It is getting hard to tell who—the United States or Russia—has been more destabilizing to Europe lately.

Between its tariffs, its Greenlandic ambitions, and the war it is waging on Iran, the United States is now endangering Europe’s economy, energy supply, reindustrialization, territorial integrity, and security all at once. As real as European shortcomings are, that is not how the transatlantic bargain was supposed to go. And while the situation has reached dramatic levels in recent months, the problems didn’t start with U.S. President Donald Trump.

This is Europe’s trivialization on the world stage. After benefiting from the U.S. cocoon for eight decades, the continent is now experiencing what it’s like to be on the receiving end of American power without the protections of a special relationship.

Because that bond is broken. The belief that the United States and Europe are bound by connected fates in power and prosperity is virtually nonexistent among those that matter in the Trump administration. It is also a less powerful organizing principle for the majority of the rising leaders of both U.S. political parties: Democrats and Republicans.

The good news is that while Europe is doubtlessly still trying to find its footing in this new reality, it has amassed some experience that the Arab Gulf is about to find useful. And that could be the basis of a new partnership of middle powers.

The new pact between Europe and the Gulf countries wouldn’t be about replicating the security guarantees Washington used to provide. That was a model only the post-Second World War United States could implement. The new partnership should instead be driven by mechanisms to mitigate the instability of the new disordered world that is taking shape.

Among themselves, they have enough military, economic, and natural resource capabilities to build reliable shock absorbers. Over the medium term, and by associating other powers such as Canada, India, or Japan, they can build enough industrial capacity to minimize the potency of tariffs. They can build diplomatic connections to shield themselves from the adverse impacts of further ill-conceived unilateral actions taken by America. And over the longer term they can constitute a credible military mass for which the United States could act as a force multiplier without being its fundamental pillar.

The world will be durably altered at the end of the war, which the United States and Israel launched against Iran on February 28. The Arab world will be the most affected, with Europeans a close second. The American security guarantee and hegemony that formed the basis of the Arab Gulf’s economic and security models is suffering real damage. After the decades-long destabilization of the region and the empowerment of Iran produced by the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Washington is now failing to protect countries where it has massive military bases.

Even more crucially, the Trump administration’s inability to prevent Iran from paralyzing one of the world’s main arteries for global commerce and energy supply—is durably eroding the United States’ global cachet. The preponderance of American might has long been built on its status as the ultimate guarantor of international trade and freedom of navigation in the seas. That is now severely challenged. And it is precisely in the quest for a durable reopening of the Strait that a new European-Arab partnership can make a durable place for itself on the global chessboard.

The European nations that Trump has called to the rescue—despite repeatedly disparaging them as weak and useless—have taken the first encouraging step of clearly stating that they will not be cleaning up the mess the U.S. president has imposed on the world.

What this war has shown is that even the mighty United States needs Europe and multilateralism. Because geography is the ultimate geopolitical nonfungible. And because the costs of this war on the world economy are too big for Washington to shoulder on its own.

This gives Europeans and the Arab Gulf leverage that they should use immediately. The reaction shouldn’t just be a polite “no, thank you.” It should be a redrawing of the terms of the relationship.

Europe and the Gulf are currently suffering from the same ill and share some interests and goals. As middle powers, they both have a vital need for stability, predictability, and a more equal seat at the table on matters affecting them. The danger to both Europe and the Gulf is not that America has become irrelevant, it is that it has supercharged its economic coercion, political erraticism, and transactional diplomacy while becoming a main source of insecurity. And the dilemma both regions face is that Washington also remains an indispensable ally.

Neither region can decouple from the United States in any meaningful near-term sense. American military power, intelligence, advanced technology, logistical depth, and nuclear guarantees remain foundational to the defense and economic prosperity of both Europe and the Gulf. But a continuation of the status quo is no more viable an option than decoupling. Both are now not only vulnerable to adversaries, in a world increasingly driven by power dynamics, but also vulnerable to the volatility of their protector.

The chain reaction of first, second, and third-order effects that the war on Iran has unleashed should be taken as proof that, for both Arabs and Europeans, no amount of sycophancy and checkbook diplomacy are enough to contain Trump’s wrecking balls.

The damage to the Gulf oil and gas sector is producing an energy shock that will likely stunt European reindustrialization efforts. And, though Gulf countries have maintained good relations with Russia, the Ukrainian and Gulf battlefields are now connected. Moscow has reportedly been assisting Tehran with its targeting, while Gulf countries are having to call on Ukraine for help in countering the Iranian-made drones Kyiv has been dealing with for four years.

All of this has been set off by a single decision taken by the U.S. president. Europe and Gulf countries spent decades worrying about life without America. They have been much slower to prepare for a different problem: life with an America that no longer behaves as a stabilizer.