Europe has changed. Call it a watershed, a turning point or, if you prefer German, Zeitenwende, but the continent is reassessing its defence priorities in response to the Trump administration’s brutal shift in attitude to the 80-year-old transatlantic relationship and US support for Ukraine. This week’s issue plots how, with unaccustomed speed, Paris, Berlin and London, along with the European Commission, are stepping up with a new “whatever it takes” mentality to create a framework for their own defence. Our coverage, led by Toby Helm and with contributions from our correspondents in Kyiv, Brussels and Berlin, examines how fiscal shibboleths are being shed to allow for increased military spending, and from Berlin a growing enthusiasm for Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz to consider sheltering under France’s independent nuclear umbrella.
But even as leaders firm up their approach to Washington and Moscow, diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour reports on how their populist opponents, whose rhetoric has tended towards support of the strongman diplomacy of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, are left fumbling as to how to counteract this new geopolitical landscape.
