The Trump administration has thrown European security and the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine into disarray. In Part II of Rules of engagement, Andrew Anthony reports on the UK’s response. To read Part I, with Andrew Gunn reporting from Kyiv go here. Tomorrow, rearming Germany.
Ever since the Brexit referendum nine years ago, the UK has been mired in angst and uncertainty, one symptom of which has been the procession of six different prime ministers in that time. Given this general air of socio-economic malaise, it’s been hard to say just what effect the war in Ukraine has had on national morale.
When, eight years after it annexed Crimea, Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the situation was quite straightforward for most Britons. Russia was the bullying aggressor and Ukraine the plucky defender of its national territory, deserving of our sympathy and solidarity.
Many people took in Ukrainian refugees, and, rather late in the day, the UK government instituted sanctions on Russian trade and individuals. While the moral case hasn’t changed much, other than at the extremes of political debate, there is little consensus about what needs to be done.
The second term of Donald Trump has utterly changed our relationship with the world at large, because so much of that relationship – economic, military, cultural – was conducted within the American sphere of influence. Now, all that we took for granted is under disruptive challenge.
Nato, the so-called “special relationship” and the idea that the US is our firmest ally in dealing with Russia aggression – all of it is being torn up by the Trump administration.
In one sense, the UK and Europe in general has relied on a US defence shield that enabled its beneficiaries to become complacently entitled. Like some overgrown adolescent, we complained about American power and influence, but nonetheless expected the US to finance our defence from a dictatorship armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons.
Now that we are being called upon to look after ourselves, there is a growing recognition that it’s a dangerous – and costly – world out there without the security of US protection. Throw in Trump’s early-April tariffs announcements and the angst is turning to full-blown anxiety. Although trade negotiations since have eased US tariffs on UK cars and metal exports, uncertainty remains.
A leading UK economic journalist tells me the tariffs could necessitate further tax rises and/or further cuts in spending by Sir Keir Starmer’s administration. Any fragile sense of growth has been crushed by Trump’s threats. His trade war with China, the falling dollar and shrinking markets, says this expert, create conditions that “look very much like 1929 [the start of the Great Depression] all over again”. It’s not as if he’s an alarmist kind of character, given to bleak warnings. But he can’t really see a way out of the crisis for the UK.
Obviously, most Brits have limited understanding of market mechanics, but they can see their pensions shrinking and, having experienced the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, are aware these things have a momentum of their own that a government – at least the British one – is powerless to stop.
The government clearly hopes that if it can indulge and flatter Trump enough, lay on a state visit with all the ego-massaging trimmings, then he might just play nice and cut us a trade deal that enables us to continue sending Land Rovers and whisky to the US.
But that presupposes that international markets and the Western world as we know it don’t collapse. In other words, the best case scenario is that we suck up to Trump and he steps back from triggering a global crash almost 100 years after the last one devastated the world.
By the same token, very few Britons know much about Ukraine, its history, geography or culture. Everyone can see Putin is a bully. It’s not been forgotten that he launched chemical weapons attacks on former Russian agents on British soil, killing one British citizen and severely harming others.
Russian acts of destabilisation and disinformation grow in severity and regularity – from cutting communication cables at sea to economic and digital crime – and so only those who admire power and ruthlessness for its own sake have any sympathy with Putin’s cause.
Yet there is nonetheless widespread belief the Crimea is never going to return to Ukrainian control. It would have been difficult enough to achieve that if the US backed Zelenskyy to the hilt, but impossible given Trump has told him to accept its loss.
If the war is to end, the feeling is it will end on terms that are favourable and acceptable to Russia.
What that will mean for European security is a question which is beginning to make itself known in the national consciousness. For one thing, Starmer has already committed to raising military spending from 2.29% of GDP to 2.7% within two years.
The post-Soviet bloc days of demilitarisation and falling defence budgets are well and truly over. Unable to depend on the US and cut off from the EU, the UK feels like an increasingly embattled place to be – as though we are being borne back into a dangerous past by currents we are not strong enough to resist.
Sunny optimists are nowhere to be found.
Andrew Anthony is the Listener’s London correspondent.
