Name: British security expert Edward Lucas: 'We can't rely on the United States' | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-01-24T17:15:35.000Z
Duration: 19 min 38 s
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Our guest is Edward Lucas, British security expert.

The Economist magazine has a picture of Donald Trump on its cover riding a polar bear, bare chested, Vladimir Putin style.

The Economist urges Europeans to get ready for a day when NATO, I quote, is no more.

So is NATO already dead or just damaged after Trump's speech in Davos?

I think it's a bit like a marriage where you have one of the partners in the marriage using threats of violence and mocking the other partner for being trusting and idealistic.

And the marriage may survive in the sense of a sort of transactional arrangement where you share bills and combine to deal with some obligations.

But the emotional heart of it has gone, and I think that's what Trump's done to NATO.

So we are now really in a new era where we regard the United States as sometimes a partner that we can work with, but

And we are faced in Europe with the very grave difficulty of trying to create a new security alliance at very high speed.

What could that security alliance look like?

Well, I think that the first thing is to look at the political cohesion.

We know that Russia has an economy the size of Italy, so this is not the sort of problem we would face if we were dealing with China.

But there are many gaps, particularly on the military side.

The United States provides the high tech capabilities, it provides, supplies a lot of the intelligence, it supplies the nuclear umbrella, it supplies the logistics, the so called enablers.

And it is also very important when it comes to reinforcement and to stockpiles.

And so Europe will have to work extremely hard and spend a lot of money to fill the gap left by the United States.

The best we can hope for, I think, is an orderly United States withdrawal from Europe over a period of a few years where the Europeans can fill the gap.

The danger is that it's a disorderly withdra withdrawal, and then we're left with very severe vulnerabilities.

So you think that the United States will pull out of Europe?

Especially it is important for Germany, where about 50,000 U.S. troops are stationed.

The United States may want to rely on Europe, and that will be a matter for bargaining.

So I imagine that Ramstein, for example, will remain because it's very important for the United States.

But if you ask yourself, if the Kremlin attacked a NATO member, would Donald Trump funnel American combat power into Europe in order to resist that attack.

Would he willing to risk nuclear war to defend Europe?

And if you cannot depend on the United States, then you have to substitute for the United States.

So will Trump support Europe if Russia attacks?

I think this is going to be the big test of European diplomacy.

So in the answer to your question, I think we can't be sure.

And if you can't be sure, then you have to make plans accordingly.

The big test of European diplomacy is whether we can manage the American withdrawal.

We need to show that we're useful to the Americans on things that they care about.

We need to work out what gaps need to be plugged most urgently and how to substitute for this American security blanket which we have been keeping ourselves warm under for the last nearly 80 years.

Do you think the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, might be tempted now to test NATO after the Greenland crisis?

I think Putin is already testing NATO and we see systematic sub threshold provocations inside NATO countries.

And also the war in Ukraine, which is really a big test of NATO's credibility and we are flunking those tests.

We've shown that we are scared of Putin's nuclear blackmail.

So we didn't really put pressure on Russia.

We didn't really give Ukraine the weapons it needed to win when it had a chance of winning at the start of the war.

We don't have defense to deal with these attacks on the seabed and in our airspace and elsewhere.

We don't have something that we can do that makes the Russians really scared.

We do have these things, but Russians know we won't use them.

And the result is the provocations from Russia are increasing in scope and in intensity and in frequency.

But do you think that the probability of a Russian test on the eastern flank of NATO has grown and something could happen this year 2026?

I would question your use of the word eastern flank.

That would imply that we are being attacked from the north.

I mean, I would say that the countries bordering Russia are the ones that are really vigilant, have excellent readiness, strong social cohesion, and

I think it's highly unlikely that Russia would try something in Finland, the Baltic states or Poland.

I'm much more worried about countries, further worried about Germany.

I think this is where Russia is more likely to continue to escalate its provocations.

But as I stress Russia is already testing us and we are already failing.

Coming back to Davos, what do you think made Donald Trump change his mind on tariffs against eight European countries, including the UK And Germany, who have sent soldiers to Greenland as a gesture of solidarity?

I think if you read the Art of the Deal, you'll see that Trump says you always start a negotiation with a lot of threats and bombast.

You try and frame the negotiation in a way that the result you want seems like a very moderate concession from the other side compared with all the things that might have happened.

And I think this is classic art of the deal that he came in with threats of military action, he came with threats of tariffs.

He said he wanted the whole of Greenland and it had to be basically American.

And it's looked like he's settling for some sovereign bases on Greenland.

And that's fine if you're on a real estate negotiation, but the result is very bruising.

Your countries are left feeling that they can't trust the United States.

It's, as I said at the beginning, like the threats of domestic violence in a marriage.

But I would say it's at a very high cost in terms of American credibility and American likability.

And in terms of the America is something that we can believe in.

I don't know what it means now to be pro American.

All my life I've known that America was the sort of citadel of Western values, and

I was a true believer in the Atlantic alliance, and

I can't be a true believer now because I don't know what it means to believe in America.

Does it mean belie believing in Donald Trump's schemes to get rich quick?

Does it mean believing in the Monroe Doctrine that the old America, the American of the Truman Doctrine, who was the bastion of European freedom against communist tyranny that's gone by threatening several, but

not all, European countries with tariffs, President Trump seems to have tried to divide and weaken Europe.

I mean, it's notable that he absolutely won't talk to the European Union.

Kai Callas Von der Leyen the other European leaders don't get any hearing in Washington.

And it actually says in the national Security strategy they don't like the European Union.

So the European Union is the expression of European unity.

Trump's against that, but absolutely he wants to deal with individual countries.

He doesn't really understand that There's a customs union, single market.

He thinks he can do one deal with Italy and another one with Germany and, and so on.

And there's an odd kind of symmetry that both Putin is playing divide and rule in Europe and Xi Jinping is playing divide and rule in Europe and Trump is playing divide and rule in Europe.

And the result is that Europe is much weaker than it should be.