President Donald Trump’s first year back in office has shattered any remaining illusions among European leaders that he can be managed or controlled.
His open hostility to the European Union has strained a transatlantic alliance that has endured since World War II and deepened rifts among Europe’s national leaders and within the bloc, jeopardizing its ability to respond to Trump’s threats and taunts with the kind of unity and force it respects.
That left Ukraine’s fate hanging in the balance heading into 2026, not to mention unanswered existential questions about European security, at a time when many fear Russian President Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions are extending westward beyond Ukraine.
But in many ways, Europe has survived the Russian roller coaster – for now.
“Europeans cannot afford to cut ties and hand in divorce papers because they are still too dependent, especially when it comes to security and the US military commitment to defend Europe,” said Jana Puglierin, Senior Collector at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
But, she continued, the leaders’ efforts to maintain strong ties with the US based on short-term interests does not mean that the past year has not made it clear that long-term interests are no longer aligned for now.
“We have to be pretty clear,” she said. “Once upon a time, there was a clear understanding of the old transatlantic relationship enshrined in Western values and norms and principles, the rules-based international order. And now I think we’re seeing a competing project developing.”
The administration is also clear heading into the new year.
He sees a continent losing its values and identity, due to liberal ideals that do far more to endanger European security than any White House missive. The act of a friend, the White House argues — as it pushes Europe to spend more on its own defense, restrict immigration and end the war in Ukraine — is to set the record straight.
“President Trump has great relationships with many European leaders, but he never shies away from delivering hard truths,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “The devastating effects of uncontrolled migration, and the inability of those migrants to assimilate, is not only a concern for President Trump, but also for Europeans themselves, who have increasingly singled out immigration as one of their top concerns. These open border policies have led to widespread examples of violence, increases in crime, and more, with damaging impacts on the sustainability of the fiscal social safety net.”
After a terrible start to the year, with Vice President JD Vance lecturing Europe about freedom of expression in Munich and then partnering Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with Trump in the Oval Office, Europeans have adjusted to Trump’s vision — a shift, as Romanian Nicușor Dan described it, from a “moral way of doing things to a very pragmatic and economic way” The White House is back on track on several fronts.
The EU’s presentation on trade, accepting a new 15 percent tariff, limited the short-term economic damage. NATO reassured Trump with its pledge to increase defense spending by 5 percent over the next decade, cemented at its summit in June — largely because it allowed existing non-defense spending to count for 1.5 percent of the new total.
Instead of abandoning Ukraine, Trump agreed in July to provide additional defense aid for his war with Russia, as long as Europe pays for it. And the Europeans managed to resist Trump’s August meeting with Putin in Alaska and the administration’s announcement of a 28-point peace plan drafted in secret with the Kremlin, which they worked with the US and Ukraine to revise.
In an interview with POLITICO earlier this month, Trump criticized European leaders as “weak,” saying they “don’t know what to do” especially on immigration. He questioned whether European leaders should continue to be allies, saying it “depends” on their policies and that he would not hesitate to intervene in European elections to support far-right parties that challenge the very coalitions and leaders he currently works with.
This coincided with the issuance of a new National Security Strategy that called for “cultivating resistance” to European centrism that is “suicided on civilization” and expressed disdain for the European Union, which the administration labeled as “adversary” to US economic interests.”
Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for the United States and Europe, called the European sections of the new NSS a “game changer” for leaders across the Atlantic that “permanently changed” the long-term strategy with the US.
“It cannot be understated how shocking it was for European leaders and the public to read the European chapter of the National Security Strategy and see in writing that this administration views Europe, or European political centrists, as unreliable allies and takes such an adversary against them,” she said. “For 2026, we need to buckle up and plan for the worst in every way. We have obvious vulnerabilities and they will be exploited.”
Trump also ends the year by reminding Europe of his unspoken desire, outlined in his first term and again shortly before his second inauguration, to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark, a staunch NATO ally whose per capita defense spending is among the highest of any member nation. On Saturday, he named Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry as special envoy to Greenland, a job Landry said would focus on efforts to “make Greenland a part of the US.”
“This is earth-shattering for many of the countries that believed there was nothing more secure than their bilateral relationship with the United States,” Stelzenmüller said.
While openly threatening Denmark, the administration has tried to create a foothold in the European Union, suggesting the countries would get better trade deals by breaking away from the 27-nation bloc and working bilaterally with the White House.
“At the end of the year, the fundamental question facing Europeans is whether they believe that tactical victories are enough to win the strategic war, which is to maintain the transatlantic alliance of eight decades,” said Ivo Daalder, the US ambassador to NATO under President Barack Obama.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who earlier this month declared “Pax Americana” dead, appeared open to the possibility, saying last week that it had become “quite obvious” that Trump “cannot relate” to the EU and that “at least there are individual member states, including Germany first of all, of course, with which such cooperation can continue.”
Merz led a failed push in Brussels last week for the EU to use $200 billion in seized Russian assets in a loan to Ukraine when Belgium, Italy and others balked. But he finally succeeded with a backup plan of sorts, as the EU approved a $90 billion loan to Ukraine meant to support its military on the battlefield for another two years. Three Trump-aligned leaders in Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have waived the loan but have not blocked its passage.
While Trump has quietly opposed the EU’s effort to shore up Ukraine’s war chest, Europeans have largely supported his diplomatic efforts to end the war, pushing for stronger security guarantees to ensure Ukraine’s long-term survival. Finnish President Alexander Stubb appeared on Fox News on Sunday to say that Trump’s efforts helped move the talks “closer. [to a peace deal] than at any time in this war,” a comment that seems aimed at the proverbial audience of one and only vaguely grounded in what most European leaders actually believe.