WIREDGOV

Europe is being recast, sharper and stronger, reflecting the world order at work in the forge.

The German Chancellor’s opening at the 2026 Munich Security Conference stated what Europe’s defence and security leaders already knew – the ‘old world order’ of the Transatlantic Alliance is dying. Mertz’s address echoed the French President's fiery speech at Davos in January. Emmanuel Macron's declaration of Europe’s preference for the ‘rule of law to brutality’ – aimed not at Russia or China, but at America – captured an atmosphere of open hostility. But during this past weekend of meetings in Munich, what was once stunned disbelief is now turning to resolve.

Donald Trump and his second administration are accomplishing what seventy years of French or German diplomacy could not. By treating the EU not as a partner but as a delinquent debtor, the US has inadvertently supplied the one ingredient the European project always lacked: necessity.

The humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, the hurried Russo-US Alaska Summit aftermath, and finally the territorial threat to Denmark, have inadvertently solved the continent’s oldest problem: the lack of a unifying existential threat. Life under the American umbrella was too comfortable but the security shocks of the last twelve months – from watching the US bypass Brussels, to the partition of security interests with Russia, to treating a NATO ally’s territory as real estate – have acted as a radical accelerant. Trump is not humiliating Europe into submission but hardening it.

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