Erik Jones
Nonresident scholar at Carnegie Europe
Pragmatism and capitulation are not the only two options on the table to describe what the EU and its member states are doing; the real question is whether they have a plan. The outline for one is there.
The EU needs to spend more on its own defense. It needs to take responsibility for its own security. And it needs to deepen its internal market, enhance its financial self-sufficiency, bolster its defense industries, and de-risk its relationships with the United States as well as Russia and China. This cannot happen overnight, but it must happen quickly and at a time when resources are strained, people are restless, and threats are mounting.
Will that be easier if the EU picks a (well-deserved) fight with the Trump administration that leaves the member states bruised and divided? Will it be quicker if the EU throws its support behind a rules-based multilateral system that has already been crippled by U.S. policy as well as other countries? Is the EU buying time and conserving resources by focusing on those things that really matter for Europe’s future in a global environment that is changing rapidly, and against European interests? Call it what you like, but I hope the EU—and member states—are being strategic.
Liana Fix
Fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations
Europe is neither capitulating nor is it just being pragmatic. European leaders are buying time, strategically, and they have no alternative to this course. Time that they need to refund and rebuild European defense. Every single day that they manage to keep U.S. President Donald Trump on their side is a win. Not because anyone wants to bend the knee voluntarily and remain as depend as Europe is on the United States, or even hopes that things will go back to normal after Trump. Those illusions are gone. But because Europe is defenseless without the United States right now. And changing this reality needs time and money.
For decades, European leaders have not told their population the truth. Their citizens have a wildly exaggerated and detached view of what their armies can actually achieve. There is a huge gap between expectations and capabilities in Europe. Citizens expect their states to defend them but in reality, not a single European state can defend its people in a major war without the United States.
As former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi said, it was a post–Cold War illusion that economic power buys you geopolitical power. Even if the United States becomes little more than an arms dealer to Europe, Europe still needs that arms dealer right now.
Martin Quencez
Managing director of Geopolitical Risk and Strategy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States
In security as in trade policy, Europeans do not know how to respond to Trump’s actions. Their objective is to buy as much time as possible, hoping that today’s transatlantic crises will eventually wither on their own. Faced with U.S. pressure, their priority is to safeguard a relationship that has benefited European economies for decades. In many ways, sycophancies and hollow pledges may seem like acceptable costs to ensure the preservation of an advantageous status quo.
But what is now portrayed as sensible pragmatism may reveal itself to be flawed. First, the Trump administration will surely react when it becomes apparent that Europeans cannot pay the billions worth of U.S. military capabilities and energy they promised to purchase. Second, the cost of transatlantic conciliation will hinder the allies’ ability to sustain the necessary investments in their own industrial and technological base, infrastructure, and energy transition, impeding Europeans’ ability to take more leadership on security affairs.
Europe has therefore not capitulated, but it continues to embrace a form of strategic patience that is increasingly costly. After each meeting with Trump, European leaders celebrate the fact that they have avoided the worst-case scenario for U.S.-Europe relations. Unable to agree on a proactive strategy, this may sadly be the best Europe can deliver for the time being.
Pierre Vimont
Senior fellow at Carnegie Europe
Talking of Europe’s capitulation about the Turnberry trade agreement or the NATO summit outcome misses the point. If there has been capitulation on the European side, it was not the result of any tactical choice or some sense of necessary pragmatism. It was the natural outcome of a strategic misdirection in which Europe has been indulging itself since Trump’s return to power.
European leaders still believe in the continuity of transatlantic bonds and the persistence of the U.S. security protection for their continent. So the crucial issue for them is to find ways of appeasing the whims of the U.S. president while waiting for better days. But the Trump administration is no friend of Europe anymore.
Europeans were hoping their one-sided concessions would allow for continuity in their economic and military relations with the United States. But reality is not providing such comfort. The Turnberry deal has not prevented the U.S. president from going after the EU digital governance rules and threatening Europe with renewed trade retaliations. As for its security protection, Europe is still in desperate search of any genuine reassurance from the American side over the need for more stability inside the NATO coalition and a common policy in support of Ukraine.
Federica Mangiameli
Senior program manager of the Future of Security Program at GlobSec
The decades-long debate over the EU’s identity and its ability to project power and stand by its partners seems to have taken a dramatic turn. As Washington drifts away from being the like-minded ally Europe once relied on, reality has caught Brussels off guard.
Despite efforts by the EU and member states to build a European industrial defense architecture to protect themselves and support Ukraine, these ambitions clash with a harsh truth: Buying American weapons is the only way to keep Trump even minimally interested. The attempts of the so-called coalition of the willing to show unity and strength, and to advocate for Ukraine, have barely influenced the thinking of the American president—who, like his Russian counterpart, responds only to the language of power (and business).
Meanwhile, the unpredictability that defines Trump’s approach makes any strategic planning nearly impossible. Will these concessions be enough to satisfy him? And more importantly, how far is Europe willing to go in sacrificing its own principles and strategic autonomy just to keep the relationship friendly?
What’s unfolding is not pragmatism, but appeasement. And the EU risks eroding both its credibility and its long-term interests in the process.
Michael Williams
Director of the International Relations Program at the Maxwell School for Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University
Breaking up is hard to do, as the saying goes, which may explain why the EU has contorted itself to accommodate the Trump administration. Despite mounting evidence that the West as we've known it since 1949 is dead, European leaders persist in trying to appease Donald Trump.
History offers a stark warning about such strategies. As the world learned in 1938, appeasement proves a poor foreign policy tool. Bullies accept what is offered, then immediately demand more. Trump will follow this same pattern.
The EU, as the strongest remnant of what was once the unified West, must uphold the liberal values it claims to champion. Yet it cannot do so while pandering to Trump in pursuit of marginal gains. The United States has abandoned its role as leader of the free world under Trump's presidency. This abdication creates an opening—and an obligation—for Europe.
It must now rally the remaining remnants of the old West—Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea—around a renewed vision of liberalism rooted in social democracy.
The EU must adopt hardball tactics on trade and prioritize European defense capabilities over dependence on Washington. Brussels must establish itself as a new pole of power in an increasingly multipolar world.
Monika Sus
Visiting Professor at the Hertie School
Europe has not capitulated yet—but it is dangerously close, and the next few weeks and months will be crucial. Yes, it is commendable that the EU has remained united on the key issues and that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other European leaders joined Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington. But let’s be honest: This is the bare minimum.
If Europe wants to stop being bullied by the Trump administration and counter Russia’s imperial ambitions, it must finally move beyond gestures to bold action. That means issuing common debt to finance large-scale European projects in defense, energy, and technology—building competitiveness and strategic autonomy rather than pouring taxpayer money into U.S. weapons. It means investing incoming funds in Europe’s own defense industry. It means redirecting revenues from frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, working seriously with the UK on a reassurance force, and tightening sanctions against Moscow.
Caution will not save Europe. Only ambition might. Few expect the EU to act boldly—which is precisely why doing so now would not only strengthen Europe’s hand, but deliver the strategic surprise it desperately needs.
Stefan Lehne
Senior fellow at Carnegie Europe
At the beginning of her first mandate, Ursula Von der Leyen stated that Europe needed to “learn the language of power.” In the summer of 2025, Europeans learned the language of submission.
Faced with the double threat of a trade war and of the United States abandoning Ukraine, European leaders decided to bow to the wishes of the Trump administration. But this pragmatism came at a high price. They accepted a deeply unequal trade deal, betraying their commitment to WTO rules. They made promises on military expenditures and on investments in the United States that will be almost impossible to keep. They showered Donald Trump with praise and flattery, which will hurt their image back home and probably also their self-esteem.
Worst of all, Trump has little respect for agreements and considers concessions a sign of weakness and an impetus to come back for more. Days after the EU celebrated the safeguarding of their digital regulations as their major negotiation success, he launched a fierce attack against these rules threatening a new wave of tariffs. Unless the EU somehow manages to find the coherence and the strength to respond more robustly to the bullying from Washington, the next three years will see a whole series of humiliations leaving behind a much-diminished union
Rem Korteweg
Program lead of the Geopolitics of Trade at the Clingendael Institute
The EU and its member states have yet to develop a workable strategy for dealing with the Trump presidency. Instead, their approach is based on damage control.
Such has been the case with the NATO defense-spending pledge, as well as with the recent EU-U.S. tariff deal. To avoid significant uncertainty for companies, the EU has accepted a 15 percent tariff and getting little in return. But as senior EU officials have recently highlighted, the Turnberry deal was hardly a negotiation.
The problem is that, because Trump believes he now has the upper hand in the relationship with the EU—and spurred on by his rather unsympathetic views of the EU as an institution—the agreement will not be the end of it. Despite the deal and the European commission’s presumption that it will create predictability in the transatlantic trade relationship, the EU’s exposure to Trump’s tariff-wielding will not end soon, as his recent threats over EU tech regulation make abundantly clear.
The Trump administration sees relations with the EU in clientelist terms, and Europe is doing little to correct that view. The only upside is that most countries face the same fate.
