J.D. Vance’s uncouth diatribe at the Munich Security Conference does not only signal a shift in the basis for defence and security policy in Europe.

Combined with Donald Trump’s always impressive articulate description of European behaviour towards the US as “bad, very bad”, it presents an opportunity for the European Union to liberate itself from a fiction that has long outlasted itself: that Europe is an equal partner with the US in defence of democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and in the furtherance of the free market economy and of liberal pluralistic democracy.

Common values? J.D. Vance’s arrogant chastising of European leaders was a clear indication that there is no common ground in the interpretation of our long-shared values, not least in a warped interpretation of democracy as a winner-takes-all exercise where institutions are subservient to that electoral mandate and where elections are only free and fair if you win them.

It is time. Already in 2017, Angela Merkel, Europe’s last real leader, said it loud and clear that Europe needed to take its fate in its own hands and that it could no longer consider the US as a reliable partner. That was Trump I. Europe then got comfortable with the interim to Trump II’s US. Worse still, in the interim, too many European leaders fell in with the US belief that Ukraine should join NATO and that NATO’s frontiers could be taken right to the doorstep of Russia and that Russia would take this on the chin. The disastrous, intra-fraternal, murderous, cruel invasion of a neighbouring sovereign state by Vladimir Putin’s Russia soon changed all that.

Europe’s uncoupling from the US is long overdue. It was already staring us in the face in the second Gulf War which, though it dethroned a savage Saddam Hussein regime, did not lead to the sweeping democratic revolution in the Greater Middle East so dogmatically touted by Condoleezza Rice and her State Department: instead it gave us all a strengthened Shia Iran with its medieval theocratic regime and a fortified Shia crescent, as well as a new Sunni terrorising fundamentalist “emirate” called Daesh (or ISIS), a killing machine which set on obliterating Christianity and all traces of ancient pre-Islamist civilisation in the Middle East.

Even then, only some had the courage to take a stand against that bloody adventure that resulted in a much more fragile international order subsequently requiring many “adjusting” actions that are still ongoing. That “some” included notably France and Germany, later joined by Spain, but also military minnows such as the Vatican and Malta.

How can Europe not decouple from a US president that is sure to impose tariffs and has simply a transactional view of the US-EU relationship? From a US president and administration that transactionally sees an obliterated territory that used to be Gaza, Palestine as a real estate opportunity for the US as long as the obliteration of the land is followed by the annihilation of the Palestinian nation from its historic land. Has Trump ever heard of ethnic cleansing? You betcha that we don’t share these values, Mr Vance.

French President Emmanuel Macron put it well in his interview with the Financial Times: the return of Donald Trump to the White House is an “electroshock” for Europe that will compel it to take care of its own future, to “muscle up” in defence and the economy and to invest in its technological revival.

Europe’s uncoupling from the US is long overdue- Michael Frendo

It is time. Time for Europe to endorse the Draghi Report and believe in its ability to make it a reality. To use to the maximum its technological and production strengths not least in Germany, Italy and Spain, just to mention three of its member states. It is time for the European Union to address international relations as a solid bloc, with an independent vision which reflects our collective interests.

Of course, it is hard to manage the specificities of the diversified realities of all the member states whatever their size or population. But it has been done before and must continue to be done in an integrated approach underwritten by the fundamental belief that we are stronger, more prosperous and more effective together than on our own. Away from fundamentalist federalism, or even from fundamentalist wokism, but dedicated to that functional federalism that collectively achieves results for all.

Mr Trump, your vision of a multi-polar world where America is Great Again does not only include Russia and China and your friends Putin and Xi Jinping. Excluding the European Union from the direct Russia-US talks on the future of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is another in-your-face message of the value that Trump’s US places on its European allies! This week, in reaction to this continued exclusion, Macron called the European Union to diplomatic arms in Paris, scrambling to reassert European relevance in international relations. There is only one way to Make Europe Count Again (that’s another slogan for you!): the EU needs to believe in itself, assert itself and stop looking over its shoulder towards the Atlantic before it acts. 

Europe needs to be liberated from these self-imposed shackles, its small-minded squabbles, and surge forward in its belief of its own successful democratic, economic and social model in its founder fathers’ vision of a Europe of Peoples and a Europe of States.

Michael Frendo is a former minister of foreign affairs of Malta.