Europe Is Slowly Getting Ready to Ditch America

In his second term, Trump had a real opportunity to shape the world in his image and restore the United States’ place as the undisputed leader of the free world. Instead, Trump has continued to lash out at allies and reject the White House’s place in the world. Europeans are responding in kind.

Europeans were happy to keep Trump on side, because they believed they still needed the United States. In the aftermath of the Cold War, Europeans spent decades in lethargy and complacency about their own defense where a broadly subservient pro-Atlanticist position made sense. Europe allowed itself to be an outpost of U.S. foreign policy in exchange for D.C. bankrolling its security and preferred market access.

That calculation is now less certain. What value is there in an easy and complacent arrangement if the United States suddenly withdraws 5,000 troops from Germany or imposes tariffs for no obvious reason? Is it really worth sucking up to Trump when he makes jokes about domestic violence to belittle you, as he did with French President Emmanuel Macron, or makes claims about a politically neutral head of state privately agreeing that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, as he did with King Charles?

The flattery of Trump from allies hasn’t just been gestures and words: Trump’s return to the Oval Office prompted a surge in defense spending from NATO members. European nations have backfilled U.S. spending on Ukraine, even when it means effectively handing money to U.S. arms firms for weapons. The United Kingdom signed a landmark pharmaceutical deal with Trump that will cost Britain’s public health service more than $4 billion a year. And despite Trump’s constant complaints about his NATO allies, particularly in Europe, military bases and resources across the continent have been used by the United States in the operational effort against Iran, even though the White House kept leaders out of the loop.

All of the fundamental arguments, from the practical to the economic, for keeping Trump happy still exist. Europe cannot replace the security infrastructure provided by Washington overnight, nor is it possible to simply redirect Europe’s trade relationship with the U.S. elsewhere. But it can slowly move away from U.S. overreliance by making long-term decisions that return strategic sovereignty to Europe, while keeping Trump superficially happy in the meantime.

That’s why Europe has begun “quiet quitting” the trans-Atlantic alliance, as Carnegie Europe’s Rym Momtaz wrote recently:

Some paragons of Atlanticism have recently chosen European providers for long-term structural contracts instead of American ones. The Dutch central bank ditched Amazon Web Services in favor of the German Lidl as their cloud operator, and Denmark’s defense ministry opted to purchase the Franco-Italian SAMP/T air defense system instead of U.S. Patriot batteries.

While, as Momtaz correctly notes, these steps are being made practically because of what Trumpism more widely has done to U.S. reliability, that doesn’t mean they are being taken without confidence. Speaking to European or NATO officials, it becomes clear that the constant state of crisis that dominated Trump’s first term and the first year of his second has dulled, as European countries become more confident in their own ability to shape their security future.

Take the “coalition of the willing” (unfortunately shortened as COW), a British- and French-led project of like-minded middle powers that, as the name suggests, are willing to support Ukraine’s fight against Russia. What is happening through COW is 35 nations—including non-Europeans such as Australia, Japan, and Canada—coming together for a common goal, centered in European security. As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said at a recent meeting of the European Political Community, he believes “the international order will be rebuilt, but it will be rebuilt out of Europe.”

The new European order Carney describes will hopefully count a postwar Ukraine among its ranks. The strange characterization of Ukraine as a country without “any cards” or as an ungrateful money pit, as Trump and his deputy have variously suggested, is easily debunked when you note how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been traveling the Middle East, cutting deals with Gulf states where Ukraine is offering them protection against Iran. While Ukraine might need financial support, its armed forces are arguably the most effective and experienced in the world right now—and will thus be a key part of any future European alliance.

Carney and his partners in COW understand this in a way that the U.S. administration evidently does not. Even at the start of this year, even after Trump launched his attacks on Iran, U.S. allies were trying to keep him inside the tent. They still are, but with less enthusiasm or expectation and, crucially, a different destination—one that doesn’t leave them so helplessly at the mercy of the United States.

We are already seeing COW countries collaborate on projects like Japan’s next-generation fighter jets, where Tokyo turned to European partners rather than the United States. Meanwhile, the European Union’s 150-billion-euro loans-for-arms scheme is finally coming together, as Poland and Lithuania are braced to become the first countries to sign agreements worth about 50 billion euros.

Geopolitical shifts tend to move at the pace of a heavily laden oil tanker. Ten years on from that first shock Trump victory, all the dramatic outbursts and frenetic news cycles have slowly and subtly forced that oil tanker to change its course. And it will take an awful lot to convince allies, especially in Europe, to turn it back around.