Donald Trump is correct in much of his analysis of the internal flaws of the European Union, as articulated last week through the mouth of his Vice President, J.D. Vance, at the Munich Security Conference. At the same time, the American administration is now running the very real risk of under-estimating European conviction and determination.
The Trump view of the world is, at its core, very simplistic: There are strong countries and there are weaklings. Europe, in this analysis, is very much in the latter category – and why wouldn’t it be? For eighty years, Europe has – in the Trump view – leeched of the United States for defence, and extracted hundreds of billions of American dollars in return for very little. As he sees it, the Ukraine War is essentially a European fight that his country has been suckered into, handing over great wads of cash and equipment in return for nothing.
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