The last few months are set to enter European history as the summer of humiliation. This August saw European leaders first ignored and then granted an appearance before Donald Trump’s desk, where they stood like truants hauled before the headmaster, to be informed of the subservient role they were to play in the commander in chief’s peace negotiations over Ukraine.
July had seen humiliating trade negotiations in which Europe’s self-styled leader, Ursula von der Leyen, had to acknowledge the failure of the showpiece of half a century of European integration — the EU’s internal market — to sway the United States to treat her as an equal. On top of swallowing devastating tariffs for German car manufacturers, she had to promise Trump tributes to the tune of $750 billion in energy purchases, $600 billion in European investments in the United States, and an unspecified sum for American military hardware.
This came after perhaps the most consequential humiliation: after two days of embarrassing groveling, NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte — the former Dutch prime minister — texted Trump his congratulations for enforcing upon NATO’s European member states the obligation to spend at least 5 percent of GDP on defense — a demand that exempted the United States itself, as well as the only dissident, Spain.
After decades of struggling to get them to spend 2 percent of GDP on weapons, this was an armaments revolution: “You will achieve something NO [sic!] American president could get done,” texted the Dutch secretary-general. “Europe is going to pay in a BIG [sic!] way, as they should, and it will be your win.” It was a new low in the asymmetrical US-EU relationship, accurately described by Gilles Gressani as Europe’s…
Auteur: Ewald Engelen
