The Daily Populous Wednesday December 10th, 2025 morning edition
Authored by inews.co.uk and submitted by theipaper

Europe's blithe indifference is becoming more and more dangerous

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When Volodymyr Zelensky met Sir Keir Starmer and the leaders of France and Germany in Downing Street yesterday, the Trump administration’s new national security strategy will have loomed large in their conversation.

A transcript leaked last week of a call among the leaders quoted Emmanuel Macron warning Ukraine that the United States may “betray” them in talks with Russia, while Friedrich Merz told the Ukrainian leader that the Americans “are playing games with both you and us”.

The White House’s new strategy won’t have calmed those fears. Alongside denunciations of Europe’s governments for supposedly blocking peace, and predicting that “within a few decades … certain Nato members will become majority non-European”, the paper recklessly calls into question Nato, the most successful and effective defensive alliance in human history, and fails to even identify the clear and present danger posed by Russia.

From left to right, Volodymyr Zelensky, Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz after a meeting in 10 Downing Street on Monday. ‘The continent is still far short of being self-sufficient in security terms,’ writes Mark Wallace (Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP)

That said, the document is uncomfortably correct about one thing: the free countries of Europe continue to fail to take their own defence sufficiently seriously.

This is a long-standing American frustration, with good reason. Sure, things have improved in most (but not all) European Nato members since Donald Trump’s first-term speech in Brussels when he lambasted them for failing to meet their defence spending obligations, but the continent is still far short of being self-sufficient in security terms.

That isn’t a uniform failing. The further east you go, and the closer you get to Russia, the more urgent governments find it to rearm. Poland in particular is taking the threat of Russian aggression extremely seriously.

Overall, though, the picture is frustrating. Domestic defence manufacturing capacity continues to lag. Spending on European militaries overall, and the military aid that Ukraine desperately needs in its fight for survival, is sluggish. The only thing in plentiful supply is rhetoric about the importance of European defence – tragically, it is not backed by serious action.

Take two examples of this failure of seriousness. I’ve written before for this newspaper about the huge opportunity presented by the hundreds of billions of dollars of frozen Russian state assets held in Europe. These are under European control – a card that we, not the Americans, hold. This money could and should be deployed to support Ukraine’s survival and, in time, reconstruction.

This idea has been on the table since Vladimir Putin’s war began. It has now been discussed at the very highest levels in EU summits and beyond for much of this year. And yet still, nothing has been done.

The latest obstacle is the Prime Minister of Belgium, Bart De Wever, who claims the proposal would be “a nice idea, stealing from the bad guy to give to the good guy”, but had never been attempted before and was therefore somehow improper. Mr De Wever’s sense of propriety appears to outweigh his concern about what would happen if Russia prevails in the greatest land war in Europe since 1945. So Europe gabs on, while Ukrainians continue to bleed and die.

Further farcical scenes can be found in the short-sighted obstructionism on display in UK-EU defence co-operation over the last year.

The original UK-EU defence and security pact signed in May this year almost foundered because the EU insisted on getting access to British fishing waters in return for a defence deal – as though allies working together wasn’t a benefit in itself for all involved. Prioritising the right to catch our cod over rapid action to improve our mutual security would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.

The government declared that the fisheries surrender would “pave the way” for British defence manufacturers to supply the Safe programme, the EU’s €150 billion defence fund. (Safe stands for “Security Action For Europe”, though action appears to be little in evidence.)

Last month, talks on the UK’s involvement broke down because Brussels reportedly demanded an eye-watering £6.5bn fee, or they wouldn’t allow some of Europe’s most sophisticated defence manufacturers to contribute their expertise to the EU’s defence.

Lord Ricketts, Chair of the House of Lords’ European Affairs Committee, described the demand as “so off the scale that it suggests some EU members don’t want the UK in the scheme”. In less diplomatic terms, France wants to hog the funds for its own defence sector – and all the airy talk of prioritising “security action for Europe” above all else has crumbled at the first sniff of national protectionist advantage.

This smacks of fundamental unseriousness. Years into this latest Russian war of aggression, the EU’s leaders and Member States are still unable or unwilling to put defence first. Their words sound fine, but their actions keep revealing what their true priorities are. There is no point saying we all stand together and will forge an independent, secure future, if you aren’t willing to tell Spanish trawlermen, EU accountants or French vested manufacturing interests that security comes above everything else.

What would be enough to make them change their ways and prioritise the security of their citizens and this continent? Russia’s invasions of first Georgia and then Ukraine (twice) evidently weren’t sufficient cause to snap out of it. Years of sustained threats, cyber attacks, assassinations, attacks on infrastructure and terrorist sabotage campaigns emanating from the Kremlin directly onto Europe’s streets apparently weren’t enough either.

Even now, faced with Trump’s abandonment of America’s allies, and his disgraceful betrayal of the brave Ukrainians, this attitude of blithe indifference to the way the world is becoming more dangerous seems unshakeable. Must we wait for an even wider, even worse war before waking up? That would be a dangerous gamble.

Paris, Berlin and Brussels are grievously offended at the way Washington criticises their inability or unwillingness to stand on their own two feet. Their outrage would ring less hollow if they didn’t keep proving the critique to be true.

Mark Wallace is chief executive of Total Politics Group

Extreme-Outrageous on December 9th, 2025 at 17:50 UTC »

Europe, like me, believed the world was becoming a better place. That eventually multi-lateral agreements would give way to a sort of globally unified system where war isn't necessary. We were both dreadfully wrong.

theipaper on December 9th, 2025 at 15:14 UTC »

When Volodymyr Zelensky met Sir Keir Starmer and the leaders of France and Germany in Downing Street yesterday, the Trump administration’s new national security strategy will have loomed large in their conversation.

A transcript leaked last week of a call among the leaders quoted Emmanuel Macron warning Ukraine that the United States may “betray” them in talks with Russia, while Friedrich Merz told the Ukrainian leader that the Americans “are playing games with both you and us”.

The White House’s new strategy won’t have calmed those fears. Alongside denunciations of Europe’s governments for supposedly blocking peace, and predicting that “within a few decades … certain Nato members will become majority non-European”, the paper recklessly calls into question Nato, the most successful and effective defensive alliance in human history, and fails to even identify the clear and present danger posed by Russia.

That said, the document is uncomfortably correct about one thing: the free countries of Europe continue to fail to take their own defence sufficiently seriously.

This is a long-standing American frustration, with good reason. Sure, things have improved in most (but not all) European Nato members since Donald Trump’s first-term speech in Brussels when he lambasted them for failing to meet their defence spending obligations, but the continent is still far short of being self-sufficient in security terms.

That isn’t a uniform failing. The further east you go, and the closer you get to Russia, the more urgent governments find it to rearm. Poland in particular is taking the threat of Russian aggression extremely seriously.

Overall, though, the picture is frustrating. Domestic defence manufacturing capacity continues to lag. Spending on European militaries overall, and the military aid that Ukraine desperately needs in its fight for survival, is sluggish. The only thing in plentiful supply is rhetoric about the importance of European defence – tragically, it is not backed by serious action.

Take two examples of this failure of seriousness. I’ve written before for this newspaper about the huge opportunity presented by the hundreds of billions of dollars of frozen Russian state assets held in Europe. These are under European control – a card that we, not the Americans, hold. This money could and should be deployed to support Ukraine’s survival and, in time, reconstruction.

This idea has been on the table since Vladimir Putin’s war began. It has now been discussed at the very highest levels in EU summits and beyond for much of this year. And yet still, nothing has been done.

The latest obstacle is the Prime Minister of Belgium, Bart De Wever, who claims the proposal would be “a nice idea, stealing from the bad guy to give to the good guy”, but had never been attempted before and was therefore somehow improper. Mr De Wever’s sense of propriety appears to outweigh his concern about what would happen if Russia prevails in the greatest land war in Europe since 1945. So Europe gabs on, while Ukrainians continue to bleed and die.

Further farcical scenes can be found in the short-sighted obstructionism on display in UK-EU defence co-operation over the last year.