With Trump, the EU Must Pay for Its Own Defense

Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orban are going to be more credible interlocutors than those now in place, led by Ursula von der Leyen, who is quite satisfied with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Although we are already on the first working day of this new year 2025, the Christmas holiday spirit will continue until after the great feast of the Three Wise Men next Monday, Jan. 6, which will be more like an aqueduct rather than merely a festive bridge.

Official “politics as usual” will not be resumed in Spain until then, when a year of great tension will begin. The king alluded to that in his Christmas speech — as almost all the autonomous presidents have done in their end-of-year speeches — unanimously referring to the political situation we currently face as a particularly serious problem.

Unfortunately, it should come as no surprise that this should happen, given that the politics of Sanchezism has polarization and confrontation implicit in its DNA.

It is trying to justify its existence in an effort to prevent the ultra-right from gaining access to the government. Inherent in this strategy are political polarization and social fragmentation into divided and opposing factions. In addition to other circumstances, it is striking, to put it mildly, that a partisan coalition made up of separatist groups — successors of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, communists and extreme left-wing populists, all of them accredited “moderates” — allows itself to disqualify its opponents as ultra-right-wing.

With Donald Trump’s arrival at the White House, the EU, dominated from Brussels by a coalition of popular and socialist parties, will be forced to adapt its official discourse and strategy to this new reality: Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orban are going to be more credible interlocutors than those parties presently led by Ursula von der Leyen, who is so comfortable with Pedro Sanchez.

NATO is going to take on new leadership, with the EU assuming that its defense should not be in the hands of the U.S. but in its own and that security “has to be paid for.”

Sanchez followers face in Trump a political adversary too powerful for them to believe that everything will remain the same. There will be head-on confrontation in two arenas: in the cultural, with the woke phenomenon, and in the political, with defense spending.

To Pedro Sanchez and cabinet members Yolanda Diaz, Ernest Urtasun, Ione Belarra, Maria Montero and company — all, such pacifists: We have just ranked last among contributors to NATO, with 1.2% of GDP. Trump is already saying that Europe must pay for its own defense, and is talking about 5% of GDP. The problem is that this will be paid for not only by the Sanchez followers out of their own pockets, but by all Spaniards. And we will also be faced with addressing the woke culture.