By Jorge Liboreiro
After surviving a week that almost rewrote the annals of history, Europeans are back to work as if nothing had happened. Well, not exactly.
The aftermath of Donald Trump’s annexationist threats looms like a phantom. Some cannot wait to forget what happened and move on to other businesses, like the joint work on security guarantees for Ukraine. Others believe the episode should be engraved in collective memory and be hailed as a fundamental lesson on how to close ranks and defend sovereignty.
“The rhetoric during the last couple of weeks has really harmed the trust within the alliance, and I hope that we can put that behind us,” Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said on Thursday morning.
“What is absolutely clear is that Sweden and Europe need to invest a lot more in our own defence,” she added. “Europe is really worth defending.”
Calls for greater European independence have grown in the days following the Greenland crisis. The EU has rolled out multi-billion-euro initiatives to rapidly rearm, promote home-made weaponry and achieve full defence readiness by 2030. These efforts have now been infused with a new sense of urgency.
But the ambitious pitch was given the cold shoulder by none other than NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the man who brokered the framework deal that convinced Trump to abandon his tariff threats.
“If anyone thinks here, again, that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming. You can’t. We can’t. We need each other,” Rutte said during an exchange with members of the European Parliament.
Rutte then argued that European nations would have to spend 10% of their GDP, rather than 5% as is foreseen in the collective objective, to make up for the loss of Washington’s backing.
“You’d have to build up your own nuclear capability. That costs billions and billions of euros,” he said. “In that scenario, you would lose the ultimate guarantor of our freedom, which is the US nuclear umbrella. So, hey, good luck!”
It didn’t take long for Rutte’s remarks to go viral. Clips of the exchange spread like wildfire on social media, with users divided on whether he was right or wrong. In France, a staunch advocate of “strategic autonomy” and the “Made In Europe” preference, the reaction was particularly vitriolic.
“No, dear Mark Rutte. Europeans can and must take charge of their own security. Even the United States agrees. It is the European pillar of NATO,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot.
Andrius Kubilius, the European Commissioner for Defence, was more conciliatory. He said that he agreed with Rutte when it came to the importance of the US nuclear umbrella. But, he added, on conventional defence, this is where Europe “needs to be ready to defend ourselves with much less of America”.
The reaction to Rutte’s comments, driven partially by facts and partially by emotions, encapsulated the anxiety left behind by the Greenland crisis. Europeans are seeing the cracks in the transatlantic alliance with indisputable clarity. This is a reason for deep concern, given the major threat posed by Russia next door. But it’s also a driver for change, a rallying cry for European self-reliance.
For defenders, Rutte’s “keep on dreaming” is a much-needed reality check that should be taken into account. For critics, it’s a mockery of Europe’s collective impetus, which, it must be noted, is costing billions in taxpayers’ money. Rutte’s insistence that he’ll defend Trump when he’s “doing good stuff” added insult to injury so soon after the extraordinary assault on Denmark’s sovereignty.
What’s clear is that something has changed. What’s unclear is how big, lasting and profound this change will be in practice. Foreign policy crises always have an immediate impact that is easily perceived, followed by knock-on effects that need more time to grow, ripen and germinate.
“Europe is no longer Washington’s primary centre of gravity,” High Representative Kaja Kallas said in a speech this week. “This shift has been ongoing for a while. It’s structural, not temporary. It means that Europe must step up. No great power in history has ever outsourced its survival and survived.”
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