Former US President Trump's rhetoric about the US not helping some NATO allies is already undermining trust in NATO, defense analyst Ulrike Franke tells DW. Trump's comments are yet another wakeup call for Europeans who for years have been accused of only paying lip service to doing more for their own defense.
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00:00 Ulrike Franke is a defence analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
00:04 She's based in Paris but she comes from Germany.
00:07 She joins us here at the Munich Security Conference.
00:09 So Ulrike, thanks for speaking to DW here.
00:11 There's been a lot of focus on Germany's commitment to defence, both its own defence and the defence
00:16 of Ukraine this weekend.
00:19 Olaf Scholz is saying that Germany will finally hit the 2% of GDP NATO spending target this
00:25 year and he says that it will do that for every year to come.
00:29 He seems to be trying to kind of give an impression of, okay, we're on this, we're on top of defence,
00:34 our commitment to defence now after years of shortfalls.
00:38 Do you think he's right?
00:39 I wouldn't be quite so positive, of course.
00:42 Yes, it is true that Germany is going to meet the 2% goal more or less, but of course with
00:47 the help of the special fund.
00:48 And there's always this question of what happens if the special fund, this 100 billion fund,
00:53 runs out.
00:54 Yeah, so let's just quickly explain the special fund.
00:56 Yeah, sure.
00:57 So the 100 billion special fund is something that this government put in place after the
01:00 invasion of Ukraine.
01:02 So 100 billion extra money for the Bundeswehr, but it's not part of the normal defence budget.
01:08 And the question is, once this fund runs out, do we have enough money in the normal defence
01:12 budget?
01:13 So there's a question mark there.
01:14 So just quickly also to explain terms here, so the Bundeswehr is the German word for the
01:17 German military.
01:19 What kind of stuff do they want to spend this 100 billion on?
01:22 So the 100 billion were mainly spent so far on F-35s from the US and other military equipment.
01:28 That's fighter jets.
01:29 Yeah, exactly.
01:30 That's fighter jets from the United States and other military equipment.
01:33 It really is about modernizing the German armed forces.
01:39 But you say that once that fund runs out, then there's no sense of what happens then.
01:43 So what are the options?
01:44 And is the German government on the right path to working out a longer term plan?
01:49 Yeah, and this is exactly what I'm worried about.
01:51 So we have had many short term measures and for example, the deliveries to Ukraine were
01:56 really important and are really important.
01:58 Again, the special fund, very important.
02:00 But I still worry that we're not really putting everything in place for the next years.
02:05 And this is not just true with regard to money, but also with regard to industrial capabilities,
02:08 right?
02:09 Producing more military equipment.
02:11 It feels like we've lost at least a year, if not almost two, to put those things in
02:15 place.
02:16 And we have a lot of American voices, particularly representing a potential future Trump administration
02:22 here in Munich this weekend, really kind of banging the drum that the whole exercise still
02:27 isn't enough.
02:29 That Germany has not really kind of got with the program, not just about the new threats
02:33 that Europe is facing, but also in terms of a fair sharing of the burden with the United
02:39 States.
02:40 It's quite possible that a Trump administration will come in saying, you've got to spend more
02:43 than 2% of GDP.
02:45 So what are you hearing from kind of Republican delegates here in Munich?
02:50 What do you think the demands will be from a potential new administration?
02:53 I mean, what I'm basically hearing from everybody, the Republican delegates, American delegates
02:57 in general, but also the Europeans, is that Europe needs to do more on the fence.
03:01 The thing is, I've been hearing this for the last years at the Munich security conference.
03:05 This was always the main message.
03:07 On the one hand, honestly, I think this has been heard and this has been understood.
03:10 And looking at the numbers, looking at what the EU has been doing, looking at what the
03:13 Europeans have been doing, we have increased.
03:15 But there is a question of, you know, if you go from two to five, that's great news.
03:20 But if you need to be at 10, then that's not enough.
03:22 And I can't really answer whether it is sufficient right now, but it feels like we're still coming
03:28 short.
03:29 And so everybody here, and this is very much preaching to the choir because this is the
03:32 security conference, but everybody here is emphasizing more needs to be done.
03:36 And Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, actually said, you know, without security, you know,
03:40 anything is nothing.
03:41 Nothing is anything.
03:42 So you need security first and then you can think about all the other things.
03:45 And this is something that I think in Europe and in Germany, we're currently relearning.
03:50 So let's talk a little bit more about the potential Trump administration in a moment.
03:54 I just want to touch on Ukraine, of course.
03:55 We're talking about Germany's and Europe's security so far.
03:59 Germany is also, Olaf Scholz is also out there saying Germany's been a very big provider
04:05 of weapons to Ukraine.
04:07 He's implicitly pointing the finger at other European countries, like, for example, France,
04:11 which are providing quite a bit less.
04:15 Are we entering a kind of a period of finger pointing within Europe about who's doing their
04:20 fair share with regard to Ukraine?
04:22 I think we've already had this over the last two years.
04:25 There's always been this kind of ranking produced who gives most.
04:29 And in a way, I mean, competition can help.
04:30 I mean, some countries maybe did more because they didn't want to fall back too much in
04:34 their competition.
04:35 Of course, France on this specific approach would say that they don't make everything
04:39 public and they are also delivering really important weapon systems.
04:43 But nevertheless, France is doing less than Germany.
04:45 I think that that we can agree on.
04:47 There is a little bit of a competition.
04:48 Again, I don't think that that's the worst thing.
04:50 But overall, the most important thing, of course, is that the Europeans need to come
04:54 together.
04:55 They need to ensure Ukraine's defense.
04:57 And also, and this is really something that I keep talking about, they need to build up
05:01 their own capabilities, ideally together, take advantage of economies of scale, all
05:06 of these things and work together rather than, as you say, finger point.
05:12 And Olaf Scholz, do you think the attitude that this betrays, that he's sort of suggesting,
05:17 well, I would like other countries to do as much as us, this seems to suggest that he
05:22 feels, OK, we're doing enough now.
05:25 And Germany's being criticized for not providing, for instance, the Taurus cruise missile.
05:31 Scholz seemed to be still stonewalling on this question.
05:34 Do you think Germany should go ahead with that?
05:35 And what do you think of this attitude that we seem to be detecting from Scholz?
05:39 I think since the beginning of the war, Germany really has been in the focus of a lot of criticism.
05:44 And at the very beginning, that was warranted.
05:46 And now it is no longer justified, I would say, because Germany really has been doing
05:50 a lot.
05:51 Again, how much is enough is very difficult to tell.
05:55 But but yeah, with the Taurus missiles, I think we're too focused on kind of specific
06:02 weapon systems, always kind of building them up as if these are the solution to this war.
06:07 Would Ukraine have good use for the Taurus missile in their defense?
06:12 Most certainly.
06:13 I don't quite understand why there is the stonewalling of the specific proposition.
06:18 That being said, would Ukraine gain the war, win the war tomorrow if they got Taurus missiles?
06:22 I highly doubt it.
06:23 We already had similar discussions about leopard tanks and other things.
06:27 And so I don't I don't think it's particularly useful in Boris Pistorius, the German defense
06:31 minister said as much to kind of keep focusing on this one weapon system.
06:35 Germany is doing a lot.
06:36 It should be doing more.
06:38 Other countries should be doing more.
06:39 This is all really important.
06:40 We need to step up.
06:41 OK, so let's turn back to Trump and what he said recently, which really sent a kind of
06:46 chill through Europe, these comments where he suggested that if he felt a particular
06:51 country was not spending enough, then he would just say to Putin, OK, you know, do what you
06:55 want with them.
06:57 This has led to a lot of chatter about whether the nuclear deterrence that Europe benefits
07:04 from from the United States would really be strong enough under a Trump administration,
07:09 whether he tries to pull the US out of NATO or not.
07:12 But simply rhetorically, there are kind of cracks in it.
07:15 First of all, like how concerned are you about that kind of rhetorical threat to NATO of
07:22 language like that undermining the credibility of Article five and nuclear deterrence?
07:27 I'm very I'm very worried.
07:29 I think already these statements right now, the rhetoric we're hearing right now is undermining
07:35 NATO security guarantees and trust in NATO, even if nothing follows from them, because
07:39 this is a former US president, the likely Republican candidate, possibly the next US
07:44 president.
07:45 So just him saying these things is already bad news.
07:48 And it could kind of encourage an actor like Russia to test NATO to see, you know, let's
07:54 see whether or not they really defended each other.
07:57 Now, I still very much believe in NATO.
07:59 But I think, yeah, this is this is yet another wake up call for the Europeans that maybe
08:05 in the long run, you know, we need to be able to do more things ourselves.
08:08 That doesn't mean that the transatlantic relationship is breaking.
08:11 But I think it is clear that in the long term, the US is at least also looking at other parts
08:16 of the world.
08:17 And that's also something we've heard here at the conference.
08:19 And so again, Europe needs to step up its own capabilities, I would argue, mainly conventionally.
08:24 But we're also having these kind of nuclear debates now.
08:27 Yeah.
08:28 So let's touch on that.
08:29 These nuclear debates, this idea that Europe kind of needs a plan B for for nuclear deterrence,
08:34 if it gets really shaky with the United States, obviously, France and Britain both have nuclear
08:39 weapons.
08:40 Talk to me about what the options might be.
08:42 There's a lot of discussion, particularly about things that Emmanuel Macron, the French
08:46 president has been saying.
08:47 Yeah.
08:48 And we've had a few absurd debates, especially in the German media recently.
08:51 So I want to say this now.
08:53 I don't think that discussions about an EU bomb are useful or likely or really lead us
08:58 anywhere in the European Union.
09:00 There are countries that have even signed the nuclear ban treaty.
09:03 So they're against nuclear weapons in general.
09:05 So the EU is not going to get a nuclear weapon.
09:08 Could European countries cooperate on nuclear capabilities?
09:11 Again, we also have all signed the nuclear non proliferation treaty.
09:15 So I don't expect any new nuclear states to emerge.
09:19 But and this is kind of the third option in this.
09:21 I think it is worth discussing with the UK and especially France, whether or not there
09:26 can be some kind of enlarged nuclear European deterrent.
09:31 What that would look like is a big question.
09:33 I don't think we're going to have nuclear sharing in the way that we have now with the
09:36 US with, you know, forward based nuclear weapons.
09:39 So the US bases nuclear weapons in Germany and Italy and other European countries.
09:44 I don't think we may be seeing this.
09:47 But talking about kind of joint trainings, how do we make sure that France's nuclear
09:53 deterrence is understood as being more European than just, you know, French?
09:57 I think that would be useful.
09:58 But these are baby steps.
10:00 This isn't for tomorrow.
10:01 And again, I think the conventional capabilities are more important.
10:05 And I mean, we're talking about thinking about this because the US is looking potentially
10:11 politically unpredictable, unreliable.
10:15 And yet in France, they could soon be a president Marine Le Pen.
10:19 The UK has left the EU.
10:22 There was Brexit.
10:24 Are France and Britain and the rest of Europe really politically in a solid enough place
10:29 to come up with a kind of solemn, really profound commitments that would be involved in such
10:35 an arrangement?
10:36 I mean, the honest answer is we don't quite know.
10:39 And of course, you know, in democratic states, you always have the possibility of governments
10:45 not just changing, but changing quite dramatically.
10:48 So far over the last decades and decades, there has been a commitment to European unity
10:52 and to European trust and defense to some extent among Europeans.
10:58 And this is not going to break tomorrow.
11:00 I mean, even with, say, a Le Pen presidency in France, I don't, you know, these are very
11:05 fundamental elements of European cooperation and I don't think are just going to disappear.
11:10 And by the way, in a way, the Trump presidency in the UK, sorry, in the US was an example
11:15 for that, because even though Donald Trump was, you know, by far the most critical president
11:20 of all things transatlantic defense, the alliance did not break because these are very fundamental
11:25 relationship between states.
11:28 So I don't think we should be completely panicky and say, you know, we can't work with anybody
11:33 because governments may change.
11:34 But of course, there is an element, there's an added element of uncertainty at this time
11:40 in Europe and in the world in a way, because there is a rise of certain, you know, especially
11:47 right wing actors.
11:48 And so, yeah, that's the world we're living in, which may again kind of point also countries
11:52 to do more themselves, you know, nationally.
11:55 But I do believe in the European cooperation and even, you know, with other actors coming
11:59 to power, I don't think that this is kind of very fundamental truths of the European
12:04 cooperation we're going to break apart.
12:06 Ulrike Franke, thanks very much.
12:08 Thank you very much.
12:09 Okay, great.
12:10 Would you be up for doing one little nugget for social media of like a three takeaways,
12:16 which we would just do on Twitter, and then we have the full interview on YouTube.
12:22 Like, do you need a moment to think about three takeaways?
12:24 So basically three takeaways from this weekend.
12:28 I didn't want to just bring that on.
12:29 Yeah.
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