that's independent of the US, they will not be any more independent.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Most of that military spending is going to buy American weapons that can be shut off or not updated by the US government if they want.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, we're remaining reliant on the command and control structure of NATO, which is US controlled.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually at an EU army event, an event talking about the ideas for a European military last week with some MEPs and the former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the Dutch MEP, Renjeer van Landschot, pointed out that we already have an EU army or a European army.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's called US European Command.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: The issue is that it's in the control of the Americans under the Supreme Allied commander for Europe.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: So the issue really isn't the spending.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, Europe needs to spend more, but the issue isn't the spending.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: The issue is that Europe has no way to coordinate itself if the Americans don't help.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So if Russia invades tomorrow and the US says, sorry, you're on your own, as Donald Trump promised in his 2024 campaign when he said he would let Russia do whatever the hell they want, then Europe has no way of coordinating its combined militaries.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Already European countries have more troops than Russia.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: So the military spending in the troops is a red herring.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: It does need to increase, but that's not the problem.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is that America controls the coordination of Europe's defense.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And there have been no moves, none, zero to change that uh over the past year.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Then let's look at the economic dependence.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we've had a couple little initiatives to try to, for instance, wean Europe off of Visa MasterCard to make Europe able to make payments without the Americans by expanding Wiro, the pan-European payment platform.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: We've had some municipalities switching from like Microsoft to European solutions, but really we've had no big move to end Europe's economic and technological dependence on the US.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then finally, energy, the most frustrating example, because 10 years ago, Europe was not dependent on the US for energy.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: It was like the one area where Europe didn't have an American dependence.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And now we've swapped the Russian energy dependence, which we ditched after Russia invaded Ukraine successfully, but we've just swapped that for American dependence.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: President von der Leyen, in that Turnberry surrender deal last summer, committed to buying$750 billion of U.S.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: liquefied natural gas.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Those imports have been increasing steadily.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: And what happened?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we saw last week.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump is freaking out about high energy prices in the US because of his war against Iran ahead of the midterms.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so he threatened European countries that he would ban exports of diesel to them unless they release their oil reserves, which is a very stupid thing to do right before winter when we're looking at a lot of supply shocks in the coming months.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what happened last Friday?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Emmanuel Macron, president of France, convened a teleconference of the G7 leaders and they agreed to give in to Donald Trump's extortion.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: They are releasing oil and diesel in order to help Donald Trump out ahead of the midterms.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because Europe is now importing 50% of its diesel imports from the United States.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: They had no choice, and that's because of the decisions they have made over the past several years to increase Europe's dependence on the US for energy.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: So not only is Europe not getting itself out of its dependence on America, it's actually increasing that dependence.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so in my book, The Owned Continent, you know, I trace all of these areas of dependence and I write about this increasing energy dependence on the US.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, since that book came out in December 2025, the problem has only gotten worse.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that sort of naturally brings to the next question is to how have you seen attitudes evolve towards Trump and the Trump administration?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Again, you know, when we spoke last time, it was still relatively new into it.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one got a sense of an element of horror towards what was happening in Washington.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: But as I say, that sort of sense of, well, we must do something about it until Washington would sort of give those calming signals.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then it would be, all right, okay, everything's going to be all right.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how do you think Europe is now living with the Trump administration?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think Greenland and the Iran war really changed the equation here.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: It really made Europe wake up.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: I keep using the line, okay, in January and February of 2026, Europe finally woke up to the danger, to the threat of the United States.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: But Europeans still aren't getting out of bed.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: So they're kind of like lying awake in bed, terrified with inertia, looking at the scale of this challenge, considering how dependent Europe is on the United States, which now represents a danger to them, and they don't know where to start.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: So they're just kind of sitting in bed, shaking.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, there's a big difference between what I hear privately from European officials and what I hear publicly.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: But we had a rare public expression uh in the past weeks with this leaked um position paper by the foreign minister of Belgium, Maxime Prevost, uh, where he said basically the United States can no longer be relied on.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: It is no longer a reliable ally.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that implies not just with Donald Trump, but forever.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that the US, the positioning, the foreign policy positioning of European countries has to change.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that's nothing new in terms of what people will say privately here in Brussels.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: The issue is nobody wants to express that publicly for fear of attracting Donald Trump's wrath.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, when this was reported, uh, what happened?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: The uh US ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, uh, went to basically tell off the um Belgian foreign minister, saying he was it was outrageous that he would say such things and uh, you know, basically kind of trying to intimidate him into stopping this type of talk.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's why people don't want to say it publicly, because our European leaders are still terrified of Trump.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I do think that the Greenland threats, you know, which was, let's, let's call a spade a spade, it was the United States threatening to invade the territory of an EU member state, a NATO member.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that really changed things.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that really, really rattled people here.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, the second thing was the Iran war, which of course was done with no European consultation.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: And after it started to go badly, the United States started demanding and threatening European countries to bail Trump out by using their military forces to open the Strait of Hormuz.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I you could argue that those two things, Greenland and the Iran War, were the first instances of European leaders saying no to Donald Trump.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because, you know, they they sent those uh small contingents of forces to Greenland in this combined mission of a couple European countries, not an EU mission, by the way, but a national uh coalition of the willing type thing.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And also they said no to joining the Iran war, every European country.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that's a start for sure.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, it wasn't really a full-throated no.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as evidenced by this G7 surrender last week, it didn't change the needle in terms of Europe being able to say no all the time.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think in these two instances, Europe felt that it could um have a kind of half-throated no to those demands.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, the the Iran war thing is particularly striking because you had this leaked memo from the State Department saying that European countries should be punished for refusing to join and bail Trump out in the Iran war by having their overseas territories taken away from them, that the U.S.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: should stop recognizing the sovereignty of the UK over the Falkland Islands, for instance, that they should port should support Argentina's claim to those islands.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: And there are other European territories that seem to be in U.S.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: sites, uh, notably Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's another very, very serious threat to the territorial integrity of European countries.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, like I say, I think Europeans are now more awake to the American threat than they were when we last spoke a year ago, but they still don't know what to do about it.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: They're not acting.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: One of the other things that does seem to have changed quite significantly over the past year, and and and we'll talk a little bit about the Ukraine war later, um, but is the very strong perceived sense of threat from Russia.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so, you know, there had been talk about, you know, hybrid attacks for a number of years now, but it really does seem that that has ramped up uh over the past year.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, for those who've been following uh, for example, the the incident at Leipzig Airport, where there is very credible information that Russia was, you know, planning on staging a drone attack on cargo planes headed for Ukraine, uh, that we're seeing more and more evidence coming out of Russian hybrid attacks.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um how much do you think that that is also percolating through to uh European leaders about the need for a stronger European sort of defense structure?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll talk a little bit about some of the ideas for that, you know, in the next question.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but certainly that, you know, we you've got the US element, but now, as I say, this more and more clear Russian threat that's emerging.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, these hybrid attacks are getting more and more numerous.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: It almost feels like we have a new one every day, and they're piercing way into Western Europe.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: We've had a number of drone attacks at Western European airports, including Copenhagen and right here in Brussels.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I the the the panic about this that I hear from EU officials here in Brussels is getting more and more.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: The alarm is getting raised more and more, not just privately, but we're seeing public statements from European leaders.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Emmanuel Macron convened a meeting of all of the candidates for the presidential election next year.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: We had the president of Finland, Alex Stub, making some very, very alarming remarks about this.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the the thing about hybrid warfare, so I think it's kind of a confusing term for people actually, because you know, some of these seem like real blatant attacks.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I don't really know what's hybrid about them.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the the idea is they go just below the line.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I think a better way to explain hybrid warfare is that it's a country doing something that it has plausible deniability not to be doing.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not Russia actually attacking a NATO country and triggering Article V.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's Russia intimidating a NATO country by flying drones uh into its airspace by um having an explosion with unexplained uh origins and going right up to the line.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the whole idea is to test NATO's resolve uh and see what kind of response they get from the Americans.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the response from the White House has been obviously very disappointing on this because the US does not seem particularly concerned about these hybrid attacks.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we haven't gotten any robust response from the US.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, the the concern here is that Putin keeps going a little further, a little further, a little further until we actually have a territorial um um incursion in the Baltic states, which is obviously the first where where a Russian attack would happen.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then does the US respond?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, at the moment we have a kind of Schrdinger's NATO, which is both dead or alive, and we don't know if it's alive or not until we open the box.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And opening the box is when Russia invades.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's a very uncertain position to be in.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um there.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So now there's been this EU coordination to try to have this drone strategy, to try to have better uh tools to counter these drones.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh while ago, I forget if it was last year or already this year, but there were drone incursions into Poland, and they had to shoot down those drones with like anti-aircraft systems that are not meant for drones, but are meant for like jets, simply because they didn't have the equipment to deal with these types of drones.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: So they're trying to very quickly, um, with the help of Ukraine, which has become a real expert in drone warfare, build these anti-drone systems, and this is being coordinated uh at EU level.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, although it's kind of the the degree to which it's really the EU doing that is debatable.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that is one area where they're trying to get involved.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it sounds as though European leaders are starting to wake up to this.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: But um how much are you finding that this is also, I mean, you you travel extensively across Europe.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: How much are you finding that ordinary Europeans uh are responding to what we're we're seeing at the moment?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And what sort of awareness do you have that they, you know, we we get the reporting of all of this, but uh it doesn't seem that it's necessarily sort of connecting with ordinary people.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, there's a night and day difference between what I hear about this inside the Brussels bubble here and when I'm out there in the rest of Europe talking to people who aren't involved in politics in Western Europe.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: There is just not a public acceptance of the idea that Russia is going to invade almost.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody believes it.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh now, I believe it.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: The people here who are very informed on this believe it, but they're facing a very skeptical public, which is looking at Russia struggling in the war against Ukraine for so many years.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the line I always hear is, well, Russia can't even take Ukraine.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: How could they dare to try to invade the European Union?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they would be crushed.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing is, I think they're not looking at this walking just up to the line thing here, because the question isn't whether uh the European Union, let's say European countries could, if they really wanted to, defend themselves from Russia.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Of course they could, but the problem is do they have the capacity to do so?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Do they have the will to do so?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what Putin is banking, they don't have.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I'll give an example of this.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: I actually was last summer, I believe I put this anecdote in the book, but I was talking to someone in Italy, and um they were saying, Well, you know, I really don't think we should be supporting Ukraine.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, we're just prolonging the war.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, the argument is that we have to keep Russia at bay in Ukraine because their next step, if they win in Ukraine, their next step is to invade the European Union.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the Italian said, Bush, that's ridiculous.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he said the um Russia would never invade the European Union.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, there's already signs that they're obviously very interested in invading the Baltic states.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they've had you know troop movements there for some time.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, well, maybe they would invade the Baltic states, but not the European Union.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that really summed up the issue here.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, is there sufficient European unity and will for collective defense for European countries on their own?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, people in Italy are relying on the United States to go in and defend the Baltic states, and they don't think it's their problem.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Not everyone, obviously, but uh that's a consistent thing that I hear from people there.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Also in Spain, um, you know, these are countries very far away from the front line.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: And when I talk to people there, they just they're not convinced about this.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you know, I I think that clearly the Russian threat at the moment is not convincing people that they should support united European defense or that the, you know, a more, let's say even a more federal Europe or something, you know, strong unity without the United States.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that the message has to be different, or the the situation has to be explained more clearly to people to make them understand how vulnerable they are.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think part of the problem is our European leaders will only say Russia, Russia, Russia when they talk about external threats or disinformation.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: They'll talk about Russia, they'll talk about China.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: But the United States these days is the country that dare not speak its name.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: In her State of the Union address to the European Parliament last month, Ursula von der Leyen did not mention the United States by name once, not even once.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: So European leaders are not explaining to people their degree of dependence on the US, how dangerous that is as the US goes down a right-wing authoritarian road.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And if Europeans really understood that, then they would support common European defense, and then they would really be alarmed by Russia, because then they would understand that it is only the United States that has been keeping them safe all this time.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: But I just, when I go out there and I talk to so-called real people, they don't get that.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of this really is about European self-sufficiency when it comes to defense.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and as you say, that there's been a lot of talk about it.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what have been the specific cast iron ideas that have been put forward and how much progress have we seen on it?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, you know, for example, there's been talk of a European Security Council, and we'll talk a little bit about some of the non-EU states that can sort of be brought into that.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but certainly for now, on terms of the EU's debates about where it needs to be going for defense and security and and and what actual steps have been taken on that.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: So historically, the European Union has never been involved in defense in any significant way.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's because there was concern that if you developed EU defense, it would undermine NATO.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we always hear from Atlanticists.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's what we hear from Mark Ruta, the Secretary General of NATO, who he's who says there is no alternative to the United States for European defense.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, there's no alternative because while he was prime minister, him and people like him blocked those alternatives.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: There's been several attempts to develop EU defense, but they were always vetoed uh by Atlanticist countries like the UK, uh, like Poland, uh, like the Netherlands, uh, that did not, well, that were afraid that if you build EU defense, the Americans leave.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: The Americans uh feel that they no longer need to uh have an umbrella protectorate over Europe.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's changed with the Russian war, but I think there's a public perception out there that things have changed more than they actually have.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because the only thing that the European Union has gotten involved in is funding, military funding, weapons purchases, but not any type of command and control, no organizational control, because Mark Ruta and people like him are still blocking it.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, for instance, we have this say.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Instrument, which is meant to spur the production of weapons here in Europe so that uh Europe doesn't have to buy so much of its weapons from the United States, which is anywhere between 60 and 80 percent at the moment.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that has been having a really rough ride because the US is resisting this fiercely.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: We just had the US uh missions representative to the European Union give a speech uh uh blasting this safe instrument, saying it's protectionism and European countries should still buy all their weapons from the United States.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and of course, the US has their Atlanticist friends in Eastern Europe uh who are echoing and parroting this message.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: So even that has had a really, really tough time getting going.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you you you just have the the spending.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now, last uh month in her State of the Union speech, Ursula von der Leyen proposed this idea of a European Security Council.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is an idea that has been floating around for a while.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Her defense commissioner, Andreas Kubilius, has been a supporter.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: He's been speaking about it a lot here in Brussels over the past year.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't specify what this would be, um, but she, of course, it's curious that she would propose this because actually what she's talking about here is something that would not be part of the European Union.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: It would be outside the European Union.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it necessarily has to be for two reasons.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: And she mentioned when in the speech when she mentioned who would be in this.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: She said the UK, Norway, and curiously, Canada.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: I have never heard Canada mentioned in the context of the European Security Council before she said it.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was there sitting in the audience while she said it.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And she was keen to make this part of her whole um alliance or or associate membership, as she called it, which is not a real thing.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the the Security Council idea, essentially, if you're including those three countries, it becomes NATO without the US and Turkey, because she didn't mention Turkey in there either.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there's a lot of questions about what this would be.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I was at an event, uh, I think I talked about before, but that for the uh European military ideas.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: And what was interesting about that event is we had a lot of different ideas for how a European independent military should work.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, MEPs were saying that it would be enough to simply coordinate national militaries.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Guy Verhofstadt, former Belgian prime minister, was saying, no, we need a European, a real European, single European military.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not entirely convinced we need that.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think coordination is enough, but that's a separate topic.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: What was interesting is what they could all agree on is that this should not be done by the European Union, that this should be outside the European Union.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's new, actually, you know, because it actually makes the term EU army now irrelevant if we have a consensus that the EU isn't going to do that.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: But there are two reasons why people have now really arrived at the consensus that the EU itself can't do this.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Number one is you would need EU treaty change to give the EU this competence.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Treaty change is something that people have been terrified of for the past two decades, ever since the rejection of the EU constitution in 2005, which by the way is the subject of my new book, which is coming out next year.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but ever since then, the the idea is you open up the EU treaties and it's you're going to open up a Pandora's box, a nightmare that will take years.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so the it that basically makes it impossible to have the EU do this because as soon as you open the treaties, all hell breaks loose.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: The other reason is because the EU is broken at the moment because of the veto.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you would need to establish this uh outside of the EU in order to bypass the European Council's veto on foreign policy, because any uh Putin ally within the EU, which was Orban before and could be anybody new at the moment, could veto Europe's ability to defend itself in the event of a Russian invasion, something which actually happened in the history of Poland with the Polish-Lithuania Commonwealth and the Liberum veto that I've written about before on my Substack uh Gulf Stream Blues.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's it's interesting to me.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I have concerns that we are now all so convinced that this should be outside of the European Union, because I think that lacks some democratic accountability and also sidelines the EU, like it kind of contributes to the EU's decline.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I also see people's points about how there's no way to do this quickly and properly through the EU, especially with the UK being out of it, because there's only two significant military powers in Europe, France and the UK.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: If we do this through the EU and the UK is out of it, then there's like no point in doing it.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where we are right now.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, the few efforts that are happening at the EU level are just about funding.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the ideas for actual command and control are being talked about outside of the EU context.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: What that will be, who knows?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: It could very easily just end up being a talking shop.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: We saw this happen recently with the European political community, um, which was uh brainchild of French president Emmanuel Macron, launched a couple of years ago.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Already it's become a completely useless bi-annual event, which uh fewer and fewer prime ministers are actually bothering to attend.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it's it's nothing resembling what the French president was envisioning for it originally.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, without real powers and real coordination, a real command and control, I think that this European Security Council would end up being just like that: a talking shop uh where nothing actually happens.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: And if we leave this to President von der Leyen to coordinate this, I think that's exactly what will happen.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because she has a habit of making these big statements, having these big ideas, and then never following up on them, never taking the actions to make that happen.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I don't, especially if we're talking about this as being outside the EU, I don't think President von der Leyen is the right person to be coordinating this.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I think what's so interesting about this debate is that um how quickly it's starting to change.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you you mentioned about the UK.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: We'll we'll talk about Canada in a minute, but certainly UK.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if we were having this conversation even, you know, two or three months ago, uh, the picture would have looked very different.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I think, you know, as as you say, I mean, there is a general recognition, and notwithstanding the pretty severe cuts we've seen in UK armed forces in recent years, that the UK is still an absolutely vital uh military player when it comes to European security.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of this would have been looked at as right, okay, how do you involve Britain alongside the EU?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, now the debate is starting to open up in Britain again.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's been 10 years since Brexit.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think the full effects of, you know, the full harmful effects of Brexit have now been felt.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that there is a very, very serious discussion about whether Britain might actually be looking to rejoin.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I mean, this is a huge topic that, you know, we could talk about in, you know, all sorts of different details.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: But focusing very much on that idea of European security and defense.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how much are you starting to think that, you know, Europe, even six months ago, probably or a year ago, would have kept Britain at arm's length.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, you have caused us no end of trouble.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: No way are you coming back?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that maybe even that discussion is starting to change on the continent.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen some very positive statements, for example, from European leaders.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you've been speaking to people.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: I remember a conversation just very recently with speaking to an ambassador from an EU country who I would have expected to be much more negative towards the idea of Britain rejoining, who was actually very positive about the idea.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, are you finding that that debate has changed?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's funny you say that you know that the conversation would have been different two or three months ago.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think even two weeks ago.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because actually, two weeks ago, I was in London giving a speech about the book uh to a pro-European group.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um afterwards in the discussion, we were talking about the prospect of the UK rejoining, and everyone in the group seemed to have given up on the idea, even though they all wanted it to happen, but they had just reached the conclusion that Burnham wasn't serious about um having a uh re-look at that, and uh they just had to accept that and move on.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have the surprise announcement that this is on the menu from Andy Burnham that caught me by surprise, that caught the people I was with in London by surprise, and it caught people here in Brussels, uh EU officials by surprise as well.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, a couple of years ago I wrote an article about this for the New European, where I talked to a lot of EU officials and national officials in EU countries and asked them how they would feel about the prospect of rejoining.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing I kept hearing was that they would need overwhelming public support, something like 80% for the idea, and they would need a bipartisan consensus.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: That is, they would need both labor and the conservatives to be on board.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because what they don't want is to start these negotiations, spend all this time, energy, and money on those negotiations over a couple of years, then have labor get voted out, have the conservatives come in and cancel those negotiations.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: There is still a lot of resentment in this town about the amount of time, energy, and money that was spent on the Brexit negotiations from 2016 to 2020.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: There is zero appetite to restart that again unless it's guaranteed it's going to yield a positive result.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, you can't guarantee that.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: You would need a referendum to approve any association agreement.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I think people here want to be pretty sure that the UK is going to be able to carry that over the line.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: I will say I have not heard anyone who has a job in an official capacity present an ideological, outright opposition to the UK rejoining, even from France, which is the country you would expect to be most skeptical about this.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, everyone's kind of open to it.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: Also privately, I should say.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, publicly you understand why they wouldn't want to shoot this down immediately, but also privately, I'm not hearing this being shot down immediately.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I think we're not there yet.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, there is 60% approval in the UK for rejoining the EU, but they want to see a little, a few more surveys on that.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think they want that percentage to rise as the discussion actually takes place over the coming months.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: They want to see an increase in support.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: And ideally, what they would want to see is Burnham call an election, run with this as part of his platform, and win.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Then they can be sure that there is really public support for this.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think the EU would be hesitant to start these negotiations without Burnham calling an election and having a democratic mandate for it.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Which seems very much to be the route that is being discussed.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, uh, you know, I was listening to something yesterday which made the very good point that we wouldn't necessarily have to have a referendum to start that process.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: That, you know, if there was an election in the UK uh and it was in the manifesto, we will open negotiations with the European Union about rejoining, and then you can have a referendum at the end of it, you know.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Just to kind of the fact that Iceland did that was very unusual.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: That I don't think any country had ever had a referendum on starting negotiations before.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: So people shouldn't look to Iceland and think that's the normal thing that happens.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's definitely not.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, uh absolutely.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: It it tends to be a process that the government comes into power and says, look, this is this is what we're going to do, and then it goes through it and then gives people a say at the end of it, which I think is a in this context would be a much more sensible, you know, let people vote on what they see at the end.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I think my my more general point is that to what extent does security change that equation towards how Europe might be viewing Britain re-entering?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and and uh uh recognizing as well that there are various other options short of full rejoining, that you know, we could be talking about agree to single market, customs union arrangement, or you know, some bespoke, which I know Europe doesn't generally want, but you know, uh does security feature in this that Europe is now saying, look, we it UK can provide certain things which can be really, really useful, and we you know, we really need this more than ever.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was interesting because during the Brexit negotiations 10 years ago, I kept hearing these voices in the UK, particularly conservative voices, saying, we have, you know, this this big military.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: The EU needs our military power, and we need to use that as leverage in these talks that we could be helpful or unhelpful in terms of military things.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: But there was always a major problem with that argument, which is why that bringsmanship or that leverage was never used or never succeeded.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: The EU isn't allowed to get involved in defense.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's the problem.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: And guess who blocked that from happening?
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: The UK for decades.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the UK couldn't simultaneously make the argument, you need to give us things in exchange for our military capability.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: They couldn't make that argument to the EU because the UK itself had blocked the EU from getting involved in defense all this time.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the UK wasn't leaving NATO.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it didn't work before.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: Could it work now?
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because obviously the calculation has changed since then.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Although I think you could argue that the calculation probably should have already changed back then.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Let's not forget that Donald Trump was president during those Brexit negotiations.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, that the talk about developing EU defense wasn't really progressing at that time.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think that if the UK came to the EU and said, look, here's the deal.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: We want to offer our military capacity as part of the package here, as part of our leverage.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: And in exchange, we promised to stop blocking EU defense, that they would support a European defense union, maybe the European Security Council, that they would support some kind of outside NATO structure.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: That would be a huge foreign policy shift for the UK.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think it would have public support.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Polling shows that that has public support in the UK.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it has to come with that, right?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: And in exchange for that, the UK, I think, could keep its opt-outs.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's been a big discussion in the UK since uh Burnham's announcement that, okay, the public says they want to rejoin the EU.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: But then when you ask them follow-up questions, there was a Ugov survey about this.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: When you asked them the follow-up question, well, would you want to rejoin if it meant that you had to use the euro as a currency and you had to join Schengen and then support dropped by 13 points, um, you know, that there's been President Macron seemed to suggest that those continued opt-outs are not on the table.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not so convinced.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: I actually think the EU would be willing to have those opt-outs be part of an accession treaty, because actually, even if they're part of the accession treaty, there's a second step to both of those that the UK could just never do.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's what Sweden has done.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: Sweden is obliged by treaty to join the Euro.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: They avoid it simply by not joining the ERM, the exchange rate mechanism.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: Same thing can be done with Schengen if you just don't apply to join after committing to be in it.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm not sure the EU would insist on these things being part of the treaty when actually them being part of the treaty is kind of meaningless or at least not enforceable.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think actually the UK could get much of its previous opt-outs, not the remade for sure, but much of its previous opt-outs by um adding this military dimension.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: But the UK has to be willing to drop its veto on European independent defense and have a new attitude toward NATO in order to do so.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that sort of takes us on to the the broader view that's emerging about um, you know, the world as a whole.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we're sort of talking about power blocks, United States, Russia, China.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but of course, you you've already mentioned um Mark Carney and Canada's uh closer relationship with the European Union.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: You you mentioned the idea of some sort of associate membership.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how much is this also starting to feed through that European leaders are starting to think, well, actually, there are a collection of countries around the world where we could work very closely uh for broader security, if not defense, but certainly for broader security.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and what sort of other countries could be involved in that?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, um, you know, we we've also been hearing some interesting noises, for example, from Australia, uh, you know, half a world away.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, this in in a more expansive view of Europe being very much at the heart of um a collection of middle powers that are pushing back against sort of the great power politics at this moment.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, where is the debate on all of this in Europe?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, so I should say that there is a real EU-Canada alliance happening.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: We have a document circulating now uh in Brussels with some pretty big ideas for that, and that will be fleshed out at the EU-Canada summit in Montreal later this month.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: But there is no associate membership happening.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: That was a branding exercise unilaterally put in the State of the Union speech by President von der Leyen without consulting national capitals, possibly without even consulting the Canadians.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: We're not sure.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we can drop this term, this idea, it's never happening, it's not a thing, and it won't be a thing.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: But what will be a thing is this EU-Canada alliance for two reasons.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: One is there's a lot that Canada has that the EU needs, most notably minerals, energy, um, but also leadership.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: We have a leadership vacuum here in Europe now.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: All of our national leaders, other than Georgia Maloney, are languishing at historically unprecedented low public approval.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody in the European Council has uh political capital at the moment, other than Georgia Maloney.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: So Georgia Maloney is effectively leading the council now because she's the only one there uh with a strong public mandate.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: President von der Leyen, halfway through her second term, I think everyone has given up on her showing any leadership at this point.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: She's really kind of faded into the background.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: But Mark Carney in Canada is providing the oratory that no European leader is providing.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: He's providing the courage.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: He said no to Donald Trump's extortion with uh the trade war, whereas Europe said, yes, please, sir, may I have another.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: So what all what Europe also needs to import from Canada is inspiration, leadership, courage.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um I just spent two weeks in Canada earlier this month talking to people there.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's amazing the courage that I sense from people there.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: People are so, so angry about the United States.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: And unlike in Europe, Canadians have their eyes fully open to their level of dependence on the United States.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: They always have.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Europeans are really in denial about it.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Europeans live in a kind of la la land of pretend independence, pretend sovereignty.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: Canadians don't.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Canadians are realistic about this, and that's why they understand the gravity of this US threat.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think just for morale, for vibes, this alliance is really important.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: The problem with Mark Carney's idea of a middle powers alliance is that it doesn't really work when you're talking about the European Union, because the European Union isn't a military power.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a large power and it's a potential superpower.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think that may have been part of the purpose with this associate member thing.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: It may, this is just speculation on my part, but it may have been to kind of put Canada in its place, to remind Canada, you are a middle power, but the European Union is not.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: So this partnership, I mean, because if you think about an alliance kind of suggests a partnership of equals, which in terms of population, GDP, Canada is not with the European Union.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's kind of it it reminds Canada that they are a relatively small country in terms of population, uh, and that you know, they would the idea that they would be a member of the EU kind of puts them in their place.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: Not that I I think it's kind of I don't think Canada needed to be put in its place about this, but I'm still just trying to explain why President von der Leyen did this.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I I've heard lots of different explanations, and that's one of them.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: But that's all just to say that I you uh this alliance of middle powers thing doesn't work when you're talking about the European Union.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: It works for Australia, for Japan, for South Korea, for the UK now.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I you know, if if the EU is trying to place itself at this center of this alliance of middle powers, okay, but then that's like the EU and its satellite states, which I think is problematic, because then you're getting into the same situation we have in America.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think Europe has those types of ambitions.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and, you know, that that's an unequal relationship, in other words.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this is always the problem with Mark Carney's Middle Powers Alliance thing, is that it kind of ignores the existence of the European Union.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things is that, you know, circling back, I mean, we've spoken a little bit about Russia so far.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um what is the current European thinking on the war in Ukraine?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because obviously this has been so utterly central to uh a lot of this existential fear that exists in Europe uh uh about its security, the fact that then you have Trump that comes in who isn't willing um to provide those guarantees that everyone thought were absolutely cast iron.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, where do Europeans now see the war going in Ukraine and a sense about what Europe can be doing um to to to help give it a chance?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, there is certainly fatigue at this point, which is understandable.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's been almost five years.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um there is a uh I don't I don't really hear a clear vision actually from European leaders or European officials about what the end game is here, because we still have people afraid.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: To say out loud the idea that Ukraine would have to cede any territory, even though privately, of course, when you when you really get into a conversation with people, you'll get them to acknowledge that it's hard to envision a peace without Ukraine ceding some territory and making some concessions, but Europe still doesn't want to say that out loud.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're still not involved in the peace talks.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's still the US, um, you know, having Jared Kushner fly over there and and kind of waste time, as Macron pointed out in his UN General Assembly speech.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's it's uh uh a kind of a sense of inertia, I get right now.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm not really getting a clear idea from European officials about how Europe can better insert itself into these negotiations.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: We still don't have any point person for Russia to communicate with for the European Union.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um so right now I'd say the EU is a little lost in this.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in terms of Ukraine's place in Europe, later today, when we're recording this, we are going to have an announcement from the Commission about um essentially a membership light kind of idea that accession candidate countries, including Ukraine, could kind of half join the EU in the meantime.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: Ukraine's not going to be happy about that because they're going to suspect this is a permanent situation.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: I have an embargoed copy of that now.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think I could talk about it since this will air after it actually comes out.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, it's essentially saying that they wouldn't have voting power in the EU, but they could join the single market.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: They could, I mean, it's sounding a lot like the EEA, actually, like what Norway and Iceland have, which probably has implications for the UK as well.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the the thingy in this instance, it's it's like a punishment or a safeguard to have them not have voting power because of the veto, because the veto is still there and they're afraid of having more um Putin allies, particularly when they're thinking of the Western Balkans than any of those countries could suddenly come under a Russia-friendly government and have uh veto power within uh the Commission.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, reading this thing that they've sent out, it's a bit of a mess, to be honest.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's where we are in terms of Ukraine's place in the European Union.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I think most people in this town, again, they'll they'll first say, yes, Ukraine's place is in Europe.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: Ukraine will be an EU member state someday.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you really talk to them, you finally get them to admit, okay, this is a lot of theater.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: This probably Ukraine will probably never be an EU member state.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: But it could have this, we could have this two-tier Europe thing that Mario Draghi talked about.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, part of the problem is there isn't a clear vision for the future of Ukraine because there isn't a clear vision for the future of the European Union.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm afraid that this uh uh communication from the Commission that's coming out today isn't going to make that any clearer.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if if we could just turn to China, um, which is a fascinating story in its own right.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I I'm I'm very much reminded of the fact that, you know, while you know we we see there's been a lot of you know talk about China as being the big strategic challenge um in the 21st century and and and for Europe.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm very reminded a few years ago um of Johannes Hahn um sort of saying, you know, the the problem with Europe is that it overestimates Russia and underestimates China.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I think you know, maybe that equation has changed a lot, um, certainly on the Russia front.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: But what very much is the sense in Europe about the relationship with China, with Beijing?
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, one gets a sense that Europe doesn't see it as an immediate threat.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: It seems a very long way away, certainly not a military threat, even though it's got a very close relationship with Moscow.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there is quite clearly an economic challenge.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how does China play into a lot of thinking about European defense and security?
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there may have been a sea change on this yesterday, actually, because we had this joint letter sent by France and Germany to the European Commission outlining a totally new strategy toward China.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: So up till now we've had Ursula von der Leyen's de-risk but not decouple strategy.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: So to try to take the risk out of the China relationship without actually breaking the trade ties.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a widespread feeling that that strategy has failed because the risk is only increasing over time as Europe's trade dependencies grow on China.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so this letter from France and Germany says that the EU should wield all of its trade defense instruments.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, France has been calling for this for some time, but Germany, a very free market country, has been very, very reticent to use this for ideological reasons, like I said, but also because their economy is so especially tied up to Chinese, uh, to China's now.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: So they this the fact that Berlin signed off on this is a big change.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see where this goes.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think in general, when it comes to Europe's foreign policy positioning toward China has always been very much impacted by or even shaped by the United States.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: There has been an attempt to kind of chart Europe's own course here in dealing with China, and that was the de-risk but not decouple strategy.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it was always very unclear to me how that strategy materially differed from the American strategy toward China, which has also seen Thai's uh dependencies grow.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: And now Europe is in an especially confused place because as Trump threatens Europe and makes all these unfriendly remarks toward Europe, he is lavishing praise upon China.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: He's literally rolling out the red carpet for President Xi when he arrives in the United States.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so it's it's very confusing for Europe because they have been told by the United States for the past two decades, you need to be tough with China, you need to put up these uh trade instruments, you need to do what we say about China.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: If the US and China ever has a conflict, you need to take our side and show us now that you're going to do that.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, all of a sudden, the US and China are publicly at least best buddies, and it's Europe that the US hates.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so it's very confusing for a European strategy that has been molded around US wishes for two decades.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so like a lot of other things, the China policy for the EU is a bit of a mess right now.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's a bit confusing, but let's see if this letter uh sent yesterday offers some more clarity.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what we're waiting to see with that letter is how other EU countries respond to it, particularly Italy.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: Dave, look, um, you've been incredibly generous with your time.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have one final question, which is um, you know, so taking a little look ahead, um, where do you think European policy is likely to go?
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really very cognizant of the fact that we're talking about this just before the US midterms.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, all the polling data seems to show that the Democrats will make big gains.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: Are we going to be back in that situation where the Europeans, if that does happen, will just look at the United States and say, look, Trump is now in his final two years, he's going to be hobbled, uh, we'll just hang on and we'll wait and see what happens when a new Democrat, you know, uh a new Democrat precedent emerges, which I think a lot of people would be thinking.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, essentially, are we you you you painted sort of an interesting picture of a Europe which has now changed its overall sense of the security situation regarding the United States?
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's been forced into thinking much more seriously about Russia, but hasn't been able to do anything.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: Are you at all optimistic that we will see any real steps towards sort of building on that?
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or again, is it going to simply be a case that, you know, they'll look at what happens in the United States and think, well, look, you know, we'll let's just live it out for another couple of years.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so essentially business back to usual until another disruptive factor emerges?
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, let's see what happens with the midterms.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's all kinds of scenarios that could play out there, some very scary when we're talking about a non-democratic result, lowercase D.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it may be that Democrats do win seats in that election and then Mike Johnson refuses to seat them in the Congress, and that could go all kinds of scary places.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but let's say the Democrats do uh take both uh houses of Congress in the election.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: There is a real risk that Europeans then say, like they have in the past, uh, everything's fine.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: We can stop any moves toward developing independence, America's back.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now, they would be incredibly stupid to have that reaction, most especially because it's only the Congress.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: The Congress barely does anything these days with the imperial presidency in power.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so you know, to think that the US Congress is going to save Europe from Donald Trump's threats would be absolute lunacy, would uh uh uh betray an incredible lack of knowledge, not only of developments in the US over the past 30 years in the sidelining of Congress, but also a lack of knowledge that foreign policy is so, so much in the prerogative of the president.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that would be crazy.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: But even if Europeans are looking ahead toward 2028 and thinking all we need to do is ride this out, a Democrat will come in and save us, you know, it's still just looking for daddy America to come save them.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, this has been the problem.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: That is not looking at the reality of the situation.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, Trump is a symptom, he's not the disease.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, even if a Democrat becomes president uh in 2028, it's going to be the same situation as in 2020.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: That the movement is still there, the MAGA movement is still there, and at any moment they can come back into power through democratic means or otherwise.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: And Europe still has to deal with that constant Damocles sword hanging over their heads.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing to keep in mind here is even with a democratic administration, at least the US is not interested in defending Europe anymore.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: The protectorates does not make sense in 2026 objectively for Europe or for America.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: So thinking that everything can go back to normal and the US is going to go back to being uh the unquestioning benefactor of Europe is lunacy.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the best case scenario.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: So basically, the best case scenario is like American disinterest and withdrawal.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: The worst case scenario is American aggression, that the United States partners with Russia to divide Europe up between them, that the United States aids Russia, aids China in going after Europe.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: So looking at those scenarios, there's really no scenario in which a European leader could logically say, okay, let's maintain the transatlantic alliance as it was, let's maintain our dependence on the US, let's maintain making NATO the only defense solution for Europe, and let's not pursue developing independent European defense.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: There is no scenario that plays out over the next years in which that makes sense.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, the Atlanticist establishment on this continent, which has been in power so long, is still in power and still dominates think tanks and all the discussions that we have here in Brussels.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: They are still insisting that NATO is the only solution, that it's a danger to develop independent European defense.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, unfortunately, our elite in Europe, our leaders, are really betraying their own citizens because they are not looking at the writing on the law.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're not acknowledging the world as it actually exists today.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: Dave, I thank you so much.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it it's it's always brilliant talking to you.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you bring a fantastic perspective on things.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: You have that amazing perspective of being uh an outsider, insider, and very much an insider in your reporting on European Union affairs.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'll put a link to your your book, The Own Continent, in in the description below.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: Highly recommended.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: But look, thank you so much for talking to us today.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um as always, it's been a real eye-opener.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, great to be with you again, James.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you've enjoyed this episode, I'd be grateful if you considered following, sharing, rating, or leaving a review wherever you get your podcasts.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: It really makes a difference and helps me invite new experts onto the show.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'd like to join a lively membership of international relations enthusiasts, head on over to my Patreon or YouTube channel where you'll find additional video essays, polls, and monthly QA's, as well as thoughtful commentary that continues the conversation.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put the links in the show notes below.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: Many thanks again for joining me and catch you in the next episode.