US President Donald Trump signs an executive order designating fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction” at the White House on Dec. 15, 2025. (UPI/Yonhap)
The Hankyoreh’s senior international affairs writer Jung E-gil breaks down common questions, offering easy-to-understand explanations of global news.
Getting up to speed
Relations between the US and Europe are falling apart. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to Europe as an ally that treats America worse than its enemies. Regarding the state of Europe, the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy document, released on Dec. 4, concluded, “Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”
As the free world’s biggest and most powerful alliance, the partnership between the US and Europe has upheld the international order since the end of World War II. Its dissolution signals Europe’s weakening position in the international community. This aligns with the Trump administration’s new foreign policy, which involves abandoning the role of the US as the protector of the liberal international order.
Q. What did the Trump administration recently say about Europe?
A. After the White House released the NSS on Dec. 4, Trump has ramped up his criticism of Europe. In an interview published by Politico on Dec. 9, Trump lambasted Europe as a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people.
“If it keeps going the way it’s going, Europe will not be — in my opinion, many of those countries will not be viable countries any longer. Their immigration policy is a disaster,” Trump said in the interview. “I hate what’s happened to London, and I hate what’s happened to Paris.”
Back in February, Trump reportedly said that the EU was formed “to screw” the US.
Q. Hasn’t Trump always been critical of Europe?
A. Since the beginning of Trump’s first administration, Trump has lambasted European nations for their insufficient contributions to NATO. Now he’s reached the point of political interference.
On Jan. 15, 2017, less than a week before taking office for his first term, Trump said during an interview with The Times in London that NATO was “obsolete” and no longer useful, indirectly rejecting the importance of Europe, which the US is obliged to defend by the NATO alliance.
During a NATO summit in July 2018, Trump indicated that the US could not protect any European country that doesn’t spend 2% of its national GDP on defense. Reuters reported that Trump told NATO leaders during a closed-door meeting that if European governments didn’t meet their defense spending requirements, the United States “would have to look to go its own way,” according to an official present in the room.
On July 15, 2018, ahead of his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump said during the CBS program “Face the Nation,” “Well, I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade.”
Following the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2020, Trump was quoted as saying, “You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you” by Thierry Breton, a French commissioner of the EU.
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration for his second term, Vice President JD Vance addressed the Munich Security Conference. Vance remarked that “the threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values — values shared with the United States of America.”
Vance’s remarks called out European administrations’ hate-speech regulations as attacks on freedom of speech and as a violation of democratic principles.
But now in its second term, the Trump administration has gone so far that it’s now meddling with the internal affairs of European nations.
Q. Why is the Trump administration so critical of Europe to the point of outright disdain?
A. Europe’s role in the international community has diminished. The aforementioned NSS states, “Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP — down from 25 percent in 1990 to 14 percent today — partly owing to national and transnational regulations that undermine creativity and industriousness.”
In the early 2000s, during the administration of George W. Bush, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred to “Old Europe” and “New Europe.” When asked about European opposition to the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, Rumsfeld replied, “Now you’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe. If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east and there are a lot of new members.”
As Rumsfeld predicted, the US has shifted much of its focus from the European continent to the Asia-Pacific region. This pivot accelerated after the 2000s. Now, the Trump administration’s transactional approach to Europe is leading to overt repudiation of Europe.
During the second Trump administration, the culture war based on far-right populism has expanded to Europe in some ways. This past February, Vance began the assault that empowered the European far right.
Under a section titled “Promoting European Greatness,” the NSS states, “America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.”
This indicates that the US wants to change the direction of European politics and culture, which had been dominated by moderate leftism and conservatism, toward the MAGA path.
Plans to establish the “Core 5,” or C5, as an alternative to the Group of Seven framework were included in the extended version of the first draft of the NSS, according to a report by the military news outlet Defense One on Dec. 10.
Defense One reported that the C5 would include countries with a population over 100,000 million, such as the US, China, Russia, India and Japan. Defense One reported that “the NSS proposes to focus US relationships with European countries on a few nations with like-minded — right-wing, presumably — current administrations and movements,” noting that in the security document, Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland are listed as countries the US should “work more with [. . .] with the goal of pulling them away from the [European Union].”
Q. What has the reaction been in Europe?
A. Many in Europe are also saying the continent should detach itself from Trump’s America. Josep Borrell, the former vice president of the European Commission, said that the US’ latest NSS is “a declaration of political war on the EU.”
“European leaders should stop pretending that Trump is not our opponent, hiding behind fearful and complacent silence, and instead defend the EU’s sovereignty — technologically, in the field of security and defense, as well as politically,” he said.
Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland and former president of the European Council, posted on X, “Dear American friends, Europe is your closest ally, not your problem.”
On May 28, 2017, right after a spat between the US and Europe regarding the latter’s financial contributions to NATO, then German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a rally in Munich, “The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I’ve experienced that in the last few days.”
“We Europeans have to take our destiny into our own hands,” she added, arguing from a Europe independent of the US.
However, in the time since, European leaders have stumbled over each other to curry favor with Trump. As Ukraine hits a brick wall during peace negotiations with Russia, Kyiv and Europe are fundamentally reliant on the US for leverage.
Q. Europe supports Ukraine, which rejected the peace deal brokered by the US, as it reflects some of Russia’s demands. Doesn’t that indicate that Europe isn’t reliant on the US?
A. Throughout the war in Ukraine, Europe has exhibited inconsistent, contradictory attitudes and ultimately followed the US’ lead. The outbreak of the war was tied to the expansion of NATO. Western European nations were hesitant to expand NATO into former Soviet territories, and they wanted to deepen relations with Russia.
Germany and France were concerned about relations with Russia when it came to the NATO expansion, but exhibited patterns that ultimately indicated consent, according to institutions like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
In 2008, Germany and France opposed the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) — a guidance program for countries aspiring to join NATO — being extended to Ukraine and Georgia, both former Soviet territories, under a US-led initiative.
NATO leaders opted for a boilerplate statement in a written declaration suggesting that Ukraine would eventually become a member of NATO, and pushed back actual procedures for admission.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western European countries viewed Russia as a target for collaboration and absorption. Germany, in particular, tried to expand into the Eastern European market to deepen its energy and economic cooperation with Russia.
The US opposed the Nord Stream pipeline that connected Germany and Russia, arguing that it would make Europe dependent on Russian oil.
In 2014, amid Ukraine’s attempts to join the EU and the collapse of a pro-Russia administration, Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, and a civil war broke out in the Donbas region along Ukraine’s border with Russia.
Germany and France brokered the first and second Minsk agreements, which defined a high level of autonomy for the Donbas region, but the US was lukewarm about them. Even before the war in Ukraine, Germany and France made diplomatic attempts to stop the conflict from boiling over, but the Joe Biden administration didn’t offer aggressive support.
Once the war broke out, Germany and France led the hard-line stand against Russia. During the early days of the war, they strongly opposed the Istanbul peace talks. Now that the Trump administration is trying to broker a peace deal, it’s Europe that’s holding the US back.
Q. Why has Europe’s stance been so inconsistent? Does Europe have any alternatives?
A. Although Europe acknowledges that Russia is struggling to maintain its war against Ukraine, European nations are still not ruling out the possibility of Russia invading Western Europe. The war in Ukraine is a fire beneath Europe’s feet. The US is attempting to shift responsibility for Ukraine and Europe’s defense onto the nations of Europe and pull out.
Thanks to the war, Europe is at risk of being left to stand alone. During the last NATO summit in June, the US demanded that European members increase defense spending to 5% of national GDP, a tall order that they agreed to fulfill. This could be seen as both an appeasement to Trump’s America and a decision to become more independent.
The increasing awareness throughout Europe of the threat posed by Russia can be seen as a reason for its effort to become militarily stronger. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on Dec. 11, “Conflict is at our door. Russia has brought war back to Europe, and we must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured.
In other words, Europe could see a third world war, and he identified Russia as the European continent’s biggest threat.
It remains to be seen whether this approach will secure long-term stability for Europe.
Before the war in Ukraine, Germany imported 32% of its natural gas, 34% of its oil, and 53% of its coal from Russia. After the war, they’ve managed to wean off Russian energy, leaving Germany’s capacity to amass and integrate energy severely declined.
Otto von Bismarck, who oversaw the unification of Germany in the late 19th century, famously said that the secret of politics was to “make a good treaty with Russia.”
Traditionally, Germany has viewed relations with Russia as key to its security. Stable relations with Russia are also key to stability in European security.
The US has gone back on its argument that Russia is the invader and the source of the war overnight, and is now looking to improve relations with Russia. Europe is also desperate for the war in Ukraine to end. Going forward, they need stable relations with Russia in order to stand on their own. The longer the Russo-Ukrainian war drags out, the longer their dependence on the US will continue.
By Jung E-gil, senior staff writer
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