European Army One Step Closer

How Donald Trump has brought a European army one step closer

James Crisp

European leaders are scrambling to boost their collective defence amid fears US troops will pull out of Europe, and the transatlantic alliance has been badly damaged by Friday’s clash between the two presidents in the Oval Office.

The crisis has increased calls to ensure Europe can act independently of Washington, and raised the prospect of a common army coming a step closer.

European leaders faced with Trump’s insistence they will police the peace in Ukraine have been shocked into action by the combination of an unreliable US and aggressive Russia.

This week, Jose Manuel Albares, Spain’s foreign minister, urged that plans for a joint rapid reaction force, potentially including commandos, should be accelerated.

“I really believe that the time has come that the armed forces of Europe must be created,” Volodymyr Zelensky said at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month.

“Let’s be honest, now we can’t rule out that America might say ‘no’ to Europe on issues that might threaten it.”

Germany’s new chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, said after his victory last week that Europe had to make itself independent from the US and warned Nato could be dead by June.

He told reporters, “it is five minutes to midnight for Europe” days after suggesting Germany could ask for the shelter of Britain and France’s nuclear deterrent.

It was an astonishing intervention from an election winner on the night of his victory, who was, until recently, one of Germany’s most nakedly pro-US politicians.

Mr Merz’s opinion matters. The leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), should soon take the reins of Europe’s largest economy.

His comments will have come as music to the ears of Emmanuel Macron, who may be enjoying his “I told you so” moment.

The French president has urged his allies to do more on common defence since Donald Trump’s first term.

Back in 2018, Mr Macron declared that Europe could not be protected without “a true European army”.

The comments came after Jean-Claude Juncker, Ursula von der Leyen’s predecessor as commission president, called for an EU army in 2015.

Mr Macron now hopes the Paris-Berlin engine of EU policymaking can finally deliver the “strategic autonomy” he wants.

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