European Rearmament, the American Empire and Donald Trump

Trump has been demanding for a while that European NATO members increase defence spending to five percent of their gross domestic product. This has caused alarm and anxiety in some quarters, while others have insisted Trump is not entirely serious and that the five percent figure is merely Trump’s opening move in negotiations.

As for NATO in general, the truth seems to be somewhere in the middle. Two weeks ago, NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte announced a plan for NATO members to increase defence spending to 3.5 percent of GDP and “defence-related spending” to 1.5 percent of GDP, by 2032. Germany, however, seems much more eager to satisfy Trump’s request without qualification. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul announced that we will meet the new 5 percent spending target and so far he has not said anything about Rutte’s 3.5/1.5 percent split.

Five percent of the German GDP is an enormous amount of money. Specifically, it is 220 billion Euros a year, or 45% of the entire federal budget for 2025. For comparison, the Chinese presently spend 230 billion Euros a year on defence, and the Russians 125 billion. Were this spending to be done seriously, it would catapult Germany into the ranks of the great powers. This would be why Chancellor Friedrich Merz is suddenly talking about making the Bundeswehr the “strongest conventional army in Europe.”

Note that word – “conventional.” There is substantial opposition within the German political class to developing our own nuclear arsenal. Officially, our past means that we cannot be trusted with such weapons, and that is a first hint that there is something deeply unserious about these spending plans. These days, however, all you need to do to get everyone on your side is pledge to burn through insane amounts of money. Even Alternative für Deutschland are on board. They see in Trump a sympathetic figure and Alice Weidel has expressed her support for the 5 percent target.

I enthusiastically agree that Germany specifically, and Europe in general, should rearm. This is because I hope for a world in which the Americans leave Europe and the Continent can have its own history. We have lived for 80 years as a pacified imperial province and this has weakened us and sickened our politics.

That said: Germany already ranks fourth in the world for military spending, and our Bundeswehr is an incompetent and corrupt joke. Without serious institutional reforms, spending more money is not going to yield a stronger military. The cultural elements necessary to lend rearmament force are also missing. Germany has wandered very, very far down the anti-nationalist path since the Cold War. Even if we were to build Merz’s “strongest conventional army,” we could never summon the political will to use it. These billions will be wasted on industrial profiteering and crazy side projects, like “cyber-defence” (pink-haired ninnies reporting you for internet racism) and “disaster preparedness” (a way of smuggling Green boondoggles like “climate resilient infrastructure” into the defence budget).

On my long Friday train ride back to Bavaria, I voiced these concerns on Twitter and stirred up the righteous wrath of MAGA against me. Many angry people told me that we Europoors have enjoyed our free ride long enough and that the United States is tired of dispensing their expensive charity. We must pay up and dithering losers like me need to stop whining.¹

The unpleasantness has inspired me to outline my views on the nature of the American-European relationship, including the uncomfortable and awkward truths at the heart of it. As I see it, there are three of them:

1) The United States is an empire, and a fearsome one. Their security guarantees are not charity and they reflect a clear strategy to preempt the militarisation of European nations, especially Germany. Our own political class are eager participants in and beneficiaries of the American imperial programme.

2) Trump believes the American imperial strategy in Europe is no longer as necessary as it once was, but he has no plans to abandon it entirely. While the European establishment are eager to tell Trump what he wants to hear, they are not remotely prepared for, or serious about, full-scale rearmament.

3) The prospect of a pan-European defence force, independent of the Americans, is a sad illusion. There can be no common European defence beyond NATO. Europe is not a country and if European nations seriously pursue rearmament, European unity as we know it will dissolve.