Trump and Europe are at each other’s throats. What does it mean?

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Tim Sebastian is an English journalist who served as the BBC’s Moscow correspondent, and has reported from Washington and around Europe.

If you didn’t know it before, you certainly know it now.

America is the best, the richest, the most successful, the most powerful country in the world with the best military, uniquely capable of the most spectacular operations, led by the best and most decisive President on the planet.

Got it? Good. Because Donald Trump has been throwing his weight around. In Venezuela. In Greenland. And if his new National Security Strategy is enacted, he could soon be working to undermine his own allies in Europe.

But was that risk always there? Just how firm is the transatlantic alliance? Was America’s commitment to Western security ever as solid as Europe believed?

Back in the late 1980s, I took a walk along the Potomac River in Washington with an unusually frank interlocutor.

He was Admiral Stansfield Turner, former director of the CIA, and as such, a guardian of some of America’s closest held secrets.

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At some point we touched on the “nuclear umbrella” – the shield that America purported to have installed in Europe to deter any nuclear strike by the Soviet Union and to counterattack if that deterrence failed.

In the middle of the conversation, Mr. Turner, who died in 2018, stopped and stared at me with incredulity. “You people in Europe really don’t get it. Do you?”

“Get what?” I asked.

“This nuclear umbrella that you’re talking about. You think it’s designed to give you shelter while the nukes pass overhead between Moscow and Washington. But we look at it in a different way.”

“How different?” I asked.

Mr. Turner shook his head: “Do you seriously think Washington would put the U.S. at risk of nuclear attack for the sake of Belgium … or Holland? Most Americans don’t even know where they are. You need to understand something. In our plan those Russian nukes would be kept inside that umbrella – not passing overhead.

“The reason we keep forces in Europe is that if there’s going to be a war, we’ll fight it on your territory – not ours.”

That conversation is worth remembering these days. Its central message is as relevant now as it was during the Cold War.

Treaties are all very well and good on sheets of paper, but when critical events occur and the existence of your country is at stake, who on Earth is going to read them, let alone abide by the promises they appear to make?

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To be honest, NATO was built on several shaky assumptions. Its treaty was meticulously crafted to give the appearance of a mutual defence guarantee for all its members – while, in fact, offering nothing of the kind.

So successful was this master class on diplomatic sophistry that statesmen from all parts of the alliance have trumpeted this fiction for decades, waving Article 5 of the treaty at anyone who dared doubt the promises it was said to contain.

But take a read. The key paragraph states that if a member country of the alliance is attacked, each NATO partner will take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

Left chillingly unsaid is the specific right of each member to take no action at all. That is a big loophole. Others may be opening up right now.

Whatever happens, though, Mr. Trump’s “invade and grab” operation that seized Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro will already have sent a powerful warning to some countries, especially those that have displeased the White House in the Western Hemisphere.

In December, in a wordy treatise with the catchy title “National Security Strategy,” the White House warned of “urgent threats” in the region – including from countries that had “hurt” the U.S. economically and might pose a strategic threat in the future.

“The U.S. must be pre-eminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity,” it says.

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After years of “neglect,” America would be reasserting the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine – now “Donroe” in Mr. Trump’s telling – keeping foreign countries out of its backyard, denying them control of vital assets and preventing them from deploying their forces.

The tone was high-handed and authoritarian, but that won’t have stopped some of the bigger beasts around the world from quietly applauding from the sidelines.

My guess is you won’t have to wait long for Beijing and Moscow to follow Mr. Trump’s lead. China will likely move closer to a forcible “reunification” with Taiwan; Russia may well intensify its attacks on Ukraine and step up its hybrid warfare against the Baltic states and Western Europe.

If Mr. Trump can get away with strong-arming sovereign states, they’ll argue, then they can, too.

But planning foreign adventures has never been America’s strongest suit. And even if Mr. Trump does have a plan for the days after in Venezuela or anywhere else – a dubious assumption – he will likely change his mind plenty of times along the way.

Moreover, when it comes to planners, the U.S. no longer has the pool of experts it once assembled. Multiple senior military officers were fired by Mr. Trump last year and hundreds of State Department officials lost their jobs. The loyal Trumpists in senior roles quite literally know nothing about the issues they’re now facing.

When you entrust some of your most sensitive negotiations to a couple of property developers, and your Defence – now “War” – Department to a former TV presenter and platoon commander, who, despite being decorated with two Bronze Stars, rose no higher in the U.S. military than the rank of major, you’re not exactly prioritizing America’s highest achievers.

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For their part, in the wake of the Venezuela attack, European leaders went back to what they now do best – verbal acrobatics; trying not to criticize Mr. Trump’s actions but not joining in the orgy of self-congratulation either – all aware that considerations of international law had simply been dumped at the roadside.

Examine the balancing skills of the British and German governments, when confronted with the news from Venezuela. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz breathed deeply and called the situation “complex.” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, an experienced lawyer, said he needed “all the facts,” though he said he would “shed no tears” over Mr. Maduro’s removal.

So, imagine U.S. troops shooting their way into Berlin, London or Paris, simply to enforce an arrest warrant. What would the leaders say then? What would it take for Europe to relocate its guts and its principles? In the past, we all thought there were easy answers to that question. Not any more.

Who will stand up to Mr. Trump as he goes after whatever he wants – seizing oil tankers, bombing Iran, Syria and Nigeria, pressuring even Canada?

Where will it stop?

For all the pomp and splendour of the U.S. presidency, Mr. Trump has become like a baby in a pram, pointing at all the goodies he wants as Mom pushes him past the shops.

Most of us grow out of that period. He seems not to have managed the transition.

Might he go ahead and simply take over Greenland? At least seven NATO allies are warning him strongly against it.

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Denmark has gone further than the others, pointing out that any hostile move against the Arctic territory could signal the end of the alliance. But high-level talks in the White House this week failed to make any progress. Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt of Greenland left a meeting with U.S. Vice-President JD Vance indicating the two sides were still far apart.

So why would Mr. Trump even risk such a catastrophic rift in the alliance when he doesn’t need to?

Perhaps he is simply fed up with little countries telling the most powerful state in the world what it can and can’t do.

And if he damages the NATO alliance in the process, then so be it.

He no longer appears to care one way or the other.

It should come as no surprise then that the U.S.’s new security document landed last month without any mention of a threat from Russia.

Instead, it delivered a powerful kick in the teeth to Washington’s European allies, blaming them for America’s failed peace efforts in Ukraine and slamming their current direction of travel.

Even some serving and former U.S. officials, now used to Mr. Trump’s tantrums, his fragile and insatiable ego, as well as his signature inconsistency, were taken aback.

Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. forces in Europe, said the President had simply shown his allies on the continent the “middle finger.”

Mr. Trump’s National Security Strategy accuses Europe of undermining “political liberty and sovereignty” in a continent facing “civilizational erasure” from high migration and falling birth rates.

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The document also cited Europe’s “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition.”

America, it affirmed, should be “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory.”

Quite apart from the hypocrisy of the document, offering strictures on democracy from a President who made desperate efforts to overturn the result of the lawful election he lost in 2020, it illustrated just how far Mr. Trump has begun re-engineering his European relationships. They now appear weaker and less reliable than at any time since the Second World War.

To Europeans, it has become clear that none of their leaders’ fawning and flattery toward Mr. Trump has produced any beneficial effect whatsoever. Quite the contrary.

Not only is Mr. Trump both critical and condescending to Europe – we’re used to that – but his expressed intention to undermine and interfere with the political direction of some of his European allies is nothing short of breathtaking.

So, too, is the National Security Strategy’s praise for far-right “patriotic parties” – several aligned closely with Moscow. Their “growing influence,” it claims, “gives cause for great optimism.”

As for the other parties, the message is bleak but clear.

Washington doesn’t like what’s going on in Europe and will do everything it can to change the continent’s direction of travel.

This is no friendly whisper in an ally’s ear.

It’s not even about a new sheriff in town, more a new thug on a corner near you.

No surprise then that Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t hurrying to end his invasion of Ukraine. For him, the growth of serious divisions inside NATO is like an extension of Christmas.

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If Mr. Trump can further dent Europe’s unity by backing the far right, then a lot of Russia’s objectives will have been achieved without further effort.

To Mr. Putin, his American counterpart is the gift that keeps on giving: a U.S. President, dividing and weakening Europe just when Russia needs it most.

Mr. Putin didn’t even bother to hide his enthusiasm for Mr. Trump’s security strategy. Tass, a state-owned Russian news organization, reported that Russia found much to like with the new U.S. National Security Strategy. Not a statement you hear very often from Moscow.

Let’s not forget that last February, without even blushing, the U.S. voted with Russia and North Korea against a United Nations resolution, condemning Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and calling for a cessation of hostilities.

That single stab spoke volumes, heralding the highly consequential shift in global politics that is staring at us today: the realignment of two superpowers with cataclysmic capabilities.

Both now see Europe as a thorn in their side.

Both seek to alter fundamentally the continent’s political landscape.

Both believe that the powerful are above the law and unaccountable to the weak.

Neither should be trusted.

In his public comments on the war in Ukraine, Mr. Trump has vacillated from expressing mild frustration with Mr. Putin – even threatening additional sanctions – and echoing the Russian leader’s own arguments. His harshest criticisms have all along been reserved for Ukraine, which he pushed into signing away a large chunk of its rare earth minerals, at the same time as the country was battling for its survival.

You can almost hear Mr. Trump’s pitch: “I mean, surely you guys can fight off an invasion, bury your dead – and do a big trade deal at the same time. No?”

They’re all heart, these U.S. property developers.

To its cost, Ukraine has found out what the European members of NATO should have realized long ago: that Mr. Trump’s heart was never fully “in” the alliance and that an unreliable ally – as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky might one day testify – is a lot worse than having no ally at all.

Today’s most tortuous negotiations involve attempts to agree on security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire with Russia. So far, the results have been predictably disappointing.

Europe’s “Coalition of the Willing” – led by France and Britain – had initially looked at stationing a force of more than 60,000 troops in Ukraine to monitor whatever ceasefire agreement eventually comes into force.

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Now it appears that the eventual deployment could be less than a quarter of that number. Lost in the loose wording is how any action by those forces would be triggered, and, crucially, to what extent they might be supported by a U.S. “backstop.”

Agreements don’t come much more imprecise than this one, and Ukraine surely knows it.

When the talks ended in early January, Mr. Zelensky was still looking for clear and unambiguous assurances that his country would be protected if the Russians broke a future ceasefire.

Mr. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, attended the talks in Paris and said the allies had largely agreed on a security guarantee. But there has yet to be any binding commitment on behalf of the coalition’s member states.

That’s proof, if it were needed, that this process is going nowhere fast – and may be going nowhere at all.

And yet superpower relations are conducted on many different levels, as I found out on a visit to Moscow early in 1992.

It was an exceptional period in Russia’s history. The Soviet Union had collapsed just weeks earlier, leaving the country curiously directionless and open.

In the chaos that followed, I briefly obtained access to the Communist Party’s most secret library – its Central Committee Archive – where papers, hand-signed by Lenin himself, were kept in temperature-regulated, electronic sliding shelves.

Gone were the rules that used to keep foreign journalists permanently excluded from venues like this. Instead, in the total absence of any rules, I was shown inside and spent several days reading some extraordinary records.

Among them were cold official reports of purges and mass executions – accounts that had never been revealed before in public.

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Other documents, labelled “Special File – Top Secret” concerned Moscow’s previous relations with Western countries and included assessments, some handwritten, by members of the ruling Politburo.

One report from the KGB concerned a confidential approach from the late U.S. senator, Ted Kennedy. In 1983, a former Democratic senator had apparently travelled to Moscow on Mr. Kennedy’s behalf to ask the Russians for a favour. It was a surprising development, since U.S.-Soviet relations had been in the deep-freeze for several years.

The memo to the Politburo claimed Mr. Kennedy was “directing his efforts to becoming president of the U.S. in 1988” and suggested private talks and a TV interview with Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, aimed at improving ties between their countries.

The American intermediary later denied that Mr. Kennedy had harboured any presidential ambitions and that he had not discussed Mr. Kennedy’s electoral chances, but he did confirm the contacts.

Whatever the truth, the approach came to nothing. Mr. Andropov was unimpressed by the idea. But the private and confidential East-West channels remained open throughout the Cold War and perhaps especially now.

Whatever is said in public, the day they stop is the day on which we should really start to worry.

We’re in a bad way in Europe – and the continent looms large in Moscow’s crosshairs.

December’s most unwelcome news flash was delivered in London by Blaise Metreweli, the new head of MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service.

She suggests the country is dangerously close to open conflict with Russia and accused the Kremlin of employing hostile tactics that “are just below the threshold of war.”

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The catalogue of misdeeds includes cyberattacks on critical infrastructure in Germany, drones buzzing airports and military bases in the Netherlands, aggressive activity in British waters “above and below the waves,” state-sponsored arson and sabotage.

NATO’s chief, Mark Rutte, has beat the same drum, only louder: “We are Russia’s next target and we are already in harm’s way.”

Europe, he said, was now facing a conflict “on the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured.”

I’m not sure these dire predictions spoiled anyone’s Christmas – but they should have. When the writing is so clearly on the wall, and you paid for that, it’s a little silly not to read it.

When the military and intelligence officers start talking over the heads of the politicians, it’s worth paying closer attention.

The fact is that in the past 12 months, the security environment in Europe has darkened considerably. With Ukraine under all-out attack by Moscow, other countries have been examining their own vulnerability and sounding the alarm. They see a battle-hardened Russian army that has built itself a war economy, successfully sidestepped many Western sanctions, and learned from some catastrophic mistakes on the battlefield.

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They see Russia producing weapons at pace that are not appearing in the Ukrainian theatre – and are likely being stockpiled for further special operations the Kremlin might be considering.

It’s not just on the battlefield in Ukraine that Mr. Putin’s forces have advanced.

He has already walked away with a victory that has severely weakened the West’s deterrence capabilities.

His threats of nuclear escalation have delayed the critical supply of several long-range weapons systems to Kyiv and denied Ukraine a no-fly zone that it has requested.

In October, Mr. Trump himself backed away from a previous tentative offer to supply Ukraine with ultra-long-range Tomahawk missiles, after a telephone conversation in which Mr. Putin made his objections clear. With that, the Russian leader became one of the few invaders in history to stipulate which weapons his enemies were allowed to use against him – and then force them to obey his diktat.

By accepting the Kremlin’s veto, Ukraine’s allies did themselves enormous harm.

It set a precedent that is hard to walk back. The fact is Mr. Putin’s nuclear deterrence worked. Europe’s didn’t. Nor did America’s.

These days Mr. Trump is clearly in awe of Mr. Putin, even patting both his hands as they stood on the red carpet at the Alaska summit in August, 2025. “I think he wants to make a deal,” Mr. Trump said. Mr. Trump frequently leans in to give Mr. Putin a charitable face.

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Mr. Zelensky, by contrast, has often been treated as an obstacle by the White House for, in Mr. Trump’s view, risking “a third world war.” After the famous bust-up at the White House in February, 2025, the U.S. halted some weapons’ deliveries and suspended vital intelligence feeds to Ukraine’s armed forces.

In the days that followed, it’s likely that a so-far-unknown number of Ukrainians died because the U.S. President had suffered a temper tantrum.

It is doubtful that thought even crossed his mind.

For now, the big question is how Mr. Trump and Europe will deal with each other.

It is already a bad-tempered relationship. It looks set to deteriorate still further. We will see plenty of threats, lawsuits and acts of retaliation.

Mr. Trump has promised to interfere at an unprecedented level in European politics. Initially, that is likely to mean funnelling vast sums into the election campaigns of far-right politicians who share his opinions – and using U.S. Big Tech’s unrivalled megaphones to try to unseat those who don’t.

Does Trump believe he can buy himself a more compliant Europe?

He may.

But the only candidate certain to benefit from that effort is watching and smiling from inside the Kremlin – unable to believe his good fortune.

More on Trump and Europe

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Opinion: Donald Trump’s America is committing civilizational suicide

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