Europe and the liberal democracies of the West face a reckoning this week in Munich: will they be willing, or able, to pull away from a hostile US and forge the capacity to see off Russia’s war against Europe?
One year ago, JD Vance, the US vice-president, signalled his contempt for Europe and his disdain for reality when he warned that the continent was vulnerable to an “enemy within”. He did not mean the locally recruited saboteurs who have since attacked targets from the UK to Poland, most recently Warsaw’s rail system. He did not mean the drone pilots spying on European and British airfields and military camps.
