At a recent conference on trilateral defense cooperation among the U.K., France and Germany held in London, at the end of a long day filled with discussions about Germany and Europe’s alarming security situation, a final speaker took the stage to address the assembled crowd of experts. We had already spent hours talking about the war in Ukraine, where Russia appears to be winning, and the future of U.S. security guarantees for Europe, which are expected to decline under President-elect Donald Trump. Numerous participants had noted how shocking it is that North Korean soldiers are fighting on the European continent and how dispiriting it is that efforts to build up European defenses—like Germany’s Zeitenwende, or turning point—are running out of steam. And yet, after all these dire pronouncements had already put the audience in a sober mood, that last speaker declared, “The threat is even bigger than what we in this room fear!”
I came out of the meeting feeling dazed, not so much because of the content of the conference—unfortunately I am under no illusions regarding Europe’s ability to defend itself, having worked on the topic for over a decade—but because in making my way back to the train station, I couldn’t square what I had just heard with the world I was seeing around me: People were out and about, continuing their daily lives as if nothing was wrong. “Why does no one seem worried?” I wondered.
The feeling, I quickly realized, seemed familiar, except that the last time I experienced it was after coming out of a screening of a documentary on climate change.