Wars, it is said, make people conservative, since they are fought for an idea of home under threat. And yet their innate tragedy is that, even in victory, they usher in a world transformed. We are seeing this revolutionary fable playing out once again in Ukraine, reshaping Europe in ways that we cannot yet comprehend.
The world of February 2014, when Vladimir Putin’s “little green men” began popping up in Crimea has now — beyond doubt — irrevocably disappeared. That was the world of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel, European demilitarisation and global interdependence. Back then, Russia provided Europe its gas and the United States its defence, while China provided the entire world with the raw materials needed for the technologies which would drive the future. All these assumptions now lie in tatters; that era finally brought to a cataclysmic end by Russia’s attempt to finally subjugate Ukraine in February 2022.
Three years on from that fateful decision, a million men at arms are still battling it out in trenches, hunted by drone armies powered by artificial intelligence. Imperial carve-ups are taking place in the marbled halls of Saudi Arabia while the transatlantic alliance teeters on the brink of collapse. And a new trade war is threatening to send the world economy into recession, risking not only the future of Nato but Europe’s entire social-democratic model. Yet behind the scenes in Europe’s capitals, a dispiriting refusal to abandon the dogmas of old still lingers. And among the worst offenders are those who are performatively leading Europe’s response to Donald Trump: the British and French.
Beyond the warm words over the past few weeks, London and Paris are largely sticking to the tired national strategies they have clung to for much of the past 50 years: the French talking of European autonomy but in reality pursuing national autonomy; the British pretending they are a mini America but, instead, becoming an ever cheaper imitation. The irony is that, as much as it might pain either side to admit, each would be stronger if it became a little more like the other.
As the former French ambassador to the US, Gerard Araud, has repeatedly pointed out, the Gaullist insistence to retain some national independence from America has proved more farsighted than Britain or Germany would like to admit. While the British military has long prioritised obtaining the latest shiny piece of American military kit available — even at the cost of becoming ever more dependent on the States — the French have prioritised retaining national autonomy, even at the cost of paying more for less.
One such example is the French insistence on a sovereign space policy. They spend around three times more than we do on space programmes, but end up with an inferior product to the one we access courtesy of the Americans, according to those I spoke with. Another example is the French satellite communications operator Eutelsat, which now wants to replace Elon Musk’s Starlink in Ukraine in order to protect European autonomy. But Eutelsat has far fewer satellites operating at far higher altitudes resulting in slower connections. European autonomy, in other words, means paying more for a worse product — at least in the short term.
The upside of this French insistence on national resilience is that in the event of a genuine American withdrawal from Nato — and, perhaps, even an alliance with Russia — the French would at least have the foundations upon which to construct a genuinely independent military. Britain, in contrast, has built its entire strategy around the principle of interoperability with the United States, and so would be sent into a crisis, forcing it to question everything from scratch.
Yet, the corollary of the French insistence on national resilience is that, for all their talk of European autonomy, they cannot bring themselves to do what is necessary to genuinely move in this direction — since it would inevitably undermine their own independence. The most obvious example of this paradox is the fact that in Ukraine’s great battle for survival against Russia — a war Emmanual Macron has held up as an existential test of European security — France has fallen far behind the UK and Germany in supplying the necessary arms for Kyiv to prevail. Why? The answer, it seems, comes in two parts: first, France continues to prioritise national self-reliance over European solidarity; and, second, as one analyst put it to me, France appears “more genuinely broke” even than Britain.
In total, Britain has contributed around €10 billion in military aid to Ukraine, compared with just €3.5 billion from France. As part of this, Britain has been prepared to run down its military stocks. “We’ve given it all away,” said one official I spoke to. By one estimate, Britain has just 14 pieces of heavy artillery left in Estonia, I was told. The French would never entertain this level of exposure. The result, however, is that in the fight for Ukraine’s national survival, Britain has shown more European “solidarity” than France.
Talking European but acting French is the straitjacket Paris seems unable to escape, limiting its ability to lead the Continent into the European revolution it has long championed. Again and again this conundrum plays out. Twenty EU states — including Germany — have called for greater coordination with the UK defence industry to boost the Europe’s resilience, but the French rejected the proposal. Britain has sought a defence pact with the EU in recent months, the process has been held up by the French insistence on negotiating access to Britain’s fishing waters. The inevitable result: French autonomy, European weakness.
“Talking European but acting French is the straitjacket Paris seems unable to escape.”
A similar story has played out on the biggest question of all: nuclear weapons. In France, the independence of the country’s deterrent is sacrosanct. There is understandable pride — especially today — that it is less dependent on American cooperation than British equivalent. Yet, for this very reason the French have proven unable to move beyond the Gaullist doctrine which states that its nuclear deterrent serves only its vital national interests. Yet, this means it cannot be extended to Europe. And so it is stuck.
Britain, in contrast, has always been much more willing to be dependent on American cooperation, but also to place its deterrent at the service of Nato. In the event of full-scale American isolationism, the cost for Britain of maintaining its nuclear deterrent would be prohibitive. As such, the lack of interest in strategic national autonomy has left it in the similarly invidious position of being tied to a superpower that increasingly fails to hide its contempt for its supplicant partners. Whatever happens over the coming months and years, Britain will at some point be forced to confront the question it does not want to answer: what will it do when the Americans are gone and there is no Nato?
The costs of real independence from the United States, then, remain too high for either Britain or France to seriously entertain. The scale of our dependence was revealed by the former head of British intelligence, Alex Younger, this week when he said there were “no circumstances” under which European troops could be sent to Ukraine without a peace deal — and that even with an agreement it would be “irresponsible” to do that without strategic support from the US. According to one senior military adviser I spoke with, Europe needs to spend around 3.5% of its GDP for the next decade simply to get its armies into a position to independently deter Russian aggression. Until then, Europe’s collective forces would be vulnerable to a Russian incursion into the Baltics without the Americans.
Yet, even at this level of spending, Europe would still have to remain under the American nuclear umbrella. Without it, military advisers believe, Europe remains vulnerable to nuclear coercion. “We don’t have the answer to tactical nukes,” as one official put it to me, bluntly. An answer would cost Britain and France more like 4.5% of GDP — unless the Germans finance it. But while nuclear autonomy remains “the big play” for France and Britain in the coming years — the grand offer reshaping the continent for the 21st century — neither seems capable nor willing to make it.
In Ukraine, as many as two million drones are now produced each year, an increasing number of which are being controlled by artificial intelligence. Ukraine now trains its soldiers to launch combined operations with drone armies at land and sea, while its traditional military is dependent on high-end American intelligence and technology that Europe does not have. The nature of war itself is changing, which in turn, will force the armies of Europe and the United States to revolutionise themselves irrespective of the outcome.
In turn, both Ukraine’s drone production and America’s military might are dependent on the supply of critical minerals — including rare earths — which are sourced via an extraordinarily complicated global network which must be protected, in the end, by military power. Strip away everything and there is a Leviathan holding a sword and a sceptre — the only question is who that is.
If Europe is serious about its autonomy, then, it will need not only its own militaries, but its own supply of critical minerals, artificial intelligence, semiconductor plants and reliable sources of energy. It is for all these reasons that neither Britain nor France today is rushing to grasp the opportunity presented by Trump of “independence” from the United States. Neither can afford it.
Here is the rub. Britain and France are far too poor to play the role they want. Last year, the French government ran a deficit of more than 6%, far outside the limits demanded by the European Commission. Yet it has so far proved impossible to assemble a majority in the National Assembly to pass a budget to bring this under control. Instead, Paris has relied on constitutional powers to enact the budget without a parliamentary vote. In Britain, meanwhile, which has similar levels of national debt, the Government has a large majority, but is gearing up for a Spring Statement which most analysts believe will contain fanciful forecasts of undeliverable spending cuts.
The painful truth facing both London and Paris is that while Britain will need to become more French to thrive in a world of American withdrawal — and France will need become more British in its willingness to rely on others — both countries will need to become something new if they are ever to become truly independent in this new world. Henry Kissinger did note that Donald Trump may be “one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences”. The trouble is, neither Britain nor France seems willing to stop pretending.
