Year XXXVIII, Number 2, July 2025

Roberto Castaldi
Associate Professor of Political Philosophy, Director, Center for Studies, Training, Communication and Design on the European Union and Global Governance (CesUE). Editor, Euractiv Italy. Secretary, Movimento Federalista Europeo (MFE)

The post-war world order is collapsing. Its material basis has failed: in 1945 the US accounted for 50 percent of the world’s GDP, in 1973 the G7 accounted for 50 percent, in 2023 the G7 were at 31 percent and the BRICS 32 percent. In this situation, to keep up the hegemonic clash with China, the US can no longer afford to devote resources to providing public goods globally, but on the contrary needs to drain resources from the rest of the world.

Therefore, the US took an essentially imperialist stance – threatening Panama, Greenland and Canada - and has split the West. They have launched a trade war against the rest of the world and theorized the need for the world to pay - by financing the US - in order to use the dollar as an international currency. They then called for a reversal of the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which should no longer be fighting climate change as one of their goals and should instead invest heavily in fossil fuels.

Europe has lost its strategic value for the US, which does not want to waste resources in this region. So Donald Trump spoke to Putin and showed Ukraine and Europe the door. He will negotiate directly with Putin and Europeans and Ukrainians will suffer the consequences of this negotiation. Europeans will then be presented with the outcome and the bill. This is proof that Trump has an imperialist stance and sees the world dominated only by the big powers, who decide and impose their will on the small ones. It is a return to Thucydides’ realism «the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must». European nation-states count for nothing. Only if united politically, with a foreign policy and defense, can Europe count and defend its values and interests. If not now, when?

The problem is that Europe today is weak because it is divided. The vagaries of national leaders protesting and demanding that Europe be admitted to the negotiating table count for nothing. The truth is that they needed to develop a European defense and foreign policy managed by a European federal government a long time ago. The American “pivot to the Pacific” was announced by Obama, now 16 years ago. But the Europeans preferred not to start building a European defense for fear of hastening the end of the America’s role as guarantor for European security.

At least since Trump’s first term and with the clear risk of a second, discussions about European strategic autonomy have been wasted. There has been a lack of political will and concrete action. Not even the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the return of war in Europe have roused national leaderships. They have thrown away these 3 years of war without doing what was needed to make Europe a protagonist instead of a spectator and the playing field.

Putin’s response to Trump’s openness and marginalization of the Europeans was to bomb Chernobyl and threaten Europe with a new attack which would complete the destruction of the radiation protection shield at the No. 4 reactor of the plant that exploded in the 1980s.

All the while, Trump demands that European states spend 5 percent on defense (despite Americans being at 3.5 percent), and do everything he says, as otherwise the US will not offer them any protection. He adds that it will be up to the Europeans to ensure Ukraine’s security based on the agreement he will negotiate. But that European troops in Ukraine will not be covered by NATO Article 5 and therefore, will not be able to rely on the US helping in the event of a Russian attack. «We Play You Pay»: the Americans play on the negotiating table and decide, but then the Europeans will have to pay for the reconstruction and defense of Ukraine.

Europe stands alone in a dangerous world where traditional alliances no longer exist, where the US president deals with enemies like Putin and Xi Jinping and threatens and bullies those who should be his allies, be it Canada, Mexico, Greenland and Denmark, or the Europeans. In the face of all this there is only one serious answer: the political unity of Europe! The rest is idle chatter and whining that only shows the complete impotence of European national governments. The first European Council meetings dedicated to European defense were held in February and March, with disappointing results. The heads of state and government of member states talked mainly about industrial cooperation and how to succeed in decoupling national military spending from the Stability and Growth Pact. But they do not address the crucial issues: what European defense we want, what model, how to finance it, and with what governance. The geopolitical and geoeconomic context demands a political union of Europe. Instead, our national heads of state and government talk and don’t decide.

Europeans together today spend almost 2 percent of GDP on defense as proposed by NATO, so double the EU budget which is 1 percent. They spend about 30 percent of the US with 10 percent capacity, that is, two-thirds of our military spending produces nothing. The problem is not that Europeans spend little, but that they spend divided. We need to create a European defense as the European pillar of NATO. The world is burning all around us, but our national leaders count for nothing and fail to make the decisions that Europeans need. We are thirty years behind in a world that is moving rapidly forward.What else needs to happen? It is time to unite Europe. If not now when?