Simon Usherwood / Mar 2025
António Costa and Keir Starmer. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The return of Donald Trump to the White House has had seismic effects on Europe. Even leaving to one side his views and actions on Ukraine, the shear chaos he has brought to the international relations has forced major re-evaluations of how the continent understands its situation.
To be clear, Trump is only the latest in a long line of US Presidents who have talked – and acted – to draw down American engagement in Europe and to re-focus on a rising China: his only difference has been one of speed and style (if that is the right word). Maybe because it was never presented in such vivid terms, Europeans chose not to work to bolster their own security system, a position that the opening years of the war in Ukraine seemed to vindicate: The US would have their backs, recognising the wider dangers of validating armed aggression by Russia.
Chaotic US behaviour has rightly prompted the question of how to manage the consequences. European leaders have worked overtime to meet, discuss and try to agree responses, both in relation to maintaining support for Ukraine in its war and to developing autonomous military capacities to reduce dependence on American assets.
The scale of the work involved is matched only by its knock-on consequences, from the new German coalition’s recasting of debt rules to the development of the Re-Arm Europe package by the Commission. But perhaps one lesser-considered aspect is the impact on the nascent attempts by the Starmer government to reset relations between the UK and EU.
The last weeks have been a reminder to the UK that their basic geopolitical position shares a lot more in common with other European states than it does with the US; The English Channel is not at all the same as Trump’s ‘beautiful ocean’. For all that Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s trip to Washington at the end of February went well – sweetened by him bringing an invite from King Charles to Trump for a state visit – there was nothing definitive to show for it. Indeed, Trump’s actions of recent weeks call into question whether even definitive things are actually worth anything.
Even if UK-US military and intelligence integration remains qualitatively much deeper than that found in any other European state, the incentive to take prudent steps to cover further chaos has undoubtedly grown in London.
As we approach the 19 May summit between the UK and EU, this has forced a further rethink about what the objectives of any negotiations should be. The concern expressed for several months in various European quarters over the lack of either strategic British policy or specific policy asks highlights that this was not a Trump/Ukraine-specific problem, but the new context has only underscored the point.
The basic thrust of UK policy under Starmer might be best expressed as a mixture of ‘steady as she goes’ and ‘technocratic work to take the edges off frictions to business’: the underlying model of the Trade & Cooperation Agreement (TCA) were not to be touched, even as work to reduce paperwork continued. European interests over fisheries and youth mobility were a complication but not a game-changer to this.
But Trump potentially is. If direct support for Ukraine can continue primarily on the ad hoc basis that it has done over the least three years, then the moves to ramp up European capabilities raises much bigger issues.
Firstly, work on procurement and on integrating defence industry capacity is both extremely sensitive and touches on aspects of the EU’s single market. That has been a red line for Starmer, just as it has come with concerns from member states about letting one of the largest defence industries become a competitor for business. Such problems have always been the bane of this domain over the past two decades, so whether it’s any more resolvable now is open to debate.
Secondly, any development of institutional integration of security cooperation raises questions of whether the TCA framework can or should extend that far. As an Association Agreement, there is a limit to what EU competences can be included in the TCA. There are also already all the necessary bodies available between the EU’s CSDP and NATO, so does further duplication make any sense?
Against that, security is the domain where the UK has most to offer the EU right now and with other dossiers presenting potential difficulties for London there might be a desire to keep everything together, cross-linking to limit unwanted elements. For all that there has been surprise in the UK about how some member states appear to be making fish equivalent to security, that will cut both ways.
In any event, the changed context means work on both sides. If we accept that the UK’s fate is tied closely to that of the EU, and that the EU’s best path to building a credible and resilient security system is with British participation, then the incentives for the reset to develop a significant piece of work on institutionalised cooperation in security and defence. The question is whether all the other pieces of the relationship are swept up along with that momentum or end up dragging it down.
Strategic moments require strategic vision and the next months will be the real of test of this for both London and Brussels.
