It’s mid-March and I’m on the Jubilee line home from Westminster. I had picked up the latest New Statesman upon leaving the office, hoping to flick through its pages until something grabbed my attention. I didn’t have to search for long. Standing to assure my fellow commuters of my upstanding citizenship (quite literally), I landed on Andrew Marr’s commentary on Europe’s future in an increasingly turbulent world. A comfort read, for sure.
Marr writes on the urgent need for US cooperation in securing a lasting peace deal in Ukraine, something he warns “depends wholly on the US president’s mood.” His assessment of the current situation is not wrong. But we cannot allow Europe’s security to hang on the whims and tantrums of a president who fancies himself a king. Even more unsettling is the growing warmth between this king and Putin, which seriously damages the credibility of any peace deal on a table at which Washington is sat at the head.
Marr paints the international landscape with a more diplomatic brush than I (one that Trump could probably do with borrowing), but do we agree on one crucial point: Britain must arm. Echoing Winston Churchill’s warning, Britain must rearm. The Prime Minister’s recent commitment to raising defence spending to 2.5% of GDP is a step in the right direction, but time is now our most valuable resource. Marr argues that Europe is in no position to face “full-scale military confrontation,” meaning diplomacy must carry the burden of buying us that time. The months ahead demand an urgent yet measured approach: reinforcing alliances and accelerating a rearmament programme akin to the one Britain embarked upon before the Second World War.
This is why, as I wrote recently, I am grateful we in Britain now have an adult at the helm. Starmer’s recent conduct on the international stage has been steady and serious. At PMQs this week, Ed Davey rightly congratulated the Prime Minister for securing the restoration of intelligence and military support for Ukraine. Regardless of how the Trump administration positions itself, Britain must pursue diplomacy over political theatrics if we are to stand any chance of strengthening our defences.
I disagree with Marr’s assertion that the “coalition of the willing” – the offspring of the Prime Minister’s Lancaster House Summit on 2nd March – means little without a peace deal. As President Macron said last week: “the future of Europe cannot be decided in Moscow or Washington.” A minerals deal that could end the Russo-Ukrainian War must, as Jeremy Bowen writes in the New Statesman, “be made with Ukraine as well as Russia” – and cannot entail Trump bending to Putin’s expansionist ambitions with the hope that he can get a slice of Ukraine’s natural resources. During the ambush of Zelensky in the Oval Office, the wartime president reminded Trump and Vance of Russia’s violation of the Minsk agreement – a reminder that we must be prepared for conflict, regardless of whether there is a peace deal to police. Not in the least as Britain already has a duty to stand by Ukraine – and Europe’s collective security – in the Budapest Agreement signed in 1994, an agreement egregiously and directly violated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The coalition of the willing has a much larger (but no more important) brief than standing by Ukraine. Europe must look to Europe; our allies, our collective strength, our capacity-building. It is not enough to wait for a dictator and a president who fancies himself a king to come to terms about how they are to carve up a country’s natural resources – which, by the way, won’t deliver a profit to the White House until long after Trump has left office.
