Europe resents its dependence on American military power while criticizing Washington’s foreign policy, exposing the hypocrisy, insecurity, and economic decline undermining its global influence.
Nearly every week, another psychodrama arises between the United States and its NATO partners.
Europeans blame the Trump administration for the usual things—a lack of cordiality and bombastic threats.
But two truths, rarely spoken, characterize all these spats.
One is hypocrisy; the other is insecurity.
Take Trump’s recent demand that Ukraine cease attacks on Russian diesel refineries.
Given the midterms and the critical issue of fuel prices, it was understandable that Trump might request an energy “ceasefire.”
So both Russia and Ukraine were asked to stop their attacks on refineries to calm jittery global diesel markets and help stabilize sky-high prices.
But the American Left, the Ukrainians, and the Europeans went ballistic—given that the aggressor, Russia, is blanketing Ukrainian skies with missiles and drones, while Russia’s critical refining industry remains vulnerable to retaliatory Ukrainian drone attacks.
But the largest purchaser of Russian gas remains Europe. It has been since the start of the war.
For years, Europe literally laughed at Trump’s earlier appeals to close European pipelines to Russia and quit fueling Putin’s war machine.
Are we to assume that Europeans buying most of Russia’s natural gas is acceptable, but Americans asking both Putin and Zelensky not to attack fuel facilities, given the world oil crisis, is somehow a betrayal?
Some like-minded European ministers are still blasting the Trump administration’s supposed efforts to revamp NATO.
They damn the United States for pulling 11 B-1 strategic bombers out of a shared RAF–U.S. base in the United Kingdom.
The cause is usually omitted: the discovery of a dry-run terrorist operation to hit the base and destroy more than $3 billion worth of American bombers.
But in Orwellian fashion, the British government conceded that (1) the arrested terrorist team was Iranian-sponsored and (2) Britain had released all the arrested terrorists on bail!
Perhaps Prime Minister Andy Burnham fears his own unassimilated, pro-Iranian Islamic immigrant voters far more than he feels the need to ensure that Americans are safe while protecting NATO interests.
Europeans are also angry that the United States will likely pull 5,000 troops out of Germany and deploy about the same number to frontline Poland, which is rapidly developing the largest and best-equipped military in Europe.
But again, why the American change of heart?
During the ongoing, eight-month-long Iran war, some NATO partners—France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom—either banned U.S. planes from their airspace or refused them landing rights at joint NATO–U.S. bases—or both.
Apparently, they opposed American efforts to denuclearize Iran and end the 50-year terrorist threat posed by that nation, fearing that it might activate terrorist operations inside Europe.
But do we remember when the French and the British—in what they called a NATO “coalition of the willing”—pleaded with the United States not merely to join them in bombing Serbia in 1999 and Libya in 2011 but also to conduct most of the combat missions?
And America did just that.
Yet Serbia was outside NATO’s purview. The United States certainly was not threatened by unrest in Serbia or Libya—at least not to the extent that nearby Europe, in theory, may have been.
Europe is understandably touchy about any American drawdown of NATO assets in Europe—despite most members’ systematic refusal, until recently, to meet their NATO commitments to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense for some 15 years.
If one were to apply prior European NATO logic consistently to the Russian-Ukrainian war, then the Trump administration might argue that Russia is less of a geostrategic threat to the American homeland than Iran’s nuclear and terrorist agendas are.
Note the further difference: the United States is not asking European NATO members to participate in combat against Iran, as Europe asked America to do against Serbia and Libya.
The United States had requested only occasional overflight rights and some landing accommodations. Both were again refused by some of the largest NATO members.
What causes this constant friction among allies and friends?
The once-promising European Union is becoming anemic. Despite having some 100 million more people, Europe’s GDP is $10 trillion smaller than America’s.
Europe’s borders are wide open. Its often hostile immigrant population is growing.
Its own native population is shrinking because of a fertility rate of about 1.34.
Many European NATO members shut down fossil-fuel and nuclear plants, preferring impractical and unreliable wind and solar energy.
Consider today’s critical technologies: AI, digital media, software, satellite launches, space exploration, and genetic engineering. European companies rarely rank among the global top 10 in these fields, which are overwhelmingly dominated by American corporations.
So one reason Europe seems schizophrenic and hypocritical is that, while it takes for granted its past global influence, military power, and political stature, its current socialist economy cannot support either its staggering welfare costs or its military obligations.
Europe both yearns for and resents U.S. help, hating its dependence as much as it needs that help. Yet so far, the medicine of economic and military reform is seen as worse than the disease.
Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness
