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For almost an entire year, Europe has repeatedly faced the same choice: go along with another outrageous demand from US President Donald Trump, or deploy what power it has to impose costs on Washington’s transgressions. Again and again, European leaders have chosen the former in the belief that ingratiating themselves with Trump will avoid the possibility of worse harm coming from opposing him.
But in doing so, they have allowed considerable actual harm to accumulate: accepting vastly unbalanced tariff changes and the abandonment of the most-favoured-nation principle; interference in European elections and pressure to (de)regulate in favour of US tech; sanctions on political figures and international court officials; and taking on the full financial burden of containing Russia’s imperial military ambitions.
The more Europe pays for its supplication, the less convincing its strategic rationale becomes. What evidence is there that hitting back would cost more? The most frequently mentioned fear is that if Europe stops kissing the ring, the US will stop supporting Ukraine. That raises the question of how much support the US has left to withdraw. Washington gives Ukraine hardly any money or weapons. As a result, as Nathalie Tocci of the Italian Institute for International Affairs points out, it “has lost significant leverage over Ukraine” and “does not have the cards to impose a capitulation”.
The US could halt intelligence sharing again. Whether this would make it impossible to keep Ukraine in the fight (especially if Europe maximised support for Kyiv and pressure on Moscow, including by seizing its reserves) cannot be known from public information. But even so, folding to Trump on everything to protect a European country’s sovereignty is absurd if “everything” includes ceding sovereign territory to him.
Rather than a strategic weighing of outcomes, a broader psychological anxiety hamstrings European leaders: an inability to contemplate going it alone — without US support or even against US wishes — where “it” means not just Ukraine and wider security, but technology and the economy.
This inferiority complex is unwarranted. It also aids the Trump administration’s concerted effort to sap European courage to go its own way rather than follow US diktats. As Trump understands so well, a leader’s job is to project confidence to use the strength one actually has.
So the last two years’ doomsaying about Europe’s economic and technological prospects has gone much too far. The productivity slowdown relative to the US is exaggerated, being largely a post-pandemic effect of greater US spending. At market prices, the economies of the EU, UK, Switzerland and Norway together still measure about 90 per cent that of the US. On Friday, EU leaders finally agreed the world’s largest free trade zone with the Mercosur bloc — but seem uninterested in trumpeting the huge geopolitical achievement it is.
In Trump’s zero-sum approach to commerce, the EU could give as good as it gets, for example by denying US digital services the enormous profits they make in its market. Rising opposition in the European parliament to ratifying last summer’s EU-US “trade deal” while Trump threatens Greenland sends the right signal.
On everything from relatively small increases in common spending to a full-fledged digital currency, the EU has game-changing tools at the ready. If it could shed its fear of missing out, it could use a “buy European” policy and its ample savings to build domestic supply on everything from AI to most weapons in a matter of years — as China has proved is possible.
Even on the biggest question of security, why would anyone think Maga US is more likely to come to the rescue of a region that is proving itself a repeated pushover than one willing to fight back when challenged? Truly strategic thinking for Europeans is not ingratiation but making clear what they are willing to fight for.
At the moment, the US could simply declare that it owns Greenland and it would be game over. A small number of additional European troops could alter that — not because a US invasion could be defeated, but because Washington’s calculation would change if it would have to contend with an invasion.
A cartoon published in the Evening Standard in 1940 has enjoyed iconic status in Britain ever since. It depicts a lonely soldier on a rock facing the stormy sea, fist defiantly raised to the sky, captioned with “Very well, alone”. That spirit hasn’t always served Britain well — think of the Brexit debate. But it is the right inspiration today, for restoring confidence, courage and conviction to all of Europe.