For decades, the Soviet Union’s core goal was to “disband” the United States from Europe. Known as decoupling would break the Western Union to stop Soviet tanks from rolling on the Prussian plains.
Now, within weeks, President Trump has handed Moscow a gift to avoid it during the Cold War.
Europe, shocking. The United States is a country whose core idea is freedom, and its core appeal has been a defense of democracy’s defense against tyranny, and he has activated allies and accepted a cruel dictator, President Vladimir Putin, President of Russia. The feeling of abandonment in Europe was shocked, shocked by the huge re-armed mission, which surprised the subversion of American ideology, and Europe found itself wandering.
“The United States is the backbone of managing peace, but it changes the alliance,” said Valérie Hayer, chairman of the European Parliament’s centrist renewal European group. Trump opens up the propaganda of Putin. We have entered a new era. ”
The emotional impact on Europe is profound. The United States is central to the long journey from the ruins of 1945 to the entire prosperous continent and freedom. In his 1963 speech on “Ich bin ein Berliner”, President John F. Kennedy put West Berlin’s perseverance into inspiration for free seekers around the world. President Ronald Reagan issued a challenge – “Sir Gorbachev, remove this wall!” – in 1987 at the entrance of Brandenburg. European history is also the history of the United States as a European power.
But in this dawn era, the meaning of “Western” is still unclear. For years, despite sometimes acute tensions in Europe and the United States, it shows a strategic actor, Manchester United’s commitment to the values of liberal democracy.
Now there is Europe, Russia, China, and the United States. The West as an idea has been hollowed out. How the vacuum will fill is unclear, but one obvious candidate is violence as the big powers eliminate it.
Of course, as the nearly daily whipping of new tariffs has been made clear, Mr. Trump is impulsive, even if his nationalist and authoritarian tendencies are a constant trend. He is traded; he can change the course. In 2017, during his first visit to Poland, he said: “I announced today that the world hears the West will never be broken. Our values will prevail.”
The president has since deprived the shackles of this traditional thinking and the Republican entourage who supported it. He seems to be a leader without boundaries.
The challenge for Europe is to judge what part of Mr. Trump’s composition is and what is the ultimate repositioning of authoritarian America.
Mr. Trump has agreed to Ukrainian and U.S. officials next week after the blast of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ugly office, and agreed to a meeting next week. He also threatened that he would impose further sanctions on Russia if he did not participate in peace negotiations. This could mitigate some of the damage, although there is almost no basis for ending Russia to form a war.
“No matter what Trump’s adjustments, the biggest danger is that he abandons liberal democracy,” said Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist at the Sciences PO University in Paris. “Trump knows where he is going. The only realist position in Europe is to ask: What military power do we have, how do we integrate and develop this power with urgency?”
French President Emmanuel Macron announced this week that the mainland is facing “irreversible changes” from the United States. He urged to strengthen “massive shared financing” for the rapid European military, announcing a meeting of the European Chiefs of Staff next week, saying: “Peace cannot be a surrender of Ukraine.” He also proposed to extend France’s nuclear umbrella to European allies.
These are signs of a huge strategic shift. But in Europe, nothing is more than the post-war republic in Germany created to a large extent by the United States, whose collective memory gave the generosity of the American soldiers to the generosity of the American soldiers, thus making the generosity of the American soldiers over, which was the re-stabilization of the United States.
Christoph Heusgen, the German president of the Munich Security Conference, gave birth to a three-year end last month. He said it is easy to destroy rule-based orders and commitments to human rights, but it is difficult to rebuild them. Vice President JD Vance accused Europe of trying to stop progress in far-right parties, including German parties using the Nazi language, he made a speech.
“It’s a terrible sight, a whipping boy and a crying boy,” said French political scientist Jacques Rupnik. “Europe must step up its efforts toward democracy right away.”
For many Germans, the idea of a lot of things the U.S. forces do to defeat Hitler should choose a party, including an alternative to Germany or AFD, which includes members who openly support the Nazis, feels like an inevitable betrayal. AFD is now Germany’s second largest political party.
In the words of British historian Simon Schama, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was interviewed this week, coupled with cuts to Ukraine’s U.S. military and intelligence aid, at least so far, is “terrible notorious.”
Germany’s incoming conservative Prime Minister Friedrich Merz reacted to feel like the death of the old order. “My absolute priority is to strengthen Europe as soon as possible so that step by step, we can really achieve independence from the United States,” he said. He suggested that the Trump administration “is largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”
In a moment, a German taboo fell out. Mr. Meers’ Germany will withdraw from US guidance to examine Berlin’s French nuclear deterrence and allow debt to continue to grow to fund a fast defense industry.
Even in times of economic hardship, Germany is a leading position in Europe. If France-German military cooperation does develop rapidly and is complemented by British military participation, it seems likely that Europe will enjoy its reputation as an economic giant and a strategic dwarf under Keir Starmer. But this won’t happen overnight.
The main forces in Europe seem to have concluded that Mr. Trump is not more abnormal. He received a lot of support among the growing anti-immigrant nationalists in Europe. He is the embodiment of the United States in the age of rising dictatorships, with post-war institutions and alliances being obstacles to a new world order built around influenced powers.
If Mr. Trump wants to capture Greenland from EU member Denmark, what other conclusions in Europe are credible? Outliers of the past decade now look like President Biden, his passionate defense of democracy and rule-based orders.
Of course, the connection between Europe and the United States is not very small. They won’t be easily uncovered; they’re not just military alliances. According to the latest EU data, trade in goods and services between 27 EU countries and the United States reached US$1.7 trillion in 2023. Every day, about $4.8 billion worth of goods and services span the Atlantic Ocean.
Since taking office for the second time, Mr. Trump claimed that the EU has “to screw up the United States.” This is his typical statement of the world’s zero and zero landscape. In fact, by any reasonable assessment of the past 80 years, European and American bonds have been the engine of prosperity and the peace multiplier.
“The league is in a very painful stretch, but I won’t call it a breakout point,” said London adviser Xenia Wickett. She distinguished Mr. Trump’s request that Europe paid more for his defense, which was not an unreasonable demand and his embrace of Mr. Putin.
If maintained, it is unclear where it is. But as Mr. Shama said: “When you reward aggression, it guarantees another round of aggression.” For Mr. Putin, Ukraine is part of a widespread campaign to undo NATO and the EU. Establishing an “unlimited” partnership with China, he hopes his Russian resurrection ends his view as Western dominance over the world.
As Pierre Lévy, former French ambassador to Moscow, wrote in Le Monde last month: “It is up to the American people to understand that they are on the line of Putin: putting the world on the brink of American hegemony, ending the dollar’s dominance in the global economy and acting with the support of Iran, North Korea and China.”
For now, Mr. Trump doesn’t seem to care for reasons that are unclear. He will not get rid of his zero-critical sensitivity to Mr. Putin. It seems that Europe only needs to overcome stupidity.
Ms. Bakaran said: “When we wake up, we are all heartbroken.”
