Prepare for a transatlantic divorce

It could be that 2026 is the year when the transatlantic alliance ends in divorce. As President Emmanuel Macron implied in his speech to the French diplomatic corps on Thursday, European states must face up to the fact that our long-time American partner has become coercive, even violent. The only hope of making President Donald Trump change his behavior will be to convince him and, crucially, the US Congress that we are willing to walk out. As in a real divorce, however, if you are going to make the threat you had better be willing to face the consequences. Like other European leaders, President Macron devoted 2025 to trying to keep America on Europe’s side by flattery, trade concessions and diplomatic persuasion. The principal goal was to maintain American support for Ukraine by convincing Trump that it would not be in America’s interests to allow Russia to prevail in its war. But this strategy has failed. The strategy was based on worries about Europe’s weakness and on wishful thinking among EU and British leaders that Trump in office might prove less extreme than during the 2024 campaign. His first year back in the White House has shown that two big factors have changed sufficiently from his first term to turn that wishful thinking into a delusion. One is that the senior figures around him, led by Vice President JD Vance and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, are even more extreme in their goals than he is. Far from being moderating influences, they are goading Trump to be more radical and destructive. The second is that Trump has shown that he is intoxicated by power and has exhibited an even greater desire to exert that power than in his first term. The slaying of a protester in Minneapolis on January 8 by an immigration-enforcement agent illustrates the domestic consequences of those new factors. The kidnapping by US special forces of President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela amid the killing of an estimated 80 Cuban and Venezuelan forces on January 3 illustrates the global consequences. The European consequences, and the final but irrefutable proof that the strategy of supplication has failed, have been seen in Trump’s renewed declaration of intent to annex the Danish territory of Greenland. A year ago, the idea of America seizing Greenland, part of a country that has been a close NATO ally for eight decades, sounded outlandish and unreal. But it wasn’t. Trump is deadly serious about it. How to respond? We should have learned by now that it is a mistake to deal with Trump by trying to reason with him. His claim that America needs the vast but sparsely populated island to protect its own national security is clearly nonsense. Under its 1951 agreement with Denmark, the United States already has the right to open as many military bases on Greenland as it wishes and yet has reduced its presence to just one base with 150 personnel. It is tempting to suggest to Italy’s Prime...

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