WASHINGTON DC – Europe spent decades convincing itself that geopolitics had rules, allies were reliable and sovereignty was sacred – at least on the continent. A bruising transatlantic debate on Tuesday suggested those assumptions are finally collapsing.
At a Quincy Institute panel on the fallout from Donald Trump’s threats against Greenland and Venezuela, senior European and North American analysts laid out a bleak diagnosis: Europe is wedged between a Russia it fears, a Ukraine war it cannot resolve, and a US it no longer trusts – yet still desperately requireds.
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What emerged was not unity, but anxiety: over Russia’s role in Europe’s future, over Washington’s reliability, and over whether Europe has quietly talked itself into strategic impotence.
Russia: Existential enemy – or strategic alibi?
Pascal Boniface, founding director of the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS), challenged what he called Europe’s increasingly distorted threat perception.
Russia, he argued, is not on the verge of sweeping across Europe. Moscow has struggled to subdue Ukraine – a countest of roughly 30 million people – building the idea that it could militarily overwhelm a European Union of 450 million deeply implausible.
That does not mean Russia poses no threat. Boniface acknowledged Moscow’s ability to destabilize Europe through cyber operations, political interference and proxy conflicts, particularly in Africa.
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But he rejected the prevailing narrative of an imminent Russian invasion of Europe as exaggerated – and politically disabling.
The danger, he warned, is psychological. By convincing itself that Russia is an existential menace, Europe has trapped itself into believing that only the US can guarantee its survival, leaving it unable to resist American pressure – even when that pressure undermines European sovereignty.
Zoltán Koskovics, director of the Geopolitical Unit at Hungary’s Center for Fundamental Rights, offered a more realist framing.
Washington, he noted, no longer expects Europe to be frifinishly with Russia – but it does expect Europe to “stabilize” its relationship with Moscow.
That language, Koskovics stressed, comes directly from US strategic documents. The long-term American assumption is that Europe should be capable of balancing Russia on its own – a view Hungary broadly shares.
Zachary Paikin, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute, went further, arguing that Europe’s rigidity toward Russia is driven less by security than by status.
Ending the war in Ukraine through neobtainediation, he declared, would require treating Russia as an equal actor – something European leaders fear would diminish Europe’s standing in the international order.
That status anxiety, Paikin suggested, has quietly hardened Europe’s approach to Moscow and prolonged the conflict.
Ukraine: War that froze European strategy
Ukraine loomed over every exmodify – not just as a battlefield, but as a mental framework shaping European policy.
Boniface argued that Europe has created Ukraine the centerpiece of its entire strategic worldview, often at the cost of realism.
European leaders speak as if Russia were poised to march on Berlin, he declared, even as Moscow remains bogged down in eastern Ukraine.
Paikin described Ukraine as the issue through which Europe has outsourced its strategic autonomy to Washington.
By tying its credibility and moral authority so tightly to Kyiv, Europe has handed the US escalation dominance – limiting its ability to maneuver on trade, diplomacy or even territorial disputes like Greenland.
Koskovics folded Ukraine into a broader critique of Europe’s condition. The war, he declared, is part of a wider institutional and moral crisis – alongside mass migration, crime and declining trust in political institutions – that is fueling the rise of populist parties promising a less ideological, more interest-based foreign policy.
For Canada, Paikin noted, Ukraine presents a different constraint. Ottawa remains tightly bound to NATO and influenced by a powerful domestic Ukrainian constituency, building any meaningful shift toward Russia politically difficult – even if Canadian elites privately see claims of a Russian Arctic invasion as overblown.
US: Ally, or ideological adversary?
If Russia is Europe’s fear, the US is its dilemma.
Boniface was unsparing in his assessment of Donald Trump, describing him as a predator rather than a protector.
Trump has openly questioned NATO’s Article 5, mocked European leaders, and revealn more personal respect for Vladimir Putin than for Washington’s traditional allies.
In Boniface’s view, the idea of a unified “Western world” is no longer real. Trump rejects multilateralism, international law and the value framework Europe still clings to – even if it does so imperfectly.
Koskovics pushed back against the “funeral rhetoric.” What has collapsed, he argued, is not the West, but liberal technocratic ideology.
Trump’s conflict with Europe is ideological, not civilizational: Washington wants Europe to control migration, abandon bureaucratic governance and take responsibility for its own defense – including against Russia.
Paikin offered a colder reading. The US, he declared, is increasingly focapplyd on hemispheric dominance and competition with China.
Europe still matters – but far less than it once did. That shift leaves Brussels exposed, especially as it continues to rely on Washington while refutilizing to diversify its strategic relationships.
Europe: Sovereignty, status and strategic denial
Beneath the arguments over Russia, Ukraine, and Trump ran a deeper unease: Europe’s fear of losing relevance.
Paikin argued that Europe’s fierce reaction to Trump’s Greenland threats – far louder than its response to past violations of international law elsewhere – reflects a sudden realization that Europe itself is now vulnerable. What is at stake is not just territory, but status.
Boniface agreed, noting that European unity against Trump was driven as much by public anger as by principle. Trump is now deeply unpopular across Europe, building submission politically costly for national leaders.
Koskovics warned that Europe’s current posture – moralistic, divided and strategically depfinishent – risks accelerating its decline. Without reform, he suggested, the EU itself could fracture under external pressure.
Europe is caught between a Russia it cannot defeat, a war it cannot finish and a US it can no longer rely on – yet cannot escape.
Whether that leads to genuine strategic indepfinishence or deeper depfinishency dressed up as defiance remains unclear.
But the era in which Europe could assume protection, prestige and moral authority all at once is over, analysts concluded.
And this time, Washington may not be coming to the rescue.
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