You know you are in trouble when your security depends on someone not getting elected. In 2016, Donald Trump's election came as a total shock to the Europeans. Mercifully, Trump was too chaotic back then to do any irreversible damage. Four years later, the European bet again on Trump not getting re-elected, and this time they got it right - but only just. Right now, they are not betting. But they are also not preparing. 

If Trump were elected, he would have auch more focused team. This is no shortage of Trumpist political operatives this time. His most credible threat, from a European perspective, is to end financial and military support for Ukraine. He may also  double down on his previous threat not to honour commitments under Nato’s mutual defence clause.

I have a lot of sympathy with the suggestion by Rob Jetten, a senior cabinet minister in the outgoing Dutch government, who wants the EU to establish a formal pillar inside Nato that could separate out if necessary (https://d66.nl/nieuws/speech-rob-jetten-rally-for-europe/). He also made the point that the EU spends three times more on defence than Russia, and yet is not capable of defending itself.

An independent European defence capability would require a massive increase in defence spending from a current 1-2% to 3 per cent or more, the prevailing level during the Cold War. (https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2023/07/03/defence-spending-sustaining-the-effort-in-the-long-term/index.html)

And as Jetten suggested, European countries would need to spend the money more efficiently. If the EU were serious about defence policy, it should bring defence procurement into the single market. The EU took a tiny step in that direction last year with a regulation that rewards member states when they co-operate on their procurement policies. It is a small programme for small countries. They need to get serious.

A Trump victory would expose Europe's under-investments into defence like nothing else. The immediate emergency will be to plug the funding gap for Ukraine. The US has so far committed €71.4bn (for this and the other data see www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/), more than half of it in the form of military aid. Number two is Germany with €21bn, followed by the UK with €13.3bn. Norway comes fourth. The three largest European donors are all members of Nato, but only Germany is a member of the EU. 

Herein lies the problem. Germany is not big enough to fill the gap left by the US on its own. France has committed only €2bn in support for Ukraine. A proposed EU support plan for €50bn is on hold because of a veto by Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prine minister. Even if the US were to end weapons deliveries for good, Ukraine would still be able to defend itself with European support, though I doubt it would be enough for Ukraine to regain all of Russian-occupied territories. When the war ends, Russia will not pose an immediate threat to Europe. But it may later. It will take a few more years until the Russian army has recovered. This scenario would leave the EU with a window of only a few years to shore up its own defences.

The biggest obstacle to a common European response is the lack of common ground between France and Germany. France is the only EU member state with nuclear weapons, and the only one with a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. Germany, however, is the bigger country. It spends more money on defence in absolute terms - €71 billion in  the 2024 budget (https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/kurzmeldungen-963378) compared with the French defence budget of €47 billion (https://www.defense-aerospace.com/french-draft-2024-defense-budget-up-7-5-to-e47-2-billion/). 

Olaf Scholz has reoriented German defence co-operation away from France and towards the US. A joint Franco-German fighter aircraft project is in doubt, as is the future of a Franco-German co-operation on a next generation of tanks. Defence procurement has been moving in the exact opposite direction to where it would need to move if Trump were to be elected. The foreseeable pipeline of current and potential German and French leaders does not make me hopeful either. If Scholz is defeated at the 2025 German elections, his successor will most likely be Friedrich Merz, whose instincts would be to patch up relations with Trump, rather than to seek a European solution. Marine Le Pen and assorted young populists, meanwhile, loom large in France. 

Today, the special Franco-German relationship is largely a historical artefact. It lives on in festive occasions like this week's memorial service for Wolfgang Schäuble, the former CDU leader and finance minister, who died last month. The two countries have established strong links, but they are pursueing incompatible economic strategies - on fiscal policy and nuclear energy. Their economies are diverging, and so is their politics. I doubt that the election of Trump would change that.

Franco-German divisions also make it harder for Europe to wean its off US financial dominance, which it leverages to put pressure on third countries. Independence from the US would require a strong capital markets union, and an EU-level government bond. 

My advice would be: don’t obsess with Trump, think about your long-term interests. The EU cannot count on permanent US military support, with or without Trump. I do not believe the EU will follow this advice. Joe Biden gave Europeans the hope of a revival of post-war trans-Atlanticism - a dangerous delusion to which EU leaders are still clinging on to. What I expect to happen is for the Europeans to respond to the next Trump presidency in exactly the same way as they responded to the previous one - with a combination of arrogance and denial, and the hope that the good times will come back one day.

The column first appeared in the New Statesman..