Is there a magic button on your plane? That’s what conspiracy theorists and aviation experts alike were asking mid-month as they debated European purchases of the US’s most advanced fighter jet, the F-35.
The jets cost more than US$85 million (NZ$148m) each and have been heroically described as “supersonic stealth strike fighters”.
But as online gossips had it, if the Americans decided they didn’t want Europeans to use their fancy plane, there was a “kill switch” they could flip, making the F-35 a very expensive paperweight holding down the tarmac at airbases around Europe.
The Pentagon denied the magic button story, saying the F-35 doesn’t have any kind of switch that could be operated remotely from, say, President Donald Trump’s bathroom. But, as aviation experts also pointed out, even without that, European militaries wouldn’t be able to use the F-35, should current Washington antagonism towards Europe morph into something more monstrous.
“Buying an F-35 is a lot like buying an iPhone or a Tesla,” US technology news website Gizmodo said. “It’s hard to repair them without going back to the manufacturer.”
The F-35 debate is just the latest in a rapidly increasing number of incidents illustrating what’s being called the transatlantic rift. Once upon a time, the Europeans and Americans were friends, upholding the so-called post-World War II “international rules-based order” together. But since the Trump administration came to power, that’s changed.
First, came the tirade by Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference in February. Since then, we’ve had Trump’s non-stop blustering and blithering about tariffs and annexing Greenland. Most recently, the unjustifiable detentions or deportations of EU citizens travelling to the US have been upsetting Europeans, too.
Yes, the transatlantic rift is very real and widening with every imprisoned German tourist or expelled French researcher.
The Europeans are trying to figure out how to respond to all this. In March, Germany, the UK and several Scandinavian countries issued new travel advice more or less warning citizens that a holiday in the US might now also entail an exclusive experience that involved sleeping on a concrete floor, in actual shackles, behind bars.
Also in March, EU countries agreed to spend more money on military equipment made in Europe, not the US, and to better co-ordinate their different national forces.
Analysts have also written up wish lists of how the EU could pressure the Trump administration into being nicer. Among other things, these include export controls on EU-made technology, limiting the use of the US dollar, and restricting US energy purchases, as well as tougher regulation of US tech companies.
European consumers have themselves been busy organising boycotts of US-made products and trading in their Teslas. The question is, can the 27-member union actually come together to get all this done?
For example, after saying it would “react firmly and immediately against unjustified barriers to free and fair trade”, the EU delayed reacting firmly – partially because Italian and French wine exporters were worried about the impact on them.
The EU has said it will support Ukraine in its war with Russia even if the US doesn’t, but certain Russia-friendly member states, such as Hungary, could still block important measures.
And although some EU countries, including Germany, France and Portugal, are obviously worried about the US’s magic buttons and are looking into EU-made replacements for F-35 jets, others, such as Norway and the Netherlands, are still backing the F-35 – which would obviously make the proposal about EU-wide military co-ordination more difficult to achieve.
Cathrin Schaer is a freelance journalist living in Berlin.
