Is the transatlantic rupture temporary or structural? Is Donald Trump the cause of the rift, or is the US president only a symptom of underlying trends? Optimists latch on to the hope that the stability we have lost can be restored post-Trump. Having spent the past few days in Washington, I doubt it.
Even in recent history, things were not quite so bad for the transatlantic relationship. The current tensions make the first Trump administration look like a walk in the park for Europeans. It is one thing to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump did in his first term. It is quite another to bomb Iran and give Israel the green light for its war against the regime.
It is one thing to be threatened with tariffs, and have to offer empty promises, as Jean-Claude Juncker did, to buy more US goods. It is quite another to swallow 15% US tariffs, leaving a queasy-looking Ursula von der Leyen giving a thumbs up for the cameras next to a smirking Trump.
When it comes to security cooperation, Trump in his first term at least sent anti-tank Javelin missiles to Ukraine; now at best he’ll allow European governments to buy US weapons for Kyiv. Meanwhile, he is taken for a ride by Vladimir Putin as the Russian dictator gloats walking down the red carpet in Anchorage, Alaska.
Optimism can become a form of faith – and some still cling to the belief, despite all the evidence, that the good old transatlantic days will be back.
This scenario is delusional. Even if Trump were to vanish, it’s hard to see the transatlantic relationship reverting to that shared sense of kinship that characterised it in past decades. The most we can hope, as one Washington observer framed it for me, is to become a separated couple temporarily living under the same roof for the sake of the children, and then amicably parting ways.
When Joe Biden was elected, I suspected that he would be the last truly Atlanticist US leader, regardless of who came next. I distinctly remember when Biden roused the crowd of transatlantic enthusiasts at the Munich Security Conference in 2021, announcing that “America is back”. A little voice inside my head added: “Probably for the last time.” Security, demographic, societal and economic forces in the US and in the wider world pointed against Biden’s pledge. The transatlantic relationship can no longer be assumed to be based on shared values and identities.
Europeans understand this intellectually, but they struggle to accept the reality emotionally. This explains the tendency to lie low and avoid ruffling Trump’s feathers, biding time in the hope the past can be magically restored.
This attitude is dangerous, because alternative outcomes seem far more likely – two in particular. They are both premised on the transatlantic drift being deeper and more structural than merely the presence of Trump himself. Whether we end up closer to the first or to the second scenario depends on how Trump acts, but also on how Europe reacts.
The first would see Europe and the US transact when their interests, however fleeting, converge. This would reduce the relationship to transactions of convenience, with none of the emotional connections or long-term commitments it has enjoyed for decades, but at least it would not be marked by enmity and hard feelings.
If Europe is at war and the US can make money by selling weapons to it, it will be happy to do so. But this won’t stop Washington from reaching a bilateral deal with Moscow over the heads of Ukrainians and Europeans. Accepting this rather squalid reality would mean that Europe, just like Russia, China or India, would cynically seek to extract as many gains as possible from the US, aware that this is the name of the game for all. Europeans would continue to buy US weapons for a while, but use that time to develop the continent’s strategic autonomy and invest in Ukraine’s defence industry.
They would accept Trump’s tariffs in the short term, but strengthen the EU’s bargaining hand by increasing the scope, depth and pace of trade with others, from the Latin American countries of the Mercosur bloc to India and the 12-strong Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). In this scenario, Europe should also pursue the proposal to build an alternative international trading system to the World Trade Organization, without the US. This is not an ideal outcome for Europe, but one we could live with.
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However, there is another scenario, which is far more ominous for Europe. It is a world of empires in which the US, Russia, China, and perhaps India one day, each has their sphere of interests. Empires could end up clashing but they could also overlap, at least some of the time. They would do so on the basis of fleeting deals, rather than shared rules and laws. Trump’s instincts tilt in this direction. Seeing Europe as a colony, he would prefer to deal with it through extortion than transactionalism.
Other would-be empires may have different ideas about the future. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping’s, recent love-in with Putin and Narendra Modi in Tianjin points in a more confrontational direction. Meanwhile, Trump’s myopic trade war has seriously dented a painstakingly crafted US partnership with India, pushing Delhi into Beijing’s lap. A world of empires would be the worst possible outcome for Europe, caught between the imperial ambitions of Russia and the US, with China waiting in the wings.
Europe’s reactions to these emerging realities make the chance of this dark outcome more likely. European leaders have spent the past six months genuflecting, pampering and conceding to Trump. A small dose of diplomatic flattery is a necessity, to be sure, and reflects relative bargaining powers. But we really don’t need to pose for pathetic thumbs-up photos, send embarrassing text messages before Nato summits or offer up gilded gifts and royal invites.
All this self-humiliation makes many European citizens cringe. It’s unnecessary, at most winning Trump’s fickle smiles; worse, it’s counterproductive, because it demonstrates that Europe can indeed be colonised, and accepts “survival of the fittest” as the way forward. Europeans must truly accept that the past is sadly past. Only then can they avoid a future that will see them violently pushed down the food chain.
