The Demise of the Transatlantic Era

BIG Editorial 

Friday 7 February 2025 

The Demise of the Transatlantic Era 

In the two short weeks since Trump’s second inauguration, the White House has despatched a flurry of executive orders, blasted allies and enemies with threatening rhetoric over tariffs and territorial takeovers, and zigzagged from domestic to international proclamations at such speed that Europe’s leaders can barely keep up with the spray-tanned septuagenarian’s diplomatic golf cart. 

In early January, Trump’s now infamous Mar-a-Lago press conference set out the real estate the POTUS was looking to acquire: Greenland, the Panama Canal, the Gulf of Mexico, possibly Canada. Having earlier welcomed ‘Governor’ Justin Trudeau of the ‘great state’ of Canada, Trump cemented the idea that the Monroe Doctrine – in which the US controls the Western Hemisphere from the tip of South America to the High North and the Arctic island of Greenland – is alive and well.  

The geopolitical message is that of an America looking to divvy up the world into blocs with Russia and China, pursuing a multipolar sphere-of-influence politics for itself and tacitly accommodating that of its rivals. The pattern is a simultaneous expansion of authority over the Americas and territorial retreat from the rest of the world. Tellingly, Russia’s war in Ukraine received no mention in the inauguration address, while the only reference to China occurred in the context of Beijing benefitting from the Panama Canal – his turf.  

Europe is no longer core to the US’s territorial interest, for the first time since F. D. Roosevelt sent troops during World War II. European nations are now ominously exposed – on both the eastern and the western flank. The Kingdom of Denmark has experienced this brutal new reality first hand. 

While Trump’s early Mar-a-Lago mutterings about the US buying Greenland sounded very theoretical, his recent call with Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, left no doubt as to his seriousness. The Financial Times quoted sources close to the PM as claiming the ‘Danes were utterly freaked out by this’. Trump has refused to rule out using military force let alone trade sanctions to ensure US security through ownership of Danish territory. The call propelled Frederiksen to appeal for Nordic solidarity by hosting the premiers of three neighbours (26 January) and embarking on a frantic diplomatic tour to secure support from Scholz in Berlin, Macron in Paris and NATO’s Rutte in Brussels (27–28 January). At the EU summit retreat on defence (3 February), rhetorical commitment to Denmark’s territorial integrity was also forthcoming. But words alone will not suffice. 

The rest of Europe urgently needs to heed the lessons of this encounter. Denmark, a benign Nordic state and loyal member of team US, finds itself abandoned by its protector. The country that fielded soldiers as part of the coalition to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan is now branded a ‘bad ally’ by Vice President J. D. Vance. Although publicly tactful and open to discussing Arctic security cooperation with the US, Frederiksen’s words exhibit the betrayal the Danish feel: ‘We have fought side by side with the Americans for many decades. I do not accept being called a bad ally. We are not, never have been and we will not be in the future.’ No matter how close the ties of the past, they no longer bind. As she said in Berlin, ‘Everyone in Europe can see that it will be a different collaboration with the USA now.’ And in London earlier this week, ‘We find ourselves in a new geopolitical reality.’ The scales have well and truly fallen from her eyes. 

This realization may soon come to other European leaders, as Trump rips up the rulebook on old alliances and treaties. Tensions over NATO withdrawal unless Europe starts to pay its way, and the looming trade war, signal that he intends to accelerate the US’s long goodbye since the end of the Second World War. The very notion of a ‘Transatlantic Alliance’ means nothing to him. It is a reality that European leaders need to embrace. With war on the doorstep and a bellicose neighbour, Europe must be prepared to fend for and defend itself. 

There are practical steps that can be taken to achieve this, as Claude-France Arnould outlined to BIG in her interview this week. It requires military capability and, critically, a separate command centre independent of NATO’s so that if Europe is attacked, it has the means to defend itself operationally without the need to ask Trump for the keys.  

It would be foolish to think that Europe can wait out Trump’s term of office; there are no guarantees that the MAGA agenda is not going to become the dominant mantra for US foreign policy long into the future. The rules of the game are changing, and probably the game itself too. Trump’s retreat from and lack of strategic interest in the countries across the Atlantic contains a tacit invitation to Europe to reinvent itself and regain a sense of its unique place on the world map and its own moment in time.  

The Transatlantic era was a golden period for (Western) Europe. It was always going to end one day. As the 47^th US president accelerates the process, Europe needs to consider the transition to a new relationship not as an unwelcome change but as an opportunity to control its own destiny.