Somewhat over 12 years ago on the 2013 World Economic Forum in Davos, German Chancellor Angela Merkel observed that Europe had only seven per cent of the worldwide population, and had twenty-five per cent of world GDP, but accounted for some fifty per cent of worldwide social expenditure and questioned whether this scenario might be sustainable in the long run. It was a theme that she would bring up at times through the remainder of her term in office.
Her fundamental concern was that European economies were finding growth difficult and that they compared poorly with lots of their competitors. In emphasising the quantity spent on social services, was there a touch that Europe was neglecting one other vital matter like, say, defence?
Across the Atlantic there have been many who reasoned that Europe’s comfortable welfare states were being paid for not directly by American taxpayers. All European countries had run down their armed forces and defence budgets, particularly after the tip of the Cold War. Some members of NATO contributed little or no and the more involved generally required substantial material backup, almost from the beginning of any conflict.
Taking the UK as a living proof and using figures from the research platform Macrotrends, in 1960 the UK’s defence budget was just over seven per cent of GDP. In 1968 it dropped below six per cent and by 1977 below five per cent. Since 1994 (3.38%) it has never exceeded three per cent. Britain’s under-resourced involvement in Iraq in 2003 recorded a figure of two.55 per cent for that 12 months and between 2016 and 2019 inclusive the figure was below two per cent. The figures include service pay and pensions.
As Britain, together with France, tended to be the more energetic members this side of the Atlantic and do not normally are available for an excessive amount of criticism, our effort would still be insufficient to compensate for the shortage from others. It would all the time be too little for an American who by 2011 was expressing an interest in running for the presidency. Maybe even to his own surprise, after announcing his candidacy in June 2015, Donald Trump became the forty seventh President of the United States in 2017, and has now returned to office this 12 months for a second term.
Throughout Mr Trump’s 2016 campaign he continually emphasised how hard done by the remainder of the world the United States was treated and his exhortation to ‘Make America Great Again’ with appropriate motion was going to go a protracted option to make amends. One goal could be the by now fairly longstanding North America Free Trade Agreement signed by Canada, Mexico and the United States which had come into force in 1994. Quite simply, if either of the 2 junior parties ran a surplus the United States was being treated unfairly and the Agreement (NAFTA) could be up for renegotiation. Another pet hate, the EU, it was claimed by Trump, had been set as much as be against America. NATO was “obsolete”.
During President Trump’s first term in office, no surprises, NAFTA was renegotiated and on trade more generally, the President put into motion the world’s biggest ever decoupling in history, America’s trade with China – though still clipping along at about $350bn in China’s favour. Yet Trump’s liking for President Xi Jinping of China I’m sure is real enough and he hopes to go to Beijing, possibly as early as next month to hammer out a deal. President Trump is nothing if not stuffed with contradictions.
Europe is one other matter and it seems that the “Leader of the Free World” doesn’t look upon us in a really positive light. (Britain thinks/hopes this just applies to the EU and remainder of Europe but I’m not so sure). An inkling for what the long run might hold will be found back in 2018.
The 2018 G7 Summit at Charlevoix, Canada, was hosted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and might go down in history as a game changer – the French would rename it because the G6+1. President Trump was in good form and insulted Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and threatened to “send him 25 million ethnic Mexicans (and you will be out of office very soon)”. Good start and he would go on to attack allies while championing Russia, criticising NATO, EU and Europe. The President and members of his party also went on to insult their host with derogatory remarks, behaviour that every one now appears to be fairly standard.
There’s a clip where he tells the world, “We’re the piggy bank everyone keeps robbing”, though I cannot make certain this was at Charlevoix – there are only so many clips! The most famous momento from the 2018 summit is undoubtedly the Merkel-Trump stare down photo where the President is sitting together with his arms crossed whilst the German Chancellor stands before him, hands pressed hard on the table between them and each glowering at one another. President Trump left the summit early and refused to endorse the ultimate communiqué.
Looking back on a few of this will be quite funny however the fate of hundreds of thousands will be affected. At Charlevoix, Trump made it very clear to everyone that “Ukraine is one of the corrupt countries on the earth” and he pressed all present to recognise that Crimea had been and may proceed to be a part of Russia.
Out of office and on 23 February 2022 a six-minute broadcast on MSNBC of Trump on Ukraine can surely only be interpreted as the previous president endorsing the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “So Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent’, a big section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force … He’s very savvy. I do know him well, very, thoroughly” – comments made after seeing more tanks than he had ever seen before.
After President Trump was elected for a second term it was surely only a matter of time before he turned against one among his pet hates – Ukraine. Speaking on Airforce One on 10 March, he again reiterated that the Russia-Ukraine war would never have happened if he had been president and said that the war had cost America $350bn thus far – and he was looking forward to getting a minerals deal. A bit of fine news is that America has nearly restored the safety shield which had been withheld last week on his command.
How accurate a costing $325bn is, is immaterial to Trump but the prices for America which he would love returned far outweigh any principles and swing right back to EU/Europe/NATO. Since his meeting on 28 February 2025 with the ungrateful ‘Dictator Zelensky’ who was asked to go away the White House after their meeting was cut short, he has returned to an old tune together with his allies. His attitude is that they’re comfortable for America “to pay their defence bills” while refusing to buy products from the United States: “We are supporting NATO, we’re paying the bills for other countries, they’re ripping us off in trade …They won’t take our cars, take our agricultural products, they would not take anything; yet we’re taking their cars by the hundreds of thousands, Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen.”
And we were all glad to listen to that he believed Putin wanted peace: “I think him, I believe we’re doing thoroughly with Russia.”
Europe is frustrated and furious with President Trump but in addition with its own apparent inconsequence, its inability to supply greater than some more weapons and ammunition but nothing like the quantity that would fend off Russian attacks for any length of time, never mind turn the tide in Ukraine’s favour.
Fifty years of defence budgets becoming an increasing number of marginal has meant that there is just one military industrial complex within the West and that’s in Trumpland. There have been hints prior to now that more needed to be done on either side of the Atlantic and for his part The Don has never held back – but Trump 2 was never meant to occur. America First is nothing latest in American politics; it has been on the go from about 1840. Trump just supercharged it in our times.
On Tuesday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, representatives from Ukraine and the United States sat right down to attempt to mend fences, discuss a proposed mineral deal, and devise some type of peace talks that may end the war between Russia and Ukraine. I simply can’t forget that he who pays the piper calls the tune.
