US soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division participate in Griffin Shock 23 held in Poland, May 19, 2023. Exercise Griffin Shock demonstrates the US Army’s ability to assure the NATO alliance by rapidly reinforcing the NATO Battle Group Poland. But the US Cavalry may not ride to Europe’s rescue in future Credit: Staff Sgt Agustín Montañez/US Army
07 December 2025
How should Europe work with Trump?European leaders have slipped into a dangerous playbook on how to “manage” the volatile and unpredictable President. Stroke the ego, flatter the man, praise his leadership – and hopefully avoid vilification and an avalanche of tariffs.
Reality check: it’s not working. The more we bow to Trump, the more we are taken for granted and the more he wields American power to divide us. Yet so normalised has our behaviour become, state visits to the Oval Office now resemble scenes from The Godfather. Leaders shuffling in, offering praise, taking a knee, desperately hoping any live press questions don’t send the President off-script. By indulging one man’s impulses, we’ve allowed our collective voice to shrink, our strategic clarity to fade, and Western resolve to erode.
It’s time to end the subservience – tiptoeing around Trump not out of admiration but out of fear: fear he’ll walk away from NATO, fear of retaliation, fear of being blamed should the US disengage from Europe altogether. In this climate of hesitation, the transatlantic relationship has become dangerously one-sided.
Last week’s release of Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) sadly confirms how pointless and indeed humiliating our collective kowtowing has been. The 33-page document reads like an isolationist’s manifesto, presenting a seismic ideological shift in global engagement. New priority: power, interest, and control. Economic nationalism. No global leadership for its own sake. Primacy of nations over international institutions. And a deliberate disengagement from Europe while seeking improved relations with Russia.
This foreign policy upheaval, upending decades of American commitment to defending global order, comes at a time when the world has not been this dangerous since World War II. Yet it’s not entirely unexpected. Reflect on Trump’s approach to ending the war in Ukraine and it’s clear that the ‘Trump doctrine’, now formally published, has been driving Washington’s thinking since he came into office.
He returned to the White House promising fresh resolve in bringing peace to Ukraine. Europe showed extraordinary patience, giving him space to wield American clout to end the war. What’s clear today, confirmed in the NSS, is how Washington and Europe differ in interpreting Moscow and its imperialist ambitions in Europe. Driven by his transactional, nationalist worldview, old alliances are questioned, commitments diluted, and statecraft replaced with deals. Ending the war in Ukraine is not about standing up to tyranny but about bringing fast peace to secure post-war resource deals with Russia.
It’s now official: European security is not a priority. We can no longer remain blind to Trump’s increasingly pro-Moscow pattern of behaviour. From the very public belittling of President Zelensky in the Oval Office back in February to the regular pauses in delivery of American military kit and the insistence that Europe now foot the bill – not forgetting the optics of that Alaska summit, bringing Putin back in from the diplomatic cold even as Ukraine fights for survival.
This all places in perspective just how amateurish and crass the US-Russia 28-point plan for peace turned out to be. Written without Ukrainian or European input, it read more like a Russian wish list than a credible attempt at peace: sweeping territorial concessions, a halved Ukrainian military, and a commitment never to join Nato – proposals unacceptable to Kyiv and to Europe alike. So why even promote the plan – unless it was part of a higher strategy to re-engage with Russia.
Meanwhile, each month of delay has given Putin strategic space to evolve his faltering 2022 invasion into a sustained war machine. Slow Western decision-making (by Biden and Trump) has allowed the Kremlin to adapt, mobilise and escalate in ways that would have been impossible had we acted earlier. Russia now runs a full wartime economy, a 40 per cent surge in defence spending, round-the-clock weapons production, and sanction-busting supply lines from China, Iran and North Korea. It produces more ammunition each month than the US and Europe combined. It continues to seize territory, at enormous human cost, while we debate peace terms.
And Ukraine is not the only alarm flashing red on the global dashboard. The world has changed more in five years than in the previous thirty. The next five will determine the direction of the international order for decades.
Beyond Ukraine, Russia has escalated grey-zone attacks, including against the UK: cyber operations targeting institutions and parliamentarians; maritime probing near undersea cables and North Sea infrastructure; disinformation and political interference designed to weaken Britain’s resolve. Left unchecked, these will escalate further – likely culminating in a major deniable attack on critical UK infrastructure.
America is stepping back from global leadership and aligning with Europe’s chief adversary. No longer can we outsource our security to Washington, leaving us vulnerable. In short, the world has entered a new era on security, and we have been dithering to Washington’s tune for too long.
It is time to break from this flawed approach and re-write our own security strategy. It’s time to give Ukraine the full capability required to reclaim its territory. And to prevent an emboldened Russia from dragging Europe into a wider conflict. Anything less is abdication.
Remember Rutte referring to Trump as “daddy?”
That groveling worked no better on Trump than Trump’s groveling to putler.
The only European leaders that Trump respects are Lukashenko, Orban and Alice Wiedel.
The “National Security Strategy” reads like the trumputler “peace plan”; ie written by the Kremlin, whose murder gang has already expressed fawning approval of this load of excrement.
“Russia now runs a full wartime economy, a 40 per cent surge in defence spending, round-the-clock weapons production, and sanction-busting supply lines from China, Iran and North Korea. It produces more ammunition each month than the US and Europe combined. It continues to seize territory, at enormous human cost, while we debate peace terms.”
More evidence that sanctions are almost totally ineffective. Only the crushing military defeat of the cauldron of devilry will solve the problem.
Also in the DT today :
“Russian forces rape, behead and gouge out civilians’ organs in Mali
Villagers accuse Putin’s Africa Corps of atrocities that echo Wagner mercenaries’ brutality.”
“Russian soldiers are raping and beheading civilians and gouging out their organs in a supposed fight against extremism in Mali.
Moscow’s Africa Corps appears to have taken over from the disbanded Wagner Group mercenary organisation, which was also accused of war crimes in Africa.
Witnesses say the unit has shot civilians on sight and harvested their organs, an investigation by the Associated Press has found.
“It’s a scorched earth policy,” said a Malian village chief who fled the Russian forces. “The soldiers speak to no one. Anyone they see, they shoot. No questions, no warning. People don’t even know why they are being killed.”
These are the people who Krasnov has made into his allies.
Unfortunately Europe’s military state of affairs is not inspiring confidence. Ten years after Putin began his “Reconquista” of the Soviet territory and Europe still has not drastically improved their defense posture.
Half of the German Air Force is rated non-combat ready. France, Britain and Germany are all struggling just to field even one division each.
France only has 200 operational main battle tanks . While not the defining weapon of national ground forces power they once were this is indicative of their overall weakness.
Only Germany and Italy can produce their own new battle tanks.
Nobody is feilding drones on anything like the scale of Russia.
Only the Eastern Europeans are building up their forces with anything like determination.
A war between Europe and Russia may well look more like the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia than Ukraine with Russian drones devastating european armies and quickly seizing the Baltics.
So for the time being Europe needs to play along with Trump and support Ukraine until they can see to their own defense.
There have been so many wake-up calls in the West, that I can only touch on a small handful.
It’s been 11 years since the mafia rat stole the Crimea and started the little war in the Donbas, ushering in a new epoch. Europe (and America) did nothing.
The runt murdered his opposition across Europe. Europe did nothing about it.
The mafia state waged a small hybrid war that has grown in intensity and audacity, especially during the past three years. Europe simply did nothing.
The hermit kingdom of north korea sent tens of thousands of meat to help the mafia state. Europe did nothing.
Drones and missiles entered NATO territories. Europe did nothing.
The mafia state and its gofer Belarus shoved Third-world immigrants into the EU. Europe did nothing.
Drones are spying across the European continent. Europe does nothing.
Then came Taco.
Instead of alarm bells shrilling like crazy, Europe did nothing.
Instead, the European leaders tried to outdo each other in their effort to woo, impress, and suck up to the gangster.
Now, Taco presented his new NSS, shocking everyone that should’ve seen it coming all along.
If Europe now does what it usually does … nothing, then it’s game over for this continent.