Trump’s statements are shocking and contradictory. They break with all political norms and hide his real intentions, deliberately creating unpredictability so he can use any negotiation technique he wants. Plus, nothing’s final in his statements or agreements – everything’s constantly up for renegotiation.
Reacting to such inflammatory statements is somewhat mandatory. The global system is built on minimal predictability, which is now being blown apart. The aggressive language against European states and the EU as a political entity has led to harsh responses on our side of the Atlantic and widespread anxiety. But escalating this „war of words” doesn’t help anyone.
Still, beyond the offensive and contradictory statements, beyond the plausible or smoke-and-mirrors arguments, there are some certainties. The USA, whoever’s in the White House, can’t afford open conflict with Europe. And the EU can’t afford and has nothing to gain from conflict with the USA. The interests of these two geopolitical entities are still largely aligned, and economic interdependence is massive.
American Interests in Europe: Both Union and Fragmentation
Realistically, the USA can’t want the EU to disappear. Trump’s vision, which doesn’t show up in his statements but is essentially economic, aims at most for a hijacking of the common market.
Here there’s a real breaking point between European and American visions. If Europeans and European states want increased integration, moving toward actual federalization, the interest of (current) US representatives is to isolate European states and deal with them through asymmetric bilateral agreements. In contrast, European federalization would create a coherent counterweight with „a single phone number” that could dialogue (almost) as equals with the USA. But beyond the declared interest in blocking federalization and even weakening current integration, the US is directly interested in maintaining a common market in Europe, through which American companies have pre-formatted access to hundreds of millions of consumers.
So Washington’s interest is (or seems to be) returning to a pre-Lisbon EU, when the political dimension was vaguely sketched, the legal dimension similar, and the military dimension (separate from NATO) wasn’t even discussed. Similarly, ambitious environmental policies couldn’t be considered, as they’d pressure the global economy’s (and implicitly America’s) ability to modernize.
European Regulations and the American Model
Actually, in the „cherry-picking” style of the current US administration, which maximizes convenient aspects while apparently dismissing inconveniences (trying to place them on „partners”), even the early-2000s EU structure, almost exclusively economic, would need negative adjustment – meaning deregulation and dismantling essential norms. For example, the EU long ago banned genetically modified agriculture, practically closing the European market to American food industry products. Mercosur, from this perspective, is a double challenge for the overseas primary sector.
But it’s not just agriculture where European regulations are inconvenient for American companies. Unlike other world economies, the EU imposed strict rules for almost all activity sectors. For European companies the challenge was major but accessible through financing programs from various fields and regions. Such financing, whether directed toward investments or consumers (including intermediate consumption in production chains), shaped an economic model quite different from America’s.
In the USA, regulations are minimal, and even essential areas (like stock markets) are too poorly controlled beyond profit-and-loss budgets. As for regulatory frameworks, most industries rely on self-regulation. This means major players in various economic segments establish general activity frameworks themselves, with their main censor not being the American state but public opinion pressure and legal sanctions. At the same time, the American state, assuming a minimal role, collects through taxation a much smaller share of GDP and, in return, rarely offers financing to companies. And when it does, it’s exclusively in strategically defined areas.
Financial Markets: Divergent Models
As a result, the economic profiles of the EU and USA have become quite different, although principles are (or were) similar.
Globalization brought major challenges for companies that achieved international status. Recent decades led to creating in all these companies a previously nonexistent function: that of compliance agent (or lawyer). The differences and even divergence between regulations on various world markets, different norms and standards, create compliance problems for most production types. Plus, they’ve even brought an ethical vision of industries and concepts of corporate responsibility, which essentially translate to increased costs and decreased profits.
Many companies, including American ones, went the voluntary compliance route, pushing regulations to the limit in all countries where they operate, but rarely crossing those limits. However, accumulating such sometimes-divergent regulations and the prospect of stricter frameworks together create potential problems for US companies, where profitability pressure is maximum precisely because the state’s role is minimal.
But American companies are just one aspect of the central role financial markets play in America, much more important than in Europe. The stock market isn’t just an environment for corporations to attract investments. On the other side, investors include (not exclusively, but with significant weight) many social funds. Without state pensions and without significant social insurance, the entire American insurance system relies on stock market capital returns. Declining returns (induced by regulations) impact not just companies but individual and collective investors, the entire insurance-type system, thus the entire American society.
In contrast, the EU went the route of consolidating pension funds, medical insurance, and social insurance through state intervention, also imposing guaranteed minimum income thresholds. All these mechanisms reduce pressure for extreme company profitability since European financial markets only extract ultimately dispensable surpluses. On the other hand, the existence of other financing mechanisms also reduces pressure on financial markets. A quite different economic-social environment emerges. Not just market, product, and service regulation, but the financial philosophy (or mechanics) itself creates adaptability barriers. And it’s not just the US that has difficulties understanding or accepting the European system.
Brexit: Trauma and Warning
A limit case is Britain’s exit from the EU. Brexit is the historical trauma that marked the recent period and still affects the EU’s ability to launch major integration-enhancement projects. The referendum that sealed the UK’s break from the EU happened in 2016, half a year before Donald Trump won his first presidential term. The events are independent but not without correlation. And a first level of similarity is the contestation of the European model.
Pro-Brexit campaign arguments were, it turned out later, mostly false and biased, lacking economic realism and social pragmatism. Still, beyond the public campaign, Britain realistically had some interests diverging from the EU. These had been consistently expressed in 47 years of European membership through British conservative MEPs positioning themselves in distinct, rather Eurosceptic groups (in today’s expression), unfavorable to EU expansion and against intensifying integration. And this essential interest came from ties (full of opportunities) with Commonwealth countries, successor to the British Empire, and hard to balance with European standards and model.
Brexit’s aftermath was massive immigration growth from these countries, while EU country immigration became negative (stopping migration was the main pro-Brexit argument). Also, some of England’s agreements with former colonies spared London from an economic shock that could have destabilized it after leaving the EU.
Still, at the level of political philosophy and public policies, nothing essential changed. Some policies, like agriculture (another hobbyhorse in pro-Brexit discourse), got different emphases (not what farmers imagined) but remained quite close to the European model. Commercial, geopolitical, and potentially military integration stayed at high levels, demonstrating that public perception doesn’t faithfully reflect long-term national interests and that real economic necessities ultimately prevail. And the model accessible to Britain is much more similar to the European than to the US one.
EU Federalization: The Target Model and Roadmap
On the other hand, the EU, instead of taking advantage of Britain’s disappearance from the member list (the British constantly acting as a brake against federalization), felt Brexit as trauma and stopped most efforts to intensify integration. The situation was aggravated by two major catastrophes – the pandemic and Ukraine’s invasion – but also by Eurosceptic governments in some member states, like Hungary. All of this has made the main concern one of preservation, containment, to the detriment of decisive political actions, such as eliminating the right of veto from the usual community decision-making instruments.
Multiple initiatives thus got blocked one after another due to hesitations and vision inconsistencies. Multi-speed Europe (which potentially would’ve created a European federation at the EU’s center but marginalized some states, and reduced cohesion financing). The European army. A common foreign policy. Maybe a consistent cultural-identity program. Also, institutions and legal mechanisms, public order, etc. were delayed or sized below necessary.
Worse is that clear models about what increased integration would mean are still missing. The European Federation obviously can’t copy the American federal model. Nor the Russian one. Both date from other historical eras and reflect other cultural and geopolitical models. The European Federation, the EU’s higher stage, can’t be as centralized and can’t access the same mechanisms. It needs its own scheme, not yet proposed, that intelligently and flexibly permits multiculturalism and multilingualism, which are the essential given of the European project.
The European Defense Dilemma
The European army, distinct from NATO but desirably part of or minimally co-partner with it, is another major problem. Realistically, a European Defense Ministry isn’t possible in the current and near-term geopolitical context. But NATO’s apparent fragility, through some American statements and actions, puts the EU’s military option back on the agenda.
Apparent – because beyond „positioning,” NATO remains an integrated and functional organism, and growing budgets and military investments outline consolidation, not weakening. On the other hand, the ReArm/SAFE programs, through which European states aim to increase conventional power to discourage Russian aggression, itself raises the stakes in EU-US collaboration/competition. Companies on both sides of the Atlantic target these budgets, and European-imposed rules that much of this money be spent developing European capacities (and licenses) isn’t calming Washington-Brussels competition.
In this context, even the American intervention in Venezuela, Maduro’s arrest, was read as having (also) the significance of demonstrating American weapons systems’ supremacy – either to impress potential European buyers or to impress potential Chinese and Russian rivals.
Still, beyond smokescreens (and showrooms), MEPs have started debating more concretely: if a European Army is impossible, what is possible? As in the case of federalization, common military force appears on a collaborative model, with asymmetric participations and intensities, but deeply committed, thus obtaining potential stability and programmability.
The Surprise Effect of American rhetoric: Relaunching the European Idea
In summary, statements from across the ocean had the capacity to mobilize, as opposite reaction, various federalist groupings and completely relaunch awareness of the need for a new level of European integration. Target models aren’t yet developed, but even in these conditions, early 2026 can be considered encouraging for the European idea. After all the delay of the last decade, European federalism is coming out of inertia and trying forms of rapid coagulation and organization. Speed is extremely important.
Obviously, such a trend isn’t calming the US-EU relationship. At least declaratively, the American administration wants a weaker EU. Getting the opposite response would further tension an already blunt relationship.
Still, if the USA pursues its interests – against rivals but also against friends – the same attitude is expected from European countries. Washington (or specifically, Donald Trump) would prefer negotiating individually with each EU member state. (And additionally, have access to the common market). In exchange, any EU state knows losing European unity would put them in an unfavorable position in these negotiations. Such an inferior position would lead to unwanted results – especially since Trump isn’t a comfortable negotiator nor one concerned with balanced agreements.
The „More Europe” Imperative
European states’ interest (and any European citizen who understands the world we live in) can only be „more Europe.” Any other variant means conserving and exhibiting a fragmented Europe’s vulnerabilities, where any decision is difficult and any agreement Sisyphean.
Even viewed in counterpart with MAGA, exclusively through interests and dropping away any values and principles, the European response can’t be an illusory MEGA (Make Europe Great Again) precisely because the stage of state organization is completely different in Europe. The EU has no golden age (real or illusory) to return to for rediscovery. Not even Charlemagne’s state, which not long ago served as metaphor in locating European institutions. Europe’s „greatness” or any symbolic label substituting it can only be in the future and in common actions that pass, elegantly and pragmatically, beyond fragmentation from the Middle Ages and the era of divergent nations. So, there is any meaning for „again” – only for „no on”.
And things are much simpler because Europe isn’t just in (relative) competition with its traditional partner, the United States, but with many global actors – China, Russia, India, Indonesia, Brazil, plus increasingly diverse countries from emerging Africa. Each EU state has advantages in this global world, but also more than evident disadvantages: negative demographics, research and innovation gaps, inability to launch into cutting-edge technological fields, chronic deficit in many resource categories (including conventional energy). Even excluding the USA from the equation, too few European states can alone obtain advantageous or at least fair agreements in today’s world and the one taking shape over a decade or two. Only together, as a well-integrated and functional entity, can the EU (or FE – Federation of Europe), and every European states, be plausible as global actor/s.
EU as Strategic Asset, Including for the USA
However intimidating the White House’s position or however attractive it could become for some European political forces (the divergent ones), the Washington-Brussels relationship can’t cover Europe’s entire spectrum of interests. The US remains the most economically developed and militarily advanced state, but its position, whatever artifices are made, represents a year-by-year smaller share in global GDP and geopolitical balance. Even if unwilling to make such a choice, the EU must see beyond the relationship with Americans and act in an increasingly competitive world that inevitably compels it toward coherence.
Even in the Euro-Atlantic relationship, the EU is an asset, a valuable investment. A potential EU dissolution would be against real US interests. However much he’d like the orchestra conductor role, Trump’s aware he can’t be the one-man band himself. And that if he were – his role would be rather comic: blowing into a kazoo, stretching an accordion, and on the same time keeping the bass drum pedal down with his foot. The world’s far too complex and, beyond disruptive statements, the US global role can only be assumed through partnerships. Consequently, maybe he wants a weakened EU, less competitive on the global stage – economically, ideologically, and technologically – that would accept American leadership; but not a dissolved EU. And ultimately, a strong EU is still a more convenient alternative for the USA than a nonexistent one.
Pragmatism Prevails Over Ideology
I haven’t mentioned principles, values, and political methods that seem to be the greatest divergence factor in the Euro-Atlantic relationship – because right now they don’t truly matter in geopolitical sketches. Beyond the show, at the White House Vance’s hillbilly exaltation, Musk’s plutocratic exaltation, or various support groups’ mystical exaltation are tolerated as long as they make press headlines and potentially coalesce voters. But they don’t show up in major US political actions, which remain in a sphere of pragmatism (with some excessive notes), justified by fairly transparent and thus predictable macroeconomic and strategic indicators.
At this level – of fundamental interests that can be measured strategically and through macro indicators – the so-called Russo-American friendship is less plausible than in press headlines or social media posts.
Limited US-Russia Convergence Points
There are, however, some convergence points.
Affirming military force as an important factor in geopolitical relations favors both intensely militarized states. Even though Russia is not fundamentally a force of the same caliber as the United States, Moscow and Washington have as a common element the ability to project military force much greater than economic force. But for Russia this ability is almost the only asset in a world where its energy resources matter less and less and where there are alternatives to its prodigious mineral resources. In contrast, the United States has numerous other economic, technological and cultural arguments: not only hard-power, but also soft-power.
Russia doesn’t have the capital, will, or knowledge to reposition itself differently in a world, like yesterday’s, where commerce is all-powerful and innovation becomes the differentiating factor. The last state remaining unchanged from the world’s imperial era, Russia is playing in Ukraine its last chance to remain a relevant global actor, maybe even its own dissolution.
Trump’s USA, although infinitely less motivated to engage in open, long-term military conflicts (Trump claims he ended eight wars!), is still interested in affirming the military factor as negotiation argument. This only because it has an intimidating military force that can be used as polysemantic argument in almost all situations. For example, simply threatening withdrawal from Europe (or even NATO) are strong arguments in intimidating Europe. The EU still does not have (or is not sure it has) a force representing clear and certain discouragement facing Russian aggression. So, packaged with Putin’s actions, American interests gain leverage in rebalancing (or unbalancing) the Atlantic relationship.
Beyond that, Putin’s Russia and the militarism it promotes are insignificant factors in Washington – if we exclude nuclear threats. And if we don’t exclude them, any political and geopolitical calculation is pointless since any nuclear power can burn the planet multiple times. Mutual destruction has been assured for decades and, since many non-proliferation treaties haven’t been and won’t be renewed, it’ll be relaunched in coming years. Right now, world states don’t have the necessary force and intelligence to completely eliminate the atomic threat, so the only solution is arming to unimaginable levels. But the option of using these weapons is dystopian: without survivors, there can’t be winners and losers in any case.
Environmental Policies: The Turning Point
Besides (conventional) military availability, another point brings American and Russian interests closer. Among the underground causes of Russia’s Ukraine invasion was also the EU’s new environmental policy. The decision to reduce and eliminate fossil fuels fully affects Russia’s export capacity. Selling these to the EU represented the best source for commercial surplus after Putin came to the Kremlin.
Provoking urgency and a tense situation, Moscow managed to inflate prices in the first two war years and obtain increased net income from Gazprom sales to Europe. But ultimately, it only hastened the Green Deal and stimulated EU countries’ transition to renewables – exactly the objective it wanted to prevent. And this weakens Russia’s entire economic capacity. (Fundamentally, things are even more complex, with Russians considering themselves favored by global warming, the thermal gradient increase expanding habitable zones and opening the north-Asian route non-stop for navigation).
For completely different reasons, related to potential oil stocks but also the American economy’s relatively reduced ability to reinvent itself while maintaining high profitability rates, Trump’s USA opposed environmental agreements. As a result, the US exited, re-entered (during the Biden years) and exited the Paris Agreement again, marking an inconsistency that is hard to imagine on an important issue. (Unlike the USA, Russia still remains an agreement signatory, even some of if its actions constantly violate its objectives).
Incompatible Long-Term Interests
But beyond such convergences (and beyond some support groups with common actions), Trump’s USA and Putin’s Russia have incompatible interests. A former spy, Putin could only imagine one successful economic model: stimulating war industry with state bonds. But American economy and politics are infinitely more complex. Trump can do business in peacetime; maybe exclusively in peacetime. Hence his rush to end the Ukraine war, almost regardless of effects and consequences. Unfortunately, on the other side, Putin doesn’t know if he can politically survive the moment when the peace treaty is signed and the state of emergency withdrawn in Russia, revealing the real picture of the internal economy and simultaneously allowing resumption of public gatherings and demonstrations.
Regarding the illusory world division into spheres of influence, often discussed with considerable passion, it’s just a smoke screen element. Even without Americans, the EU represents an economic and military power clearly superior to Russia, the only asterisk being that European troops and weapons aren’t tested in real conflicts. On this chapter, the USA would have almost nothing to offer Russia, Europe’s defense being assumed by Europeans. But – more importantly – Russia would have absolutely nothing to offer Americans.
The Elephant in the Room: China
Still, in Euro-Atlantic relations, the elephant in the room isn’t Russia, but China.
Long before Trump, Washington outlined China as the USA’s biggest rival, and the moment China became the world’s largest exporter was a red alarm for the US. The logical follow-up was America turning its face from the Atlantic toward the Pacific, on whose shores it meets not just the PRC but also Russia. This shift alone was enough to destabilize NATO and reduce its weight in American strategic interests. Consequently, even without Trump, the USA wants on the Atlantic’s eastern shore a comfortable partner, without risks and problems, to concentrate actions on the other ocean. And the EU is far from being such a partner, both in reality and in any politician’s dreams, from anywhere in the world.
But the key element is that its downgrading to common market status and US bilateral agreements with each European state would not stabilize the region, on the contrary. Relaunching national states at this historical moment would only explode old frozen conflicts (or irrelevant ones in a common development space). The US task of being arbiter in such a Europe, as it declaratively seems to want, would quickly exhaust diplomatic capacity and American interest. Including for business it would be extremely unfavorable, and profit obtained from hypothetical increased American exports would be insignificant against commercial, monetary, legislative, and political barriers that would come packaged. If the goal is obtaining peace to orient toward the Pacific, rather a strong EU interconnected through capitals and companies, as currently, is a much more pragmatic solution. In fact, the only pertinent one.
China’s Rise: Common Challenge
On the other side, China is a particular geopolitical actor, hard to define and counter.
Since re-entering the world’s ranks in the 1980s, after centuries of ostentatious absence, the sui-generis model of capitalist communism mixed with traditional-religious philosophies led to constituting a formidable economic force, capable of reinventing and resizing itself on the fly. With extremely low internal consumption, using cheap but abundant and well-qualified labor, China concentrated on exports and financial imperialism.
The first decades were marked by dumping production, which suffocated production capacity outside East Asia for many industries. Still, simultaneously, almost invisibly, China outlined an ambitious and formidable research program that currently offers it supremacy in many technologies – robotization primarily. It doesn’t even matter that originally this program was based on piracy and technological theft from Western states. Currently, China registers the most patents annually and is the uncontested leader in many avant-garde industries.
Also, financial imperialism makes it a geopolitical actor. With multiple investment programs in third-world countries (and essentially very expensive financing, but offered without imposing major guarantees), Chinese companies obtained privileged positions in an enormous number of states, from Central Asia to Africa to Latin America.
Beyond that, China manifested only and only as an economic force. Although theoretically it developed formidable military capabilities, at no point did it seem interested in military options. In its case, the army seems 100% a deterrent factor. Not even participation in peacekeeping missions aroused much interest in Beijing.
Conversely, as globalization’s main winner, its manifest interests permanently aimed at preserving this globalization. Rather, it was more interested in obtaining relevant positions in international organizations, from where to determine preserving the existing environment and, eventually, with African and South American clients’ support, to obtain influence matching its economic and commercial force. Indeed, the situation is still extremely convenient, and any change in balances can affect not just its growth rate (!) but also medium-term prospects.
On the current prospect, China’s rise seems unstoppable. For other states, the risk is given precisely by China’s capacity to adjust and reinvent itself on the fly. What would be the commercial, monetary, and political balances that a China, if become world leader, would impose? Clearly, perception about individual freedoms and collective rights is different and divergent. But objectively, risks in its case are potential, not actual, as with other superpowers.
Coercive Tactics and Asymmetric Challenges
Still, China has demonstrated repeatedly that it can use its economic assets as coercion factor. For example, almost total control over rare metals was used against some European states. Beijing banned export of such metals and even products integrating them as retaliation for customs taxes imposed on some Chinese products and even as pressure instrument for retracting political statements.
Both the USA and Europe have had an ambivalent relationship with China. (As has Russia, whose global position is eroded precisely by China’s rise, but nonetheless tries transforming it into a strategic partner.)
American and European companies invested massively in China at many moments. At the same time, imports of Chinese products are inevitable, given extremely attractive prices. But the real price was disappearance of many industrial branches from Europe and the USA, impossible to recover today. What was lost, therefore, is strategic autonomy, and the impact is considerable. As long as the sphere of Chinese products with unbeatable prices was reduced to low-tech products, with low economic return and environmental costs, the risk was less felt. But China’s entry into high-tech products – like electric vehicles, green energies, and AI – affects the potential of the most profitable industries on Atlantic shores.
Another element is favoring corruption internationally. If in China corruption is punished by death, the same doesn’t happen when such acts occur in other countries. Corrupting foreign decision-makers and governments is viewed leniently by the CCP and apparently even encouraged. This way of doing business creates an unfair competitive advantage for Chinese companies, given that such practices are sanctioned both in Europe and America, including when they happen abroad.
From the same table of risks induced by China’s rise is its capacity to participate in or support the hybrid war Western democracies are exposed to. Maybe the Chinese didn’t initiate such actions, but very often Chinese instruments and infrastructure are at the center of many attacks.
Similarities Between China and EU
Paradoxically, the EU and China have had similar positions in several high-profile cases. Both entities benefited from globalization (though the proportion isn’t even close). Both bet mainly on economic development and free trade (with different nuances). Both exclude violent solutions and bellicose positioning (again, with different nuances, since China offers generous backup to Russia, whose Ukraine war it doesn’t approve of, but without passing a vaguely-declarative level).
Plus, alongside the EU, China is a supporter of climate agreements. Again, nuances and emphases are different. While the EU establishes firm quotas and clear norms for emission reduction, China acts from the opposite sense, building a formidable renewable energy system already the world’s largest. Even the essential motivation behind supporting environmental agreements is similar in Brussels and Beijing: both political entities have too few conventional energy resources and are completely dependent on imports. The situation would degrade further through inevitable growth of energy needs.
But from a point these similarities are formal. At the commercial level, Chinese products knock European ones off markets. Including off their own markets. China’s involvement in cutting-edge technologies creates formidable competition for European companies in the last areas they managed to preserve.
And also: Chinese capitals aren’t ones participating in development and prosperity. If Europeans, like Americans, constantly invested in developing production units in China, Chinese don’t proceed in counterpart. Profits obtained anywhere inevitably return to China, where all capitalization obtained by Chinese firms is regrouped. At the same time, they rarely participate in creating jobs in other countries if employees aren’t Chinese. The EU and Chinese economies aren’t complementary but intensely competitive, as is the human development model the two entities promote.
Beyond Rhetoric: Similar Interests in US and UE
Both the USA and EU feel China’s rise negatively, especially regarding cutting-edge technologies. But a common front is hard to make for all sorts of reasons. Companies from all states have consistent interests in China. At the same time, in many economic sectors, local alternatives are much more expensive or impossible to finance. Not least, both the USA and Europe see affected their capacity to export prestige goods, with high added value, that would balance the trade balance not just in the Far East but also in many other states under Chinese influence.
In essence, both in the relationship with Russia and with China, problems are common on both sides of the Atlantic.
Consequently, bellicose statements, initiated on the western shore but resonating with voices from the eastern shore too, can’t have a real effect on Atlantic relations. They create maneuvering and negotiation space for all sorts of themes on the agenda, but are linked to specific interests, not strategic ones. Realistically, at least for coming decades, the USA and EU are entities tightly connected politically, economically, and largely ideologically. Maybe the two entities can develop divergent strategies and objectives. Still, what unites them is much more relevant than what separates them.
The EU and USA represent varieties of the same neoliberal economic model. In Europe this evolved through extremely attentive (maybe excessive sometimes) market surveillance and through active involvement of the statist factor not just in regulation and supervision but also in planning and modeling. In the USA, the market was left to generate both balance and limits itself, and the regulatory factor was justice. Much more permissive and productive, the American economy generated broader and more competitive social stratification, including hard separation lines between various communities.
But with all existing differences, essentially the model remains the same. Europe and the USA are different dialects of the same language. Their convergence and complementarity are constants whose expression is given by the immense number of common projects and major openness for transatlantic business, against which existing limits can represent inconveniences but nothing major that can’t be overcome.
The Future: Between Tactics and Strategy
Now we’re in an era where politicians’ statements, even in the diplomatic environment, no longer describe real intentions and interests but are pieces from a broad negotiation mechanism in which hiding your objectives is more relevant than revealing them. Strong expressions have also entered the landscape. Message virality, propelled by such expressions, is a visibility indicator.
Keeping your calm and seeing the game behind requires strong nerves and well-understood and well-structured information. But even so (or all the more), escalating verbal expressiveness isn’t the optimal solution, but rather identifying, through all the media fog, objectives, values, desires, and hopes, according to which states, politicians, and electorate define plausible bottom-lines, tangible targets, and satisfactory agreement-closing space.
And obviously, an era where it’s become necessary to plan achieving your own objectives taking into account even scenarios where the dialogue partner, however friendly you presume the discussion is, still includes in their tactical repertoire surprise and ambush.
Maybe some Europeans are waiting for the midterms in November, which could change the American Congress majority. Maybe Elon Musk is also watching next year’s elections in Britain and France. (This fall there are elections in Russia too, but nobody’s waiting for those). Still all these tensions only prove a political life hungry for attention and echo. In reality things are what they are, and the Euro-Atlantic bloc has stability that doesn’t spring from political will but from necessity.