It’s been a summer of obsequious self-delusion, magical mystery thinking, and auto-weakening for most European leaders.
Against much evidence to the contrary, they have repeatedly made statements in which they will themselves to believe that U.S. President Donald Trump is not dealing body blows to both their most immediate security and economic interests. Some even contend that they have been able to get in Trump’s ear and, through the Jedi mind trick of sucking up to him, bend some of his most problematic instincts.
And yet, the overall picture emerging eight months into Trump’s second presidency confirms that on Ukraine and on trade, he is not on the same team as the Europeans.
European officials so far seem to have drawn the wrong lessons from the U.S. president’s first administration. Instead of finally conquering their naive discomfort with the language of power—the lingua franca of this nascent era of international relations—they are leaning hard into appeasement and toadying. They call it pragmatism but, compared with how China or India have handled Trump, Brussels and a few European capitals are signaling to their international interlocutors that they are not first-tier players. Not even on trade.
The spectacle of prostration most European leaders have put on since February has been clocked by Beijing, Moscow, Tel Aviv, and Tehran. Look no further than how they have treated their European counterparts in recent discussions. China did the bare minimum at the EU-China Summit in July. Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t entertain negotiating with them. Iran has slowrolled its discussions. The Israeli government has blithely ignored the European cacophony. And it has come at no cost to any of them.
But the EU and its member states have real economic and military cards to play with both the United States and other powers, if they can override their paralyzing preference for bargaining.
The world and its rules have already changed, and Europe is still playing by the old handbook. Instead, there needs to be less performative summitry and statements, and more muscle flexing.
Trade and Ukraine have been obvious missed opportunities so far. They are also where Europe must cross the Rubicon into becoming a geopolitical power adapted to the new world.
On trade, the EU must be better prepared to play hardball in the coming round with Trump. Anyone who thinks that the trade deal reached in July with a 15 percent tariff rate applied to European goods is where the story ends might be in for a rude awakening. Trump is already shifting the goalposts.
Brussels preferred to avoid using the non-negligible leverage it has on the U.S. economy thinking it could avoid a trade war. It is now on track to get a trade war while having shortchanged its position with the United States, China, and India, and sacrificed its role as a bulwark for WTO principles that partly underwrite its trading might.
On Ukraine, Europeans have overly invested in the chimerical battlefield over Trump’s mind and not enough in the real battlefield of their own security in Ukraine. Everything they do revolves, one way or another, around Trump and what the United States is or isn’t doing.
European officials magnify as diplomatic breakthroughs behavior that used to be baseline for Washington and the transatlantic relationship, such as not humiliating and publicly bullying a partner. This has only spotlighted the growing disjoining of the Atlantic alliance.
Having to constantly throw money at a central ally to keep him minimally in sync—as the Europeans have done with Trump—does not amount to strategic alignment; it amounts to racketeering. Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping recognize it as such, and will likely exploit it.
Trump perceives the need that Europeans have for U.S. security assistance not as the basis for a partnership, but as the expression of weakness. What used to compound the allies together into extraordinary might—America’s centrality—is now their kryptonite.
While Trump’s statements have fluctuated between mirroring much of Russia’s talking points on Ukraine and vaguely expressing mild frustration with Putin, his actions, and those of his administration, draw a consistent arc: He will not act decisively in favor of Ukrainian or European security. From the moment Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was dressed down publicly in the Oval Office in February, followed by the suspension of U.S. intelligence sharing in March, Europeans—who seriously believe their security is on the line in Ukraine—should have sprung into action.
French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s instinct to set up what’s now called “the coalition of the willing” to prepare security guarantees for Ukraine was the right one. But it has fallen short. Too many European countries are still paralyzed out of acting militarily in the absence of U.S. involvement. And the few who aren’t, keep repeating like a mantra that they wouldn’t deploy troops before a ceasefire, which is all the motivation Putin needs to scupper any such deal.
If Europeans truly want to be knights, not pawns, in the new global chessboard taking shape, putting skin in the game before a ceasefire is now an imperative. It is perhaps their last opportunity to credibly signal to Putin and Trump, but also Xi, Iran’s supreme leader and others, that they have the risk appetite to go up against them when their core interests are in play, as they have said they are in Ukraine.
If it quits shorting itself, Europe can be central in the emerging global dynamics. The more the United States and China are at loggerheads, the more the EU will be an essential lung for both. And the much fantasized U.S.-Russia economic revival is predicated on the European market.
But none of that is possible if Europeans don’t ensure their own safety and assert themselves militarily. In the new world, a geopolitical power must ally economic and military power dynamics. One without the other doesn’t cut it anymore.
