EUROPE DISDAINED U.S. REPUBLICANS FOR YEARS, NOW EURO-ELITES ARE IN A FRENZY:

Even now, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain – four of the largest EU economies – don’t spend the minimum 2 per cent of GDP on defence that has long been NATO’s goal or struggle barely to meet it.

Europe could have guarded against Trump’s wrath by building freer trade relations with United States during the Biden Administration. Instead, they ratcheted up regulations on American high-tech firms and maintained their barriers to American agriculture.

Europe now knows where it stands. If it wants a relationship with America, it must have a relationship with all of America, not just the half that it prefers to invite to cocktail parties.

If it wants a seat at the table to form a united front with the United States even in its backyard, it needs to develop the hard military power that commands respect.

If it wants respect from Washington, it must show respect to Alabama, Kansas, and the places in flyover country that elect Republicans. And it must also show respect to their own citizens, often from their own rural and forgotten communities, who feel and vote the same way.

European elites may decide they don’t want a relationship on those terms. That’s certainly one option, and an understandable, if regrettable, one.

But then that’s their choice, not Trump’s. And they will then need to sleep in the bed they have made.

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