Fraying of transatlantic alliance, on display at Munich Security Conference, further reduces chance of bipolar hegemony of world by US and China
In the wake of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with US President Donald Trump, Indians of the kind who engage with such developments have been obsessing over the personal ties between the two leaders, who is a better negotiator, the PM or the President, and the implications of reciprocal tariffs that the Trump administration has proposed to levy on imports from any nation into the US.
What tends to get overlooked is the good news, from an Indian point of view, from the Munich Security Conference that concluded this Sunday, with the transatlantic alliance badly frayed and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calling for the formation of a European army.
The 2025 edition of the Munich Security Conference saw leaders of governments, armed forces, and political parties, former heads of governments, diplomats, think-tank experts, and other members of the strategic policy tribe gather to take stock of current security challenges. Unlike its previous 60 editions, the conference this year witnessed a major rupture with the status quo, engineered by Trump.
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The enemy within
Vice-President JD Vance represented the US at the conference. European leaders were already worried, if not seething, over Trump’s phone call with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to discuss how to end the Ukraine war. This conversation, strongman to strongman, over the heads of America’s European allies, and, indeed, of the political leadership of Ukraine, has left Europe flabbergasted, and resentful.
Vance was forthright about the message he had to deliver. The Trump administration does not share the European leaders’ understanding of the dangers they confront and of what they have to defend, what they are fighting for. The enemy is within, said Vance. It is not Russia or China that Europe must fear, but its own deviation from respect for the wishes of its own people, and the readiness to silence the voices of dissent the political establishment considers inappropriate.
Elon Musk, more frequently and prominently seen under his MAGA (Make America Great Again) hat than wearing his CEO cap, has removed all confusion as to the voices of dissent suppressed by European leaders that get the Trump administration’s goat. These relate to popular resentment against immigrants, articulated most vehemently by far-right parties such as the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland or AfD) in Germany, the National Rally in France, and Reform in the UK. Musk has promised funds for AfD and Reform, inviting the ire of Europe’s mainstream political parties at this brazen external interference in European nations’ internal politics.
Courting far-right
As if to amplify the Trump administration’s message, Vance left the Munich Security Conference venue to meet up with Alice Weidel, leader of the AfD. Most Germans consider the AfD to be modern-day inheritors of the Nazi legacy. AfD supporters have taken to chanting Alice for Deutschland, seemingly in support of their party leader, but, to the horror of most Germans, to echo the motto and chants of Hitler’s stormtroopers, the Sturmabteilung (SA), whose cry, Alles für Deutschland (all or anything for Germany), sounds very much like Alice for Deutschland.
Germany’s mainstream political parties are determined to isolate the far-right AfD and form governments without their participation. For the US Vice-President to meet the party’s leader is to give the party the legitimacy it has lacked hitherto, and European leaders are not pleased.
Vance identified mass immigration as Europe’s principal problem, and cited the attack by an Afghan asylum seeker, who had driven his vehicle into a crowd of people in Munich, injuring some 90 people, at least two of them critically, as an example of the harm migration perpetrates. Austria too recently witnessed a knife attack by a migrant, who, according to the local authorities, had been radicalized by the Islamic State online.
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Geopolitical divide
All mainstream parties have toughened their policies on migration, responding both to migrants and to the popular backlash against easy acceptance, in the past, of large numbers of refugees from conflicts elsewhere in the world.
How does this political mess in Europe help India? The more diverse the centres of geopolitical power in the world, the better it is for India. Europe is now being forced to reckon with the reality that the US is no longer a reliable defender of European strategic interests as it has all along been after World War II. Trump wants European powers not just to spend 2% of their GDP on defence as their NATO charter obliges them to, but to spend as much as 5% of GDP on defence, given past shortfalls in such spending by many European powers, including the largest, Germany.
Ever since Barack Obama announced a pivot towards the Indo-Pacific in America’s strategic focus, America’s European allies have been wondering if they were not drifting towards the periphery of the interests on which the US would be willing to spend men and treasure. Obama reduced the number of American troops deployed in Europe.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans continued the policy of NATO’s expansion to the east. Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia are all members of the anti-Russian alliance. Putin had assumed charge of Russia in 2000, ending the steady dissolution of the Russian state.
Space for manoeuvre
His government moved to thwart Georgia’s accession to NATO by supporting the secession of South Ossetia and Abkazia from Georgia, and intervening militarily to prevent Georgian annexation of these regions. The Maidan protests of 2014 in Ukraine led to the overthrow of its pro-Russian leadership and installation of a pro-West regime. Russia swiftly moved to secure its naval base at Sevastopol on the Crimean coast. A referendum saw a majority of Crimeans vote to affiliate to Russia, rather than Ukraine.
While the 2014 action secured Crimea and the Sevastopol naval base for Russia, access to Crimea from Moscow or St Petersburg remained insecure, as access over land lay through eastern Ukraine. From Moscow’s point of view, for Ukraine to join NATO would be to make Russian access to its warm-water naval base tricky, a matter of indulgence by NATO. That is not a tenable position for a major global power.
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For India, it is vital for the world to not be under the twin hegemony of the US and China. Dependence on US assistance to hold off China’s hostile moves would circumscribe India’s strategic autonomy. It is in India’s interest for Moscow to remain a centre of global power.
Now, if Europe also were to emerge an independent power centre in its own right, and free itself from dependence on the US for security, that would add to the space for manoeuvre that India has. The Trump effect on the Japanese and South Korean sense of vulnerability remains to be seen: the potential exists for the formation of yet another power bloc in the Far East.
It is in this sense that India should assess developments at the Munich Security Conference.
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