How can Europe defend itself against Russia without the US, or with much less of it? This question sums up the existential challenge now facing the continent.

Russia’s imperial ambitions start with Ukraine, but they don’t end there. Moscow’s hybrid attacks, its political interference in support of Russia-friendly parties and its military sabre-rattling – including a warship’s live-fire exercise 45 miles off the UK coast – all point in the same direction. A kinetic war to defend ourselves against Russia in the coming months or years cannot be ruled out. This is why European defence budgets are rising across Europe, especially in countries closer to the frontline.

Defence spending has accelerated since Donald Trump returned to office. This is less because of Trump’s jibes and insults – now extending even to far-right European leaders like Giorgia Meloni – and more that Europeans are waking up to the reality that in the event of a war against Russia, the US may not be there for them. While the US nuclear umbrella could hold – although France has launched an initiative to Europeanise its nuclear deterrent in case it does not – European governments and institutions are reckoning with the possibility that they might need to fight Russia without US conventional forces’ support or with much less of it.

This explains the emergence of something that is unofficially being called Nato 3.0. At the Ankara Nato summit a few weeks ago, the initiative was pompously talked up – in part to placate Trump, in part to signal to Vladimir Putin that even if the US takes a back seat, a Europeanised Nato remains credible. The slogan that its supporters use, “A stronger Europe in a stronger Nato”, is misleading. Yes, Europeans will become militarily........

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