L’Europa si lascia dominare dagli Stati Uniti. Semplicemente non è ammetterlo così tanto

“For 80 years, Europe maintained an asymmetric yet cooperative relationship with the United States. This imbalance, long accepted as the price of stability and protection, has shifted dramatically under US President Donald Trump. What was once a strategically uneven interdependence has become an unbreakable grip, which is used to exert pressure while being denied by its victims.

In my book, l’Atlantisme est mort ? Vive l’Europe ! (Is Atlanticism Dead? Long Live Europe!), I describe this shift by introducing the concept of “emprisme”: a permitted grip in which Europeans, believing themselves to be partners, become dependent on a power that dominates them without their full awareness.

Emprisme does not merely refer to influence or soft power, but an internalised strategic subordination. Europeans justify this dependence in the name of realism, security, or economic stability, without recognising that it structurally weakens them.

In Trump’s worldview, Europeans are no longer allies but freeloaders. The common market enabled them to become the world’s largest consumer zone and strengthen their companies’ competitiveness, including in the US market. Meanwhile, through NATO, they let Washington bear the costs of collective defence.

The result? According to Trump, the US – because it is strong, generous, and noble – is being “taken advantage of” by its allies. This narrative justifies a shift: allies become resources to exploit. It is no longer cooperation, but extraction.

**Ukraine as a pressure lever**

The war in Ukraine perfectly illustrates this logic. While the EU mobilized to support Kyiv, this solidarity became a vulnerability exploited by Washington. When the Trump administration temporarily suspended Ukrainian access to US intelligence, the Ukrainian army became blind. Europeans, also dependent on this data, were left half-blind.

The administration’s move was not a mere tactical adjustment, but a strategic signal: European autonomy is conditional.

In July 2025, the EU accepted a deeply unbalanced trade agreement imposing 15% tariffs on its products, without reciprocity. The Turnberry agreement was negotiated at Trump’s private estate in Scotland – a strong symbol of the personalization and brutalization of international relations.

At the same time, the US stopped delivering weapons directly to Ukraine. Europeans now buy American-made arms and deliver them themselves to Kyiv. This is no longer partnership, but forced delegation.

**From partners to tributaries**

In the logic of the MAGA movement, which is dominant within the Republican Party, Europe is no longer a partner. At best, it is a client; at worst, a tributary.

In this situation, Europeans accept their subordination without naming it. This consent rests on two illusions: the idea that this dependence is the least bad option, and the belief that it is temporary.

Yet many European actors – political leaders, entrepreneurs, and industrialists – supported the Turnberry agreement and the intensification of US arms purchases. In 2025, Europe accepted a perverse deal: paying for its political, commercial and budgetary alignment in exchange for uncertain protection.

It is a quasi-mafia logic of international relations, based on intimidation, brutalization and the subordination of “partners”. Like Don Corleone in Frances Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Trump seeks to impose an unpredictable American protection in exchange for an arbitrary price set unilaterally by the US.

Europe isn’t a country. We need to stop speaking of it as if it was some monolith.

Russian propaganda

This is bullshit. The US wants Europe as an equal partner in the NATO alliance. You don’t ask people you want to dominate to rearm.

Is it tactful or polite? No. Is Denmark moving forces to defend Greenland now, thus closing a weak point in the GIUK gap by defending it’s own territory after Trump said a bunch of dumb shit and Denmark realized oh shit, we have no military presence on the largest part of our territory? Also yes.

If Russia invading Ukraine wasn’t enough of a wake up call, which apparently it isn’t, this administration has given one to Europe. Being tactful didn’t do it.

Trump will be gone in a few years, Europe will be pissed at us, but at least Europe will have functioning military forces again, the kind of thing you want when your eastern neighbor has decided it’s willing to use force and pay an insane cost in blood and treasure to get what it wants.

Out of all the things this government has done wrong, this is maybe the one thing they got right. Europe will be stronger for it.

I agree Von Der Leyen is weak as shit. She is just words. Her trade deal with the US was a disaster. The EU needs someone like Macron at the helm, who as disliked as he is domestically (which in my opinion is only because of the French having impossible demands regarding the pension system), he has pan-European interests at heart. I’m glad the EU’s main hard power (nukes) are at his hand and not at hers.