Maintaining a good relationship between the United States and Europe has long been seen as a no-brainer by leaders on both side of the Atlantic. After all, it\u2019s this friendship that has led to decades of peace, stability and prosperity. <\/p>\n
And then came US President Donald Trump. <\/p>\n
In his second term, Trump and his closest aides have repeatedly expressed a deep disdain for Europe, centered mainly around their belief that the continent is taking advantage of the US when it comes to security and trade. <\/p>\n
They say the US has for decades been subsidizing Europe\u2019s inadequate defense spending, while getting slapped with tariffs and trade barriers in return. <\/p>\n
But their dislike seems to be at least partly rooted in ideology. <\/p>\n
Majda Ruge, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that Trump\u2019s foreign policy is an extension of the culture wars that he and his administration are leading against liberalism at home. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Europe is considered to be one of the bastions of that liberalism,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
She said Trump\u2019s \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d movement has been largely inspired by people\u2019s disappointment with globalization. <\/p>\n
Few in the Trump administration have shown as much contempt for Europe as Vice President JD Vance. <\/p>\n
Just weeks into his tenure, Vance stunned European leaders by using his speech at the Munich Security Conference to berate them over free speech and migration. He went as far as suggesting that the biggest threat to European security wasn\u2019t Russia or China, but \u201cthe threat from within,\u201d which he characterized as \u201cthe retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.\u201d <\/p>\n
He followed that up a wide-ranging interview with British website UnHerd on April 15 where he shared his and the president\u2019s frustration with European leaders. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is \u2013 it\u2019s blunt to say it, but it\u2019s also true \u2013 that Europe\u2019s entire security infrastructure, for my entire life, has been subsidized by the United States of America,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not in Europe\u2019s interest, and it\u2019s not in America\u2019s interest, for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States.\u201d <\/p>\n
But the extent of his dislike for the continent was laid bare when the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally added to a group chat of Trump\u2019s top officials on the nongovernment messaging app Signal. <\/p>\n
Vance suggested calling off a US attack on the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who had been disrupting key international shipping routes for months, because it would help European economies more than it would America\u2019s. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just hate bailing Europe out again,\u201d Vance said in the chat. <\/p>\n
That remark was in line with Trump\u2019s long-held belief that European countries have been able to underspend on defense because they knew the US would step in and bail them out. <\/p>\n
He has threatened to take the US out of NATO and questioned Article 5 of the treaty, the principle of collective defense \u2013 a key pillar of the alliance that has only been invoked once in its history, after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US. <\/p>\n
Trump made defense spending a major issue when he first became US commander in chief and 22 out of NATO\u2019s then 27 members were spending less than the agreed upon 2% of their GDP on defense. <\/p>\n
Things have changed since then \u2013 partly because of Trump\u2019s pressure, but mostly because of Russia\u2019s aggression against Ukraine, which was a major wake-up call for Europe. <\/p>\n
In 2024, only eight out of the expanded alliance\u2019s 32 members didn\u2019t meet the target. <\/p>\n
And while it is true that the US has invested a lot of money and manpower into Europe\u2019s security, experts say the picture is a lot more nuanced than how Vance and other top Trump lieutenants present it. <\/p>\n
\u201cAmericans didn\u2019t do this out of the goodness of their hearts,\u201d Ruge said. \u201cRegardless of the administration, the US has rarely done something on the foreign policy front, which hasn\u2019t been to the benefit of or in line with (the) national interests of the United States.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sudha David-Wilp, vice president of external relations and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, agreed with that assessment \u2013 and warned that pulling away from the time-tested alliance could end up costing the US. <\/p>\n
The US was able to rely on the support of its European allies on a number of occasions, even when it didn\u2019t necessarily benefit their own political standing \u2013 such as when they refused to condemn the decision by the US to kill Iran\u2019s General Qasem Soleimani in Iraq, or when they supported the US invasion of Afghanistan and contributed troops to the multinational force there as required by NATO\u2019s Article 5, even though majorities of their citizens opposed it. <\/p>\n
\u201cIs it perfect? Absolutely not. Does it need reform? Yes. But by tearing it all down, it could make (the world) more dangerous and riskier for the United States,\u201d David-Wilp said. <\/p>\n
Trump and those close to him have long pushed for the US to pull back from its traditional role as the world\u2019s policeman, warning against America\u2019s involvement in foreign conflicts. <\/p>\n
The paradox of this, Ruge said, is that Vance and other \u201crestrainers\u201d are aligned with many European countries who have in the past criticized US interventions abroad. <\/p>\n
Vance said as much in the interview with UnHerd, when he suggested that if Europe was a \u201clittle more willing to stand up\u201d to the US, it \u201ccould have saved the entire world from the strategic disaster that was the American-led invasion of Iraq.\u201d <\/p>\n
Both Germany and France opposed the 2003 Iraq invasion, a stance which greatly angered the Bush administration. The then-Secretary of State Colin Powell threatened France with \u201cconsequences\u201d over its decision to stand up to Washington. An anti-French sentiment took hold across the US \u2014 with actions like \u201cFrench fries\u201d being renamed \u201cfreedom fries\u201d in establishments around the country. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think about the Signal chat, where they\u2019re going into the action of bombing of Houthis in Yemen and saying \u2018we\u2019re going to give the bill to Europeans,\u2019 well, there\u2019s an amount of hypocrisy, because American action \u2013 especially in the Middle East and North Africa \u2013 has produced huge amounts of liabilities for Europe,\u201d Ruge said. <\/p>\n
The US has a vast network of military bases across Europe, with some 80,000 service members deployed there, down from a 20-year peak of 105,000 at the time of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The current number is roughly one fifth of what it used to be during the Cold War. <\/p>\n
The strategy of stationing American troops closer to conflict zones dates back to World War II and has proven to be beneficial time and time again. <\/p>\n
While different administrations have tinkered with the number of troops and locations of bases, the US has always maintained a significant military presence around the world. <\/p>\n
\u201cOne can certainly make credible arguments that it\u2019s important to move assets to regions like the Indo-Pacific, but it still makes sense to have a presence in Europe, because having a presence in Europe also helps the United States when it comes to out-of-area conflict,\u201d David-Wilp said. <\/p>\n
According to research by the Atlantic Council, it would cost the US taxpayer nearly $70 million more per year to rotate military forces in and out of Europe rather than have them based in Germany and Poland. <\/p>\n
The huge investments the US has been making into defense in Europe and elsewhere have also directly benefited the American economy. <\/p>\n
Because while Trump and others often make it sound like the US is pouring cash into Europe, and Ukraine in particular, what the US is mostly doing is pouring money into American defense contractors. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of what the alliance has given to the US, besides all the other benefits, just in terms of the economy \u2013 the benefit (the) American economy has drawn from this in terms of weapon sales and weapon production is huge,\u201d Ruge said. <\/p>\n
Of the more than $175 billion in aid that the US Congress has appropriated to Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion, more than $120 billion has been spent directly with US companies or on US Forces, according to conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. <\/p>\n
And according to the Kiel Institute, which monitors aid to Ukraine, European countries have provided even more aid to Ukraine than the US \u2013 first by using their own existing arsenals and then by procuring weaponry from Western defense industries. With four out of the top five global defense contractors being American companies, US industry is getting a sizable chunk of this new business. <\/p>\n
Trump has made his personal contempt for the European Union clear on multiple occasions in recent months. He even complained to Irish Prime Minister Miche\u00e1l Martin, incorrectly, that the bloc was making it difficult for him to expand his golf resort in Ireland. <\/p>\n
Last month, Trump claimed the EU was \u201cformed to screw the United States\u201d when announcing his \u201cLiberation Day\u201d tariffs. <\/p>\n
It was a strange suggestion given that the EU would likely not exist if it wasn\u2019t for the post-war push by the US to help form it. President Harry Truman was a great advocate of European unity and his and subsequent US administrations have supported European integration, seeing a united Europe as a more prosperous trade partner and stable ally. <\/p>\n
In Trump\u2019s worldview, the US is being \u201cscrewed\u201d by the EU because it is running an overall trade deficit with the bloc. But, just like with defense spending, the issue is more complex than Trump might suggest. <\/p>\n
The US and the EU have the largest trading relationship in the world, having traded $1.4 trillion worth of goods and services in 2023, according to the latest available official data. And while the US ran a trade deficit with the EU in goods, it had a surplus in services. <\/p>\n
The two sides have been balancing on the edge of a trade war after Trump unveiled 25% tariffs on European steel, aluminum and car exports, and 20% \u201creciprocal\u201d tariffs on all other goods. The EU said it would retaliate but then put a pause on the planned countermeasures after Trump announced he\u2019d temporarily halt the tariffs. <\/p>\n
But while a full-blown trade conflict has been avoided for now, trust between the two sides of the Atlantic has been fractured \u2013 perhaps irreparably. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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