The whole of Europe needs an Entente Cordiale

The “optics” as the political comms advisers say, were especially powerful during the prime minister’s visit to Paris to mark Armistice Day.

It was also to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings; and, precisely 80 years after Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle paraded down the Champs-Elysee in a newly liberated Paris, Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron rode in French military jeeps along that same route.

Meeting French veterans at the Arc de Triomphe, having “God Save the King” sung by a French military choir, the laying of a joint wreath and the visible rapport between the two contemporary leaders of old allies were all deeply moving sights.

These commemorations are not just about the past. They are about the future, too – a much-needed reminder that the Entente Cordiale, 120 years old this year, has served both nations well; and no arguments about irregular migration or fishing quotas can change that fundamental geopolitical fact as it applies to the future.

Paris and Berlin comprise the axis around which the fortunes of the European Union continue to turn; but without the enduring Entente between Europe’s two nuclear powers, all talk of European security and solidarity is otiose.

President Macron and Sir Keir have to face an inconvenient geopolitical truth that has emerged in the recent decade or so: Europe cannot rely for its stability and security on whichever political party happens to be in power in Washington DC.

Under the impeccable Atlanticists Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the US security guarantee enshrined in the Atlantic Charter was absolute and an article of faith, just as it has been for every president since Franklin Roosevelt.

All those years ago, de Gaulle and Churchill were as aware as anyone of how the New World came to the rescue of the Old – and that Americans and Canadians too lost their lives on the Normandy beaches.

But with Donald Trump and the cultish “America First” Maga Republicans in charge, the alliance has become more transactional, less absolute, less secure. They do not believe any longer the kind of things that, say, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan did – that the defence of Europe from Russian domination is a fundamental American national interest.

In short, Mr Trump sees no problem if the Russians “do what the hell they like” in Eastern and perhaps Western Europe, too. If the Russian tanks come sweeping across the North German Plain and occupy Paris, would President Trump be willing to liberate France? It sounds outlandish, but no longer unthinkable.

Perhaps, if Maga loses power again in 2028 or in 2032, as it did in 2020, then Europe may look to America again as an unconditional ally. But strategic European defence cannot be achieved under such shifting hypotheticals, such as which presidential candidate happens to be doing well in Pennsylvania and Arizona next time around.

Now, it seems, we have a bizarre and intolerable situation where the vice-president-elect of the United States can suggest that US support for Nato might be dropped if the European Union tries to regulate Elon Musk’s social media platforms. JD Vance says that Europe doesn’t share America’s values, which is wrong; he means that some European leaders happen not to share those of President-elect Trump.

Those are very different things. Mr Trump has a history of casting doubt on America’s willingness to send troops to save, say, Estonia; and few surely believe that a newly reinstalled President Trump has changed his mind. Nato as a “deal” doesn’t make much sense to Mr Trump, and the “all for one, one for all” Article 5 makes no sense at all.

Last week, at the European Political Community meeting, President Macron worried aloud about an increasingly uncompetitive, passive and “herbivore” Europe becoming predated by the world’s carnivorous superpowers – America, China and (if only in military terms) Russia. Mr Macron advocates Europe growing some incisors and becoming an “omnivore”.

It’s an unusual metaphor but he is entirely right. The time has come to move forward with the much-talked-about European Defence Community. This military alliance would lie outside the EU and be modelled on Nato as a group of sovereign nations joined in a mutual defence act, rather than the supranational EU.

It would include the UK, Iceland and Norway, for example. As some kind of peace settlement in Ukraine approaches – and with it, a further encroachment of Russian occupation and influence – there is no alternative but to start to build a Europe that can defend itself. The whole of Europe needs an Entente Cordiale.