South Africa and Europe need each other to deal with the American bully

According to JD Vance, the US vice-president, Europe is under attack. And the threat is not, we are told, the battle-hardened, massed armies on its Eastern Front. Nor China, spending unprecedented amounts on building up its military. Nor even, as many on the far right might think, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants supposedly about to swarm into Europe from the Global South.

No, according to Vance the true threat to Europe lies “within… it is the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.”

Sometimes, even in this digital age, speeches can be decisive. Since 1963, the Munich Security Conference has seen many such speeches, notably Vladimir Putin announcing in 2007 that Russia would never accept an inferior role in the new world order. But Friday’s speech by Vance has the potential to be the most consequential – the moment the world order against which Putin protested started disintegrating.

The message was implicit, but unmistakeable. Nato was founded during the Cold War as an extension of US interests to defend shared Western values, but if those values were no longer shared, then the moral purpose of Nato itself fell away. And those values have changed.

Vance explained what the Trumpian US see as Europe’s faults – multiculturalism, “globalism”, migration, gay rights, the liberal “woke mind virus” – and excluded Putin’s Russia from criticism. The speech came close to arguing that the US was at best indifferent between Russia and the European project.

It was a call to arms for the extreme right to seize power in Europe, and a promise that the “new sheriff in town”, Trump, would help them to do so. Then they would be able to “rectify” Europe’s defects and align the continent with the Trumpian US. All this mere hours after the announcement that Trump was planning to meet Putin in Saudi Arabia to hammer out a peace agreement for Ukraine, without consulting either Europe or Ukraine.

As one would expect, the response was incredulous.

Speaking after Vance in the same forum, Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, labelled the speech as “unacceptable”.

“I had a speech I prepared today,” Pistorius said. “It was supposed to be about security in Europe. But I cannot start in the way I originally intended… This democracy was called into question by the US vice-president…

“He compares the condition of Europe with what is happening in autocracies. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not acceptable.”

Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice-chancellor, said this was a “turning point” in the relationship between Europe and the US. The US government had “rhetorically and politically sided with the autocrats”, he said. Over the course of the weekend in Munich, “the Western community of values ​​was terminated here”.

The trifecta which has underpinned the prosperity Europe has enjoyed over the past 40 years, as outlined in a recent interview by French president Emmanuel Macron – US security protection, cheap Russian power and China as a source of cheap imports but also export market for European manufactured goods – has evaporated in a few years. Europe, for much of this period, squandered any advantage it might have been afforded on internal squabbles. Now it will not have that luxury.

Three immediate implications of this rupture

First, the Western security architecture which has existed since World War 2 was torn up over a weekend. The US is making it clear it wants to end or at least completely reconfigure its decades-old security partnership with Europe. As US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said, “US troops in Europe are not forever”. 

Furthermore, Vance made it clear that the enemy it sees in Europe is the EU itself. “Vance is a right-wing, extremist politician supported by US Big Tech oligarchs, whose aim is to gradually destroy the EU,” said Anton Hofreiter, a German MP.

Europe therefore is under no illusion at all as to what is at stake. It needs to quickly construct a new European “security architecture”, as described by the president of the European Council, António Costa. “It’s insane how fast this is moving,” said a Western official quoted in the Financial Times. “Europe must give Ukraine as much as possible so that it can better say ‘no’ to things rammed down its throat [by the US and Russia].” A new security pact outside of Nato, possibly including EU members, the UK and Norway, must be formed.

This will cost trillions. Bloomberg estimates that protecting Ukraine and expanding their own militaries could cost the continent’s major powers an additional $3.1-trillion over the next 10 years. This will almost certainly entail common EU borrowing. Even the likely next chancellor of Germany, the usually hawkish Friedrich Merz, is acknowledging the reality. A federal Europe, ironically, may well be a consequence of Trump.

Second, and even more critically, Europe needs reform to ensure its economy can remain competitive in a new Trumpian world of tariffs and barriers to trade. Mario Draghi, ex-president of the European Central Bank, in his strategic report for the EU, advocates more Europe: “unprecedented” new private, public and federal investments. He also underlines that the greatest challenges to Europe’s economic growth and productivity are not external, but internal. The European Common Market is far from complete. A true common market, without internal barriers and suffocating regulatory hurdles, is needed to compete.

These challenges are nothing less than existential. The kicked can has run out of road. Threatened on all sides by a bellicose Russia, an aspiring China, and a bullying America, Europe is on its own.

Finally, there is the question of how Europe reacts to the US. There are two ways to deal with a playground bully. First, one can go straight up and punch him on the nose, hoping that he gets the message. Or, one can entertain or at least ignore his aggressions, while corralling support from his other targets, thereby forming a coalition of sorts.

The EU is actively pursuing both strategies. Reciprocal tariffs will only take one so far. Even more important is building closer and firmer ties to like-minded countries. Current trade negotiations with Canada and Latin American countries are examples of ways it is trying to diversify away from a protectionist, bullying America.

For South Africa to prosper in this new realpolitik where might equals right, such “coalitions of the willing” are critical. For countries that value democracy and the rule of law like South Africa, Europe – as the last major power openly defending liberal, democratic values – will be a vital partner. South Africa will not survive in this geopolitical jungle alone, but neither will Europe. Spurned by the US, and rightfully wary of autocratic China and Russia, South Africa and Europe need each other now more than ever. DM

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