The victory of Donald Trump in the US election is likely to challenge the West’s relatively united strategy towards Russia’s war on Ukraine. But at the same time, it will bring the UK and EU closer together on security matters, argues Benjamin Martill.
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Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, successive UK governments have sought to engineer a rapprochement with European Union (EU) member states. Trump’s surprise electoral victory on 5 November 2024 threatens to undermine Britain’s strategy towards Russia, but is likely to reinforce the UK’s realignment with Europe.
The UK’s reaction to Russia’s invasion
The invasion of Ukraine coincided with a precipitous downturn in relations between Britain and its European partners, one year on from the Johnson government’s decision not to negotiate a post-Brexit security pact and in the shadow of London’s effort to wriggle out of its obligations in the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The complex and proximate nature of the conflict for Europe as a whole meant that the EU and NATO both became important shapers of the overall European response, making the UK’s status as an outsider of the Union more costly, leaving London on the outside of key decisions.
Johnson’s robust response to the invasion– including the expansion of training missions, military aid, and uncompromising support for Kyiv – was motivated by Britain’s hawkish stance on Russian aggression. It may also have been shaped by Johnson’s desire to perform “Global Britain” on the world stage and distract from poor performance at home.
Yet the complex and proximate nature of the conflict for Europe as a whole meant that the EU and NATO both became important shapers of the overall European response, making the UK’s status as an outsider of the Union more costly, leaving London on the outside of key decisions.
Informal cooperation between the UK and the EU was the result, beginning under the Johnson government and continuing under his successors, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. As the conflict evolved, Britain coordinated with the EU in various ways, with high-level meetings and attendance at the Union’s Foreign Affairs Council, a UK presence in the EU’s military clearing house cell in Brussels, accession to an initial PESCO project on Military Mobility, alignment on sanctions, and UK contributions to the syllabus for the EU’s own training mission in Ukraine.
Enter the Labour Government
Ideological opposition to structured security cooperation with the EU, coupled with the strength of pro-Brexit sentiment within the Conservative Party, ensured that this cooperation would remain informal and ad hoc, without the “trappings” of structured cooperation.
While informality allowed for much to be achieved, it limited the duration and extent of contacts, lacked a mechanism for building trust between both sides, and made continued cooperation dependent on the political “mood music”. Without structures in place, cooperation could not be routinised, deepened, or extended into other areas so easily.
This set the ground for clear water to emerge between the UK’s two main political parties when it came to European security cooperation, with Labour’s then Shadow Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, pledging to “take back control” by negotiating a security partnership with the EU once elected.
While Labour’s newfound enthusiasm for a rapprochement with Europe will aid coordination on foreign and security policy issues and will no doubt improve relations at the political level, moving beyond a security agreement would cross the “red lines” drawn by both sides.
When Labour returned to office in July 2024 with a near-record parliamentary majority under Keir Starmer, negotiating a security agreement was a clear priority. In the months since, exploratory talks have taken place in Brussels between Starmer and Ursula von der Leyen, leading to the announcement of regularised UK-EU summit meetings from January 2025 onwards.
Both sides have signalled they hope to work towards a more comprehensive agreement covering more areas of cooperation in the future, although significant political barriers exist to re-opening any of the broader Brexit settlement contained within the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA).
While Labour’s newfound enthusiasm for a rapprochement with Europe will aid coordination on foreign and security policy issues and will no doubt improve relations at the political level, moving beyond a security agreement would cross the “red lines” drawn by both sides, and make Labour vulnerable to opposition charges that it’s seeking to reverse Brexit.
In any case, the low hanging fruit is to be found in repairing the political relationship, establishing regular meetings, and perhaps signing the UK up to the ready-made and ‘off the shelf’ frameworks for participation in EU missions and defence initiatives. Beyond this, things become more complex. Negotiations on a broad and bespoke deal would take more time, raise contentious issues, and potentially re-open old Brexit wounds on the UK side.
Trump’s surprise electoral victory on 5 November 2024 threatens to undermine Britain’s strategy towards Russia.
Re-enter Donald Trump
The spectre of a second Trump Presidency has hung over British and European foreign relations ever since Biden was elected in 2020, although those fears became more acute as his term unfolded, leading to active discussion of potential European alternatives to NATO.
Trump’s surprise electoral victory on 5 November 2024 threatens to undermine Britain’s strategy towards Russia in two significant respects. First, while the UK has been an active proponent of NATO’s centrality in the response, Trump has made no secret of his scepticism of the Atlantic alliance, actively threatening US withdrawal and undermining the credibility of the deterrent effect.
Second, Trump is more sympathetic to Vladimir Putin’s depiction of Russia’s war as a defensive one resulting from NATO ‘encirclement’ and has pledged to seek a negotiated outcome once in office. This directly undermines the UK’s position that there will be no compromises on Ukrainian territory and its support for the broader European position of “containment” over negotiation.
There are also fears that Trump’s election could give succour to populist movements across Europe, many of whom have also sought to capitalise on a war weary European public, promising to seek a negotiated resolution to the conflict. Yet Trump’s election also calls the bluff of populists, forcing them to decide whether they are really willing to pull the plug on support for Ukraine. Many populist leaders have sought to politicise the conflict for instrumental reasons, and the strategic threat from Russia is far more acute in Europe than it is in America.
More likely, his election will galvanise Europeans into taking their security into their own hands and increasing their defence spending with a view to “Europeanising” the conflict and presenting a united front to the incoming US administration. Increasing UK-EU coordination is an important part of this goal, and makes a security agreement more necessary and more likely, as both sides see increasing value in standing side-by-side.
Interestingly, given the salience of Brexit divisions, the UK is one of the few parts of Europe where the war has not become so politicised and where public opinion generally supports continuing aid to Ukraine.
This does not mean that a broader settlement which extends beyond security and defence is on the cards and revisiting other areas of the post-Brexit settlement would still convey a significant risk to the EU, which considers itself to have managed the Brexit process remarkably well. But it does perhaps mean that member states will find ways to be more creative – or more generous – in allowing the UK to engage with evolving EU defence initiatives.
Interestingly, given the salience of Brexit divisions, the UK is one of the few parts of Europe where the war has not become so politicised and where public opinion generally supports continuing aid to Ukraine. Indeed, both Starmer and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch have emphasised the need to lobby the incoming administration to maintain support to Ukraine, and for the UK not to shift its position in light of Trump’s election.
Britain’s “special relationship” with the US, such as it is, might be one way in which the UK can demonstrate its value to the European effort, seeking to engage diplomatically on behalf of the European position with the incoming administration, while walking the ever-present tightrope between its historical allies in Europe and across the Atlantic.
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Alexandros Michailidis Shutterstock
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