Donald Trump’s return to the White House has exposed Europe’s strategic paralysis in spectacular fashion. For all their vaunted foresight, replete with contingency plans, position papers and closed-door sessions gaming out a second Trump presidency, EU leaders find themselves now exactly where they were four years ago: unprepared and knocked out.
More than two months after Trump’s victory, Brussels’ response has been limited to empty reassurances, dismissing his proposals as mere hypotheticals, including his quite serious claims to
, which threaten a member state’s territorial integrity. Instead of taking meaningful action, the EU has resorted to diplomatic hand-wringing and recycled platitudes about transatlantic unity.