EUROPEANS KNOW THEY NEED TO STEP UPhttps://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2026/09/europeans-know-they-need-to-step-up.phpEuropeans are not happy about the Trump administration’s insistence that they take primary responsibility for their own defense, but to my knowledge, not a single prominent European politician says Trump is wrong. On the contrary, they admit that he is right.
Perhaps the strongest statement to that effect that I have seen is this column by Matthew Syed in the London Times: “We Europeans owe our cushy, cosseted lifestyle to US workers.” It is all excellent, but I will try to excerpt it. Emphases are all mine:
Europe is in serious danger because, even now, our way of life is based on a delusion that few will admit and none in power will explicitly state.
This is not just about the failure to spend on defence, by the way. The mantra trotted out by all politicians hoping to appear wise — “we must take defence more seriously” — has the status of cliché. We’re told “3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035”; “3 per cent by 2030”. It’s like a Dutch auction nobody believes, and our adversaries don’t take seriously, given the sheer amount of “tucking under” (pretending MoD civil service pensions and the like count as defence spending). Besides, the idea that a few extra billion a year will make up for decades of free-riding, measured not just in legitimate American fury but the hollowing-out of nuclear, conventional and pipeline technology capability, is fantasy.
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Our welfare states have effectively been subsidised by American taxpayers — some of the hardest-working and most productive in the world — for so long that we’ve come to believe we deserve them.
As one Labour backbencher put it: “Welfare is a human right.” I almost hesitate to break it to such people, but there are no human rights without the military power to resist those who would destroy them, a truth absolutely grasped in Washington but not at all in London, Paris, Brussels, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the state bureaucracies and much of the judiciary.
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And here’s perhaps the most crucial of the hard truths Europe chooses to ignore. Unlike America, China and Russia, whose economies have a modicum of self-sufficiency, Europe is utterly beholden to the global free trade that powered the postwar boom. Without intricate supply chains to furnish it with parts, electronics and chemicals, Sweden (for example) would face economic collapse, turning its generous welfare state into a joke.
Yet global free trade doesn’t happen by magic (or because of the human rights convention); it happens because hard power is employed to patrol shipping lanes, protect freedom of navigation and deter piracy. And who has borne this cost? Pre-eminently America and its huge naval fleet, first deployed by Jefferson in 1801 when the frigates President, Philadelphia and Essex were sent under the command of Commodore Richard Dale to tackle the Barbary corsairs off Tripoli.
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[If you want a welfare state] you’d better make sure your growth rate is sufficient to service the interest payments — which is precisely what has been rendered virtually impossible in the EU and UK by the excessive regulation of private capital and markets. No EU company worth more than €100 billion has been built from scratch in the last 50 years, while six US firms worth more than €1 trillion have been created in the same period, according to the Draghi report. ...
The population of the EU is over 100M greater than the population of the US.
Wet-noodle beatings by DC pols have, for decades, accomplished zero. EuroLanders' collective response to Trump's tongue-lashings have been mostly been whines about Trump's style and wet-noodling instead of action.Poland and the Baltic States seem to be the few EuroLander governments that have taken Putin's imperial ambitions seriously, IMO. Have any EuroLanders taken Xi the Pooh seriously?
