Extract from ABC News
Analysis
The war in Ukraine is one that Donald Trump definitely hasn't ended. (Reuters/Ukrainian Presidential Press Service)
While the world was transfixed this week by a threat that the United States may invade a NATO ally, and global markets tanked at the prospect of a US-European trade war, Russian air strikes hit Ukraine's capital city, leaving over one million people without heating, power or water in the middle of the bleakest winter of the war.
The war in Ukraine is one that Donald Trump definitely hasn't ended.
Russia is the threat that Trump says must be addressed in Greenland.
The tardiness of European nations to assist Ukraine in its war against Russia — or even be in a state of military capacity that allows them to help — was one of the key questions underlying the rollercoaster ride that we all witnessed in Davos this week.
Trump rules out using force to acquire Greenland
No more appeasement: Europe
This was the week when European countries clearly signalled, they were changing tack with Trump. Enough of the appeasement, they said.
More significantly, it was the week when European leaders — and everyone else — finally seemed to realise that the old order really was broken and that Europe would have to fend for itself, not just without the US, but potentially, against the US both economically and militarily.
The economic threat of US tariffs was removed after European counter-threats saw Trump back down.
But leaders including the EU President Ursula von der Leyen and France's Emmanuel Macron all spoke of forging new trade ties and economic links with countries other than the US in places like Latin America, Africa, Asia … and China.
Militarily, the story is the same: leaders are now increasingly speaking of building and buying their own defence hardware.
That might look fanciful when it comes to major kit like jet fighters, it is not so fanciful in the area of warfare which has been so critical in Ukraine: drones.
The Baltic states, in particular, have made a great success of both drone technology and cyber warfare, often from start-up companies that could benefit from larger investments.
As The Financial Times innovation editor John Thornhill wrote this week:
"The region's reliance on US defence companies, including tech firms such as drone maker Anduril and the data platform Palantir, looks reckless given Washington's unreliability as a partner."
Europe has to unify its fragmented defence procurement process, Thornhill wrote.
"It should also nurture European defence tech start-ups, including Helsing, Quantum Systems and Tekever."
The long history of Europe being unable to progress its joint defence aims — despite so many EU nations being part of NATO — explains the deep scepticism from commentators as well as rivals about its capacity to change.
At Davos, leaders like France's Emmanuel Macron spoke of forging new trade ties and economic links with countries other than the United States. (Reuters: Denis Balibouse)
A sceptical Zelenskyy
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has more reason than most to be sceptical — even a little bitter.
"Instead of taking the lead in defending freedom worldwide, especially when America's focus shifts elsewhere — Europe looks lost, trying to convince the US president to change," the Ukrainian president said in Davos.
"Instead of becoming a truly global power, Europe remains a beautiful but fragmented kaleidoscope of small and middle powers," he said.
The scepticism comes despite the staggering amount of money that could flow into European defence forces under the commitment nations have made to up their spending to 5 per cent of GDP.
An assessment by analysts at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies late last year found that this would represent a spend of roughly $1.5 trillion ($US1 trillion) a year — more than the US and roughly 10 times what the Russians spend, despite the Russian economy being on a war footing.
But most of the European defence forces remain structured to work as appendages to US forces and command structures. As one analyst said, European forces — for starters — rely on the American air power just to move them around to battlefields.
The immediate issues facing Europe in shifting back to relying on its own defences is how it supports Ukraine — which has the largest standing army in Europe — and its preparedness to deal with the possible shock of US troops being withdrawn.
An outcome of the various negotiations in Davos this week were proposals for a permanent NATO presence in Greenland, in addition to whatever is decided bilaterally about a US presence there.
This was the week when European countries clearly signalled, they were changing tack with Donald Trump. (Reuters: Denis Balibouse)
No-one has really asked where those NATO troops might come from. But it would seem a fair bet — given Donald Trump's hostility to US troops current presence in Europe — that at least some of those troops would be redeployed into Donald Trump's Western Hemisphere: Greenland.
All the noise about Greenland this week has also increased the public recognition within the EU that it was not the right body to fast track a European military response to the threat it feels is posed by Russia.
As is the case with the economy, more flexible partnerships — both between European countries and with others — are being considered and pursued.
But what happens in Ukraine is the most immediate test of whether Europe really is changing.
It's not just a question of providing support to a country under siege, but of instead seeing Ukraine as the frontline in aggression against Europe more broadly.
A war decided by technology
Assessments about the course of the war — and predictions that either side could crumble and fall — abound.
But some observations this week about the long term future of the Russian economy by Fiona Hill — who served as a senior foreign policy adviser in the first Trump administration — raise some fascinating questions.
In a conversation with The Atlantic's David Frum, Hill contemplated the long term strategic consequences for Russia of having spent so much time on a war footing under Putin.
(Hill is a renowned expert on Russian affairs who gained particular fame for her blunt rebuttal in 2019 testimony before Congress — of the Trump camp claims that it was Ukraine, rather than Russia that had meddled in the 2016 US elections in favour of the Democrats and confirmed that Trump had tried to extort Ukraine for personal political advantage.)
Russia's economy, she said, is resilient because of its autarkic nature and simply because of the vastness of its natural resources.
"But that, of course, makes it very difficult to marshal them and to move into those value-added chains that we expect in a more sophisticated economy," she said.
"Now, the one thing that Putin clearly doesn't care about is human capital.
"Even with a miraculous shift to AI, you're still going to need people. And that's what Putin has done: He has squandered the future of his human capital.
"… you look down the line and that idea of economic recovery, that idea of innovation that's not just related to defence and to innovation on the battlefield, that's one of the areas that Putin has likely squandered.
"And of course, he's completely eroded trust. And although other countries look to Russia right now and still want to factor them in as a great power, they no longer think of Russia as a superpower, and they absolutely, certainly do not think of Russia as a technical, innovative, economic superpower.
"It's much [more] likely to end up being some kind of appendage of China at the end of all of this, even more so than it already is."
Technology, more than weaponry, may ultimately determine the balance of power in Europe.
Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.
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