The past year in U.S.–EU relations has not been an aberration but a clarification. Donald Trump’s return to office has stripped away lingering European illusions about the resilience of the postwar liberal order and the durability of the transatlantic bargain that sustained it.
Today’s environment is more brutal and openly transactional. An environment in which power asymmetries are leveraged and dependencies are weaponized. A world in which normative language is entirely discarded. For Europe, the implication is stark, and adaptation is no longer optional.
This policy brief argues that Trump’s worldview is not chaotic but internally coherent. It is defined by three durable pillars: a rejection of the liberal international order in favor of “survival of the fittest”; a strategic openness to Russia as a partner rather than an adversary; and a personalized, pay-to-play approach to governance that prioritizes loyalty and financial gain over institutional process. These traits translate into a distinctly adversarial approach toward Europe. An approach that seeks to divide the continent, undermine its regulatory model, and extract concessions by exploiting European security and defense dependencies.
Trump’s worldview: consistency beneath the noise
While Trump does not adhere to any ideology, there are several consistencies in his worldview. The first is his unwavering rejection of the post-1945 liberal international order. Trump believes the United States is poorly served by the very order it created, portraying alliances, institutions, and rules as mechanisms through which others free-ride on American power. In this Trumpian worldview, transactional bargaining replaces institutional cooperation, and raw leverage replaces norms.
Trump’s rhetorical and personal affinity for so-called “strongmen” is not incidental but emblematic of this worldview. His praise for leaders such as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Kim Jong Un, Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping reflects admiration for unconstrained authority and centralized power rather than ideological alignment. For example, in a mid-December interview, Trump contrasted allegedly “weak” European leaders with Erdoğan, whom he described as a “tough cookie” who built a “strong country” and a “strong military.”
This survival-of-the-fittest ethos also explains the administration’s tolerance for controversial or legally dubious actions abroad, from aggressive counter-narcotics operations in Latin America to an increasingly dominant posture toward Venezuela and the Western Hemisphere. In Trump’s frame, effectiveness is measured by dominance and extraction, not legality or legitimacy.
Trump’s financial governance and foreign influence risks
A second consistent pillar is Trump’s openness to normalizing relations with Russia. Unlike the prior U.S. bipartisan consensus that framed Moscow as a revisionist threat, Trump has persistently treated Russia as a potential partner whose estrangement is both unnecessary and commercially inconvenient.
The war in Ukraine is therefore not primarily understood in moral or strategic terms, but as an irritating obstacle to normalizing relations between the U.S. and Russia and enabling potential business dealings. This perspective aligns closely with Russian objectives and undermines Europe’s central security interest in preventing Russian territorial conquest.
A third consistency is Trump’s preference for governing outside normal national security processes. Decision-making is personalized, opaque, and strongly influenced by financial incentives. Trump relies on enrichment relationships, relationships between powerful individuals who can mutually enrich each other.
This profit-oriented approach, however, creates a permissive environment for corruption and influence, particularly by foreign actors who can entice with gold-plated trinkets or billion-dollar investment promises. It is notable that several high-profile pardons and dismissed cases associated with Trump involve individuals linked to foreign influence networks, including figures convicted of or associated with large-scale criminal activity.
Estimates suggest that Trump has earned more than $3 billion since his return to office, reinforcing the perception that personal enrichment is not a side effect but a feature of governance. Ultimately, Trump’s governing model undermines accountability and promotes corruption. For both allies and adversaries, it also creates an exploitable vulnerability because shrewd actors can leverage Trump’s financial interests to influence U.S. behavior.
Europe through Trump’s eyes
Taken together, these consistencies form a governing logic that has consequences for America’s allies across the Atlantic. From Trump’s perspective, Europe is not a community of partners but a competitor to be managed, weakened, and, where possible, divided. The strategy following this logic prioritizes U.S.–Russia ties while simultaneously hollowing out European integration through a divide-and-conquer approach operating at multiple levels.
The first level attacks internal European politics by aligning with far-right European parties that share Trump’s skepticism toward supranational governance. This alignment also mirrors Russia’s long-standing effort to undermine European cohesion from within. A second level attacks regional geopolitics through advocacy of spheres of influence. In its most explicit articulation, the U.S. National Security Strategy suggests that Europe might be dominated through asymmetric power relationships in its sphere.
A third level is in the domain of global governance. Particularly in digital governance, the adversarial nature of Trump’s approach is evident. Europe’s regulatory framework, including the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, and the AI Act, represents a direct challenge to Trump’s worldview and the business models of major U.S. technology firms. As a result, Washington increasingly leverages Europe’s security dependencies to pressure Brussels into diluting or reinterpreting these rules.
Why Europe appears constrained
While it is tempting to attribute Europe’s limited responses primarily to the idiosyncrasies of the current White House resident, in reality Europe’s difficulty in responding effectively to Trump is rooted in its own structural constraints. Institutional fragmentation, divergent national priorities, and deeply entrenched sovereignty-linked mindsets continue to undermine the integration project and lead to lowest-common-denominator outcomes.
European strategy toward Trump has also been shaped by a fundamental misinterpretation of his incentives. European leaders have repeatedly responded to pressure with flattery and concessions, believing that accommodation would preserve transatlantic stability. In practice, this strategy neither protected Ukraine nor stabilized the relationship. Instead, it reinforced perceptions of European weakness and encouraged further demands.
A third reason Europe appears constrained is its dilemma: the short-term need to increase defense spending entails purchasing more U.S. weapons, which in turn increases long-term dependence on a U.S. that might weaponize these very dependencies. Escaping this conundrum will not be easy. Additionally, on the medium term, the United States remains indispensable for key capabilities, particularly intelligence that enables Ukraine to intercept attacks and conduct deep strikes. Decades of underinvestment have left European NATO members with a severe capabilities deficit, raising the risk of collective military irrelevance without U.S. support.
A strategic reset
Being honest about Europe’s difficult situation is a first step toward effective, meaningful responses to Trump’s divide-and-conquer approach. However, it would be a mistake to focus solely on Europe’s weaknesses, which could normalize inertia or meekness. Instead, after recognizing unfavorable conditions, Europe must demonstrate willingness to act despite vulnerabilities.
In the transition to strategic adulthood, Europe must resist U.S. pressure to weaken digital regulations. Trading away standards for short-term relief on tariffs or security guarantees would undermine Europe’s global credibility. This requires insulating regulatory decision-making from coercive politics and presenting a united front in negotiations with Washington.
Secondly, Europe must urgently invest in its own military and technological base. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) warns that Russia could pose a direct threat to Europe as early as 2027. In purchasing power terms, Russia’s war economy already rivals the combined spending of European NATO members, according to the IISS Military Balance 2025 Report.
Replacing U.S. non-nuclear capabilities assigned to NATO could cost approximately $1 trillion over 25 years. Europe has begun initiatives such as the €150 billion Security Action for Europe Fund (SAFE) and the National Escape Clause, which could unlock an additional €650 billion. These efforts must be sustained, coordinated, increased, and focused on reducing strategic dependencies.
Europe must lead in supporting Ukraine
Europe must show leadership in supporting Ukraine. This requires acknowledging U.S. “peace” initiatives without relying on them, while preparing to sustain Ukraine primarily through European financial, military, and industrial resources. Engagement with Washington should focus narrowly on preserving intelligence cooperation and enabling weapons procurement during a defined transition period. In wartime, Europe must recognize its considerable leverage via the bulk of frozen Russian assets, effective sanctions regimes, and its majority share in military and economic aid to Ukraine.
Simultaneously, Europe must confront its own defense-related inefficiencies. For example, it still operates over 170 major weapons systems compared with roughly 30 in the United States, although this problem was already highlighted in 2014. Streamlining and joint procurement are essential. Recent steps, such as joint contracts for ammunition and missiles via the European Defence Agency, are encouraging but insufficient. The refusal of major states to participate in initiatives like the German-led European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) underscores the need for political leadership to overcome industrial rivalry.
Focus on remaining U.S. alignment
Europe should focus on the remaining alignments with the U.S. For example, the $901 billion National Defense Authorization Act signed by Trump in mid-December 2025 included restrictions on Trump’s ability to reduce the number of overseas troops, including in Europe and South Korea. Congressional constraints like these continue to provide a measure of stability for transatlantic relations. Europe should work with these institutional anchors while simultaneously preparing for a more transactional White House.
The era of automatic transatlantic alignment is over
Recent events in Venezuela, alongside pressures to commandeer Greenland and the goals specified in Trump’s National Security Strategy, mean that the era of automatic transatlantic alignment is truly over. Europe’s choice is not between loyalty and autonomy, but between strategic adulthood and managed decline. By defending its regulatory model, investing in its own capabilities, and leading where its interests are most directly at stake, Europe can navigate a harsher world without surrendering its agency.