Europe must stop appeasing Trump

Can Mark Rutte please stop talking? The NATO secretary general, who infantilized an entire continent last year by calling Donald Trump “daddy,” continued his campaign of flattery at the latest G7 meeting: “US action to prevent the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and degrade its ballistic missile capability improves security for all of us,” he told reporters.

Diplomats are paid to lie on behalf of their country, but this is perhaps the biggest and most obvious lie ever told by a diplomat not named Sergei Lavrov. Even Trump’s most enthusiastic war supporters don’t believe this nonsense. The only thing we can be sure of is that American action has not improved the security of anyone, except perhaps Iran, and certainly not that of Europeans.

Not only have Europeans suffered from rising energy prices, but the result of the war is that Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz for the foreseeable future. This means that European countries, like the Gulf States and all other countries dependent on access to the strait, will be at the mercy of Iran. Never mind the new “fees” that everyone will have to pay to Iran to use the strait. Any country that currently maintains sanctions against Iran will have to drop them quickly. When Tehran tells, for example, the UK that the queue to enter and exit the strait is terribly long and that the documents it has provided to the strait authorities controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are not entirely accurate but could probably be sorted out once sanctions are lifted, what will London do?

If Rutte’s self-degrading blandishments toward Trump actually worked, that would be one thing. To help save NATO: this is why Rutte is making fun of him. Unfortunately, Trump takes slavish flattery for its due. Giving it to him satisfies his need to feel superior and dominant, but it doesn’t gain you anything. Trump will turn on an “ally” or “friend” in the blink of an eye and with stunning malice. The latest victim is, of course, Bibi Netanyahu, who had far more reason than Rutte or any European to believe that Trump was on his side. Rutte’s latest flattery came just as almost the entire Israeli nation was screaming in shock at its sudden abandonment by Trump.

Read: Netanyahu finally discovers the truth about Trump

And the Trump administration’s response to Rutte’s absurd blandishments? The very next day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking at NATO headquarters, informed allies that Washington was beginning a six-month review to “examine the posture of U.S. forces and their basing in Europe,” with the clear intention of continuing what has already been a significant and steady drawdown of U.S. forces on the continent. He took the opportunity to once again criticize the Europeans for not having contributed to the war against Iran that the Trump administration undertook without consulting its allies and which has now turned into a debacle. Rutte’s response? “I’m happy he’s doing that.”

We all understand the difficult situation Europe finds itself in. She needs time to adjust to the fact that the United States is no longer a reliable security partner, to say the least. It does not want to fight with the United States, and possibly expose itself to even more serious sanctions, during this transition and at a time when the risk from Russia appears to be growing. Above all, they do not want to jeopardize the little support that the United States still provides to Ukraine. European leaders also live in fear of additional punitive tariffs.

Yet one thing should be clear by now: Trump has a tendency to capitulate in the face of determined opposition, whether it’s China’s trade retaliation, Iran’s unwavering belligerence, or the resistance of ordinary American citizens in Minnesota. Those who appease him, however, find themselves on an endless treadmill of concessions and self-abasement, because everything you did for Trump yesterday is forgotten today.

Read: Europe without America

From the start, Europe’s approach has been one of appeasement. For example, instead of collectively lining up to retaliate against the tariffs imposed by Trump last year on Trump’s “Liberation Day,” Europe, whose economy is as large as China’s, gave in. Instead of responding to the Trump administration’s bullying and insults with the defiant self-respect befitting proud nations, the European approach has been: Thank you, sir. Can I have another one?

This strategy will not work. In fact, it produces the opposite of the desired result, as Hegseth’s final proclamation shows. Europeans must understand that right now and for at least the next two years, they live in a world of three predatory empires. Trump is as likely to seize Greenland in the next two years as Xi Jinping is to take action against Taiwan. Europeans will become vassals of these empires or learn to fend for themselves.

What Europe does matters to us all. As the United States slides deeper and deeper into authoritarianism, likely culminating in the Trump administration’s attempt to overturn the results of this fall’s congressional elections, Europe may well be the last hope for a liberal democracy. Those of us who want to keep liberalism alive need Europeans to start defending it against all its enemies – in Moscow, Beijing and Washington.

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