With Trump on Deck, Europe Reaches For Its Checkbook

European leaders see Donald Trump’s return to the White House as a spur to the continent’s independence amid the potential weakening of a partnership that has shaped the world for most of the last century. “We can’t depend on U.S. voters every four years for our security,” Benjamin Haddad, France’s Minister Delegate for European Affairs, tells TIME. “Trump will defend U.S. interests—it’s normal. It’s now time to wake up and defend ours.”

That sentiment, expressed in recent years by French President Emmanuel Macron and others, has gained a growing resonance in the weeks since Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, who had vowed to maintain the historical relationship embraced by President Joe Biden and every other post-war U.S. President save for Trump. In European capitals, observers say the shock many Europeans experienced after the 2016 election has given way to a more muted stoicism in 2024. Trump’s trademark unpredictability notwithstanding, Europeans are more clear-eyed about what they can expect from a second Trump term—in part because he’s already made his intentions clear. In wide-ranging interviews with TIME earlier this year, Trump pledged to take Europe to task on issues such as trade (“European Union is brutal to us on trade”) and defense spending (“I want Europe to pay”). He also vowed to end the nearly three years of fighting between Russia and Ukraine in as little as a day—an aim that some fear could involve forcing Kyiv to cede territories that Moscow has claimed as its own.

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“We are much better prepared, because we know what awaits us,” says Nils Schmid, a German lawmaker and foreign policy spokesperson for the ruling Social Democrats. “As far as we can be prepared for an unpredictable president, but still. European unity is, of course, key in dealing with this.”

Among Trump’s longstanding complaints is that Washington disproportionately foots the bill for European defense, a gripe that’s grown as the U.S. provided military support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion. Europe is already on it. Several European foreign ministers have called on countries to “play a still greater role in assuring our own security,” including by surpassing the current NATO defense spending targets and reinforcing Europe’s industrial base. The sentiment was echoed by many of their defense counterparts, who this week pledged to ramp up their own military support for Ukraine.

“The view is that we can’t be credible on Ukraine and expect Trump to take into account our sensitivities unless we’re willing to put a lot more money on the table,” says Mujtaba Rahman, the managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group consultancy. In doing so, he says, Europe will not only be better positioned to influence Trump’s thinking on Ukraine, it will also hand the president an early win by allowing him to claim responsibility for pressuring the E.U. to shoulder more of the financial burden for Ukraine—just as he did on defense spending within NATO during his first term.

Georgina Wright, deputy director for international studies at the Paris-based think tank Institut Montaigne, says such thinking indicates a “shift in mindset” within the bloc toward the transactional thinking that defines Trump’s approach to foreign policy. “I think there’s much more realization on the European side that you need to have a credible offer,” she says. “If Europeans are going to ask the Americans for guarantees and security, a continued presence in Europe, but also to be kind to them on trade, they know that they’re going to have to offer something in return.”

That thinking extends beyond security. On trade, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has reportedly floated the idea of buying more U.S. liquified natural gas as a means of avoiding Trump’s punishing tariffs. If the tariffs come anyway, the thinking goes, the strategy can shift to retaliatory tariffs on American-made goods, such as Kentucky bourbon, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, and Levi’s jeans.

Observers are confident that the E.U. can remain united on trade: “When faced with something that’s going to hit the whole of the E.U., even when it hits some member states more than others, there’s actually a default to band together,” Wright says. Support for Ukraine also appears solid. Despite opposition from Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, the bloc has provided 122 billion euros, or $131 billion, in military and financial aid.

But Europe’s two biggest powers are embroiled in domestic troubles. Germany’s government collapsed earlier this month amid disputes over spending and how to address the gaping hole in the country’s budget; it is preparing to hold fresh elections on Feb. 23, meaning that the next government won’t be in place til months into the incoming Trump administration. France, meanwhile, is currently embroiled in a debt crisis that threatens to plunge its government, as well as the eurozone, into crisis.

A weakened Berlin and Paris doesn’t necessarily mean a paralyzed E.U., Wright notes. But Trump may opt—as he did during his first term—to bypass European institutions and deal with national leaders directly. This is where Europe’s chosen interlocutors will be key: Among those seen as key in getting through to the president includes Mark Rutte, the reformer Dutch premier-turned-NATO-chief whose rapport with Trump during the president’s first term earned him the moniker “the Trump whisperer.” Another is Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose conservative credentials have earned her plaudits within the MAGA movement, including from Trump’s incoming efficiency czar, Elon Musk.

Most all European leaders appear to recognize that the incoming Trump administration presents an opportunity for Europe to pursue greater autonomy. “Do we want to continue to exist, to carry clout, or just be the passive theater of great power rivalries? That’s the question that Europeans must answer,” Haddad, of France, says. “In 2016, there was collective denial, that this was an accident of history, that things would go back to ‘normal.’ Now it’s time to wake up from our vacation from history.”

Others caution that a more self-reliant Europe need not push away American security guarantees on which the continent remains very much dependent. Schmid notes that calls by Macron for the E.U. to overhaul its security architecture— in large part by relying less on American nuclear deterrence and more on France’s own nuclear stockpile—invites a continental version of the same risk that U.S. voters have twice driven home.

“The French always push it too far,” Schmid says. “I think there's a large majority among European governments that prefer to have both a rock solid U.S. commitment to Europe’s security and a strong European defense. But exchanging the U.S. nuclear umbrella for the uncertainty of the outcome of the next French presidential election is not so promising.”

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