Peter Mandelson has launched a forceful critique of Europe’s response to Donald Trump’s foreign policy, accusing leaders including Keir Starmer of overreaction and strategic timidity…reports Asian Lite News
Peter Mandelson has accused European leaders, including Keir Starmer, of a “histrionic” reaction to Donald Trump’s plan to take over Greenland, warning that without “hard power and hard cash” they will continue to slide into unimportance in the “age of Trump”. In his first political comments since being sacked as Britain’s ambassador to Washington last year, Lord Mandelson said Trump had achieved “more in a day than orthodox diplomacy was able to achieve in the past decade” when the United States captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro.
The intervention is likely to be read as a pointed criticism of the British prime minister, who has sought to tread a careful diplomatic path since the US operation against Maduro. Starmer has attempted to balance public expressions of support for international law with a determination to avoid a direct confrontation with the White House, reflecting the government’s broader effort to preserve relations with Washington amid fast-moving events.
This week, Starmer signed a statement calling on the US president to respect Danish sovereignty over Greenland after a White House statement said the administration was looking into “a range of options” to acquire the territory, adding that the use of the US military to do so was “always an option”. The prospect of a challenge to Denmark’s control of Greenland has prompted alarm across Europe, with leaders warning of the implications for Nato and the postwar settlement.
On Wednesday evening, Starmer “set out his position on Greenland” in a phone conversation with Trump, Downing Street said, without providing further details. While the prime minister has steered clear of criticising Trump’s actions in Venezuela, he has repeatedly insisted that Greenland’s future must be decided by the territory and Denmark alone, an emphasis intended to underline Britain’s commitment to sovereignty and international norms.
In an article for The Spectator, Mandelson argued that the response to Trump’s manoeuvres exposed a “growing geopolitical impotence” in Europe. He urged Starmer and other European leaders to focus less on rhetorical condemnation and more on building the military and financial capacity that would give their statements weight, contending that credibility in Washington depends on demonstrable capability.
The former ambassador argued that Trump would not invade Greenland because he did not need to. “What will happen is that the threats to arctic security posed by China and Russia will crystallise in European minds, performative statements about ‘sovereignty’ and Nato’s future will fade, and serious discussion will take over,” he wrote. “The bigger issue is how both sides of the western coin – America and Europe – are going to establish a modus vivendi in this age of Trump.”
Mandelson’s critique extends beyond the immediate controversy over Greenland to a broader assessment of the international system. While UK ministers have decried the “disintegration” of the rules-based order in the wake of the US capture of the Venezuelan president, and Starmer has stressed his lifelong advocacy for international law, Mandelson argued that the “rules-based system” had not existed for a long time.
“President Trump is not some populist disruptor bent on destroying it; it ceased to have meaning before he was elected. He has not single-handedly broken up the postwar ‘global order’: if that ever fully existed, it started to evaporate two decades ago when China emerged as a great power contesting the US-led unipolar world,” he said. The passage reflects a view long held by Mandelson that power politics, rather than formal institutions, now shape outcomes.
He said European leaders had not “even now … adjusted to the revolution under way”, and were “guilty of a lazy interpretation of ‘America First’ to mean ‘America Alone’”, despite US interventions in Ukraine and Gaza. In his assessment, Washington’s actions demonstrate continued engagement abroad, albeit on terms set more explicitly by American interests.
“Europe is transfixed by the Truth Socials coming out of the White House but without following the arguments underpinning them,” he said, suggesting that an overemphasis on Trump’s rhetoric has distracted from the strategic calculations behind it. Instead of hand-wringing, Mandelson argued, European leaders would be better “to ask themselves why the US is making an adjustment and how they, as America’s allies, can mitigate its consequences”.
“In other words,” he added, “how and when the piggybacking stops and Europe starts assuming its full military and financial responsibilities beyond fine words.” He concluded by arguing that Trump’s decisiveness had exposed the limitations of multilateral processes. “This will mean accepting that Trump’s decisive approach when faced with real-world situations is preferable to the hand-wringing and analysis paralysis that has characterised some previous US administrations or, indeed, the deadlock and prevarication that so often characterise the UN and the EU respectively.”
