Europe wakes up to a tectonic shift in the continent’s geopolitics

Host Macron apart, British Prime Minister (PM) Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, Polish PM Donald Tusk Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez, Dutch PM Dick Schoof and Danish PM Mette Frederiksen among others were at at the Paris emergency summit. (Source: X/@Bundeskanzler)

The emergency summit of European leaders hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday (February 17) in response to the extraordinary, no-holds barred admonition by US Vice-President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) ended on a predictable note. There was no joint statement after the Paris meeting and the distress and dissonance were more than palpable in the individual statements of the leaders.

Vance’s speech at Munich upended decades of US-EU-NATO amity nurtured during the Cold War era and the latter phase, when Russia emerged as the successor to the Soviet Union that had imploded in an ignominious manner. The US provided the strategic umbrella to protect Europe and did the heavy-lifting in the security domain and the MSC was an annual ritual from 1963 onwards where the trans-Atlantic commitments were reiterated.

This time the US message, delivered by Vance, was clear: Europe would have to acknowledge the ‘new sheriff’ – US President Donald Trump, and align its policies in keeping with a radical geo-political MAGA (Make America Great Again) template that was being evolved. The hypocrisy and hectoring were all too visible, as Vance waxed eloquent about the sanctity of democratic values, liberty and free speech and chastised Europe for abandoning them – even as team Trump was trampling over all of these normative values and principles in the US within days of assuming office.

The war in Ukraine remains the immediate challenge and European leaders were shell shocked to learn that President Trump had spoken with his Russian counterpart President Putin over a possible ‘deal’ to end the war and that preliminary negotiations would take place on Tuesday (February 18) in Riyadh. Neither Europe nor Ukraine would be at the deliberations and the dismay was evident in Paris even as the leaders gathered tried to put up a brave front.

Host Macron apart, British Prime Minister (PM) Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, Polish PM Donald Tusk Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez, Dutch PM Dick Schoof and Danish PM Mette Frederiksen were among the leaders at the Paris emergency summit. Other participants included senior officials: NATO chief Mark Rutte, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa.

The leaders expressed divergent, individual views about the Trump-triggered churn over Ukraine that had caught them by surprise but were agreed that any long term security policies that would be evolved – including increased defence spending by EU states – would ultimately have to include an American guarantee.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer added that he was “prepared to consider committing British forces on the ground alongside others if there is a lasting peace agreement” with the caveat that the US must be involved.

He said: “There must be a US backstop, because a US security guarantee is the only way to effectively deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again.”

The Paris meeting was an emergency summit and clearly there was not enough time for the usual staff work to be done by senior officials for a joint statement to be issued. It was conveyed that the Munich shock administered by Vance would be discussed in a larger EU-NATO framework.

The immediate inference that follows from Munich and Paris is that the trans-Atlantic alliance which was considered to be the foundation of US-led Western primacy in the international arena is now in considerable disarray.

Will the EU accept what emerges from the US-Russia talks to end the war? On current evidence it appears that Russia will not have to return any of the Ukrainian territory it has wrested – illegally – and Ukraine will have to accept that it cannot aspire to be a NATO member in the future.

These are very complex, import-laden issues for Europe to ponder over. And this comes at a time when there is a wave of discord and dissent within European democracies over immigration, unemployment, sluggish economic growth and an increasing frustration with what is seen as liberal ‘wokeism’ among the mainstream political parties.

Europe’s principal nation Germany is grappling with these issues in a visible manner and VP Vance stirred the domestic German kettle in a brazen and politically rude manner in his Munich speech. Upbraiding Germany for trying to stifle voices of the extreme right-wing constituency (some of whose members extol Hitler and Nazi rule), Vance snubbed Chancellor Olaf Scholz by meeting with Alice Weidel, the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Germany will go to the polls on Sunday (Feb 23) to elect a new government and the Christian Democrats led by Friedrich Merz are expected to become the biggest party in power and may have to contend with an energized AfD – which will have the tacit support of the Trump team.

An ironic trend line is discernible in Europe. World War II ended in 1945 with the Axis powers led by Germany being defeated and it was hoped that fascism and related right wing ideology had been buried in an irrevocable manner.

That hope alas, has been belied at Munich.