Europe faces one of the most uncertain and dangerous times in decades. The historic and traditional threat from Russia which, after having invaded Ukraine for four years, has intensified its hybrid war against kyiv’s European allies, today waking up the Old Continent. Europe began to rearm, to return to military service. Now that you are fully aware of your dependence and vulnerability on the American security system, open your eyes to another traumatic reality: Donald Trump’s United States also seeks to weaken, divide and destabilize it. The EU is under siege. External and internal forces are working to abolish the European project, a multinational, political and economic structure; a union of values which defines the multipolar world on the basis of rules while the voracity of other major players wants to destroy it. Europe is facing key moments for its survival.
“Europeans still have to adjust to the fact that the post-Cold War world is over and a new era of disruption has begun,” says Daniel Hamilton, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Foreign Policy Institute. Last week’s release of the US National Security Strategy, which asserts that Europe is in “total decadence” and outlines intervention operations to remedy it, was a shock to the EU.
In the document, which traces the path of the American administration and establishes its reactionary and Eurosceptic turn, the objective is to support the reactionary forces contrary to the European project which it considers to be “patriotic parties”.
Constanze Stelzenmueller, director of the US-EU Center at the American Brookings Institute for Analysis, believes that what is happening to the US regarding the EU on the other side projects, diverts the concerns or fears it feels towards it, there are others: “It is worth emphasizing that China is hostile to Taiwan (a Chinese democratic nation), Russia is hostile to Ukraine (a Slavic democratic nation) and the US MAGA government is hostile to Europe. The strategy for demographic change in Europe is a classic example of projection: demographic change is much faster in the United States than in Europe.
In the Union, a diverse club of 27 countries and 450 million inhabitants, the reaction was late. “Allies do not interfere in the political life or in the political decisions of their allies, respect their sovereignty,” António Costa, president of the European Council and the voice that speaks the harshest and most clearly about Washington’s strategy, announced this week. Trump wants to put Europe on its wheels and sink it into the role of vassal, of technological and cultural colony, of territory in which to do business for its technological oligarchs. And for him, European laws and directives, their democratic governments and their consumer organizations are going wrong. You move forward with everything you have to try to eradicate them.
Harassment also comes from social networks. Elon Musk, dueño of X (formerly Twitter) and Tesla, considered the richest man in the world, launched a campaign against the EU after his social network received a fine of 120 million euros from the European Commission. Ensure that the European privacy policy costs users thousands of minutes (and therefore costs money) and that the Community executive and everything surrounding the European institutions are not democratic. An idea shared by the Russian ultranationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, who was one of the ideologues of Putinism. Musk called for “abolishing the EU.” The Russian calls for an “insurrection now”.
The harassment and harassment of the European project, of which Spain has been part for 40 years, has occurred on several fronts. From the inside too, where the Trojan horsemen connect with the Kremlin or the MAGA universe (Make America Great Againfor example the Hungarian Viktor Orbán), always for both, preaching populist slogans which accuse the foreigner, the migrant, the poor. And fishing in the discontent of a population displaced by the earthquake in a world order that drinks a lot of social networks.
Son of those assets with which Russia and the United States seek it divide and you will win of my whole life. Trump wants to avoid the Fortress Union and engage separately with member states, resorting to foreign war if necessary. The Kremlin has been trying to do this for years (in some cases, it has succeeded by using its cheap energy and commercial networks as leverage).
“The EU is working to reduce its dependence on Russian energy, Chinese markets and American security. This is why Europeans have not realized that these three great powers, each for their own reasons, are actively participating in the dismantling of the European project,” says Hamilton. “Everyone believes they can promote their own interests on the European continent and presents themselves as an obstacle to entry into the EU,” he underlines.
The perspective of harassment is broad. And the EU, with its powerful internal market, is facing it slowly and with serious dependencies on another key player, China, which supplies essential goods, such as rare earths or materials essential for the green transition, while flooding its market with cheap products. So much so that if the EU does not accelerate, it will devour its European industry.
However, on the way to European institutions, in diplomatic corridors, in what we call Burbuja of Brussels It is about giving importance to a document which criticizes Europe as if it were a destabilizing agent of Russia as an adversary. Put into writing what US Vice President JD Vance said in a fiery speech at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year. Some say that too much importance is given to the document, others that in reality it does not have Trump’s flavor.
“Europe is retaliating against itself and running the risk of falling back into error… Today, we are our allies on the ground and that is not the only thing that gives a helping hand to our enemies,” reflects a senior European diplomatic source, who alludes to the contacts between Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump – who have always been in a good mood –. Between Washington and Moscow, there is a treaty to concoct without Ukraine (and without the Europeans) an agreement which puts an end to the war started by Russia which opposes the objectives of kyiv and jeopardizes its future. The Kremlin trusts the man from Casa Blanca and the interests of the Republican magnate to reach a pact before Christmas to achieve at the dialogue table what was not achieved with weapons.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was very clear: “Europe is going through its most dangerous and difficult moment since the Second World War.” I said it in early October, when his country suffered a hybrid drone attack – several investigations targeting Russia – that forced the closure of several civilian airports, ahead of a major European summit, and have repeated it since.
The Nordic state also experienced Trump’s ambition, which was attenuated by the annexation of Greenland (autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark) without renouncing the use of force. “The United States uses economic power, including the threat of strong weapons, to impose its will. And it does not rule out the use of military force, even against its allies,” says a document from the Defense Intelligence Service, published this week.
Jamie Shea, a researcher at Friends of Europe and former senior NATO officer, points out that Russia poses the main threat to Europe. Meanwhile, the Kremlin clearly demonstrates its hostility towards the European project through concrete actions like the invasion of Ukraine and the conduct of a multitude of hybrid warfare operations (from “cyber atrocities” to sabotage, nerve agent assassinations, GPS interference, drone flights disrupting air traffic, submarine cable interference), what comes out of Washington is mostly rhetoric.
The United States has certainly taken some steps against Europe, such as imposing arms and withdrawing an American brigade from Romania. But at the same time, NATO’s old high-ranking position remains, and there is still a lot of “forever” in the transatlantic relationship: American weapons and intelligence are arriving in Ukraine, American officials are discussing a peace plan for Ukraine with their European counterparts, NATO exercises with American forces are carried out regularly, European automobiles and pharmaceuticals are exported to the United States, millions of tourists travel back and forth, etc.
“There is no need to panic at the moment. Europe must wait and see whether the Trump administration takes its own national security strategy seriously and follows it up in 2026 with concrete actions, such as direct intervention in the European elections in support of far-right populist parties, but also sanctions or sanctions against certain European countries or banning European politicians and intellectuals critical of the administration from traveling to the United States,” says Sheah.
The community club has established a massive mechanism to attempt to strangle Russia’s war economy and combat its hybrid attacks. However, it recognizes great community strength, it lacks the pulse and reaction force to respond to Trump’s confrontations and it is very slow to defend itself in the face of China’s assertiveness.
“Europe must learn to defend itself: its societies, its economies, its democracies, its security,” diagnoses Stelzenmueller, who believes that it would be useful for Spain to contribute more to this objective than simply asking for “deeper integration” or “Eurobonds” and making a common decision.
Of course, recognize the Hamilton scholar, who still needs Americans to deal with Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and other European states. In other words, the economic agreement reached this summer between the United States and the EU was not a “deal”, it was simply the first step in what will be ongoing negotiations. “This avoided a full-scale trade war and helped ensure that the United States and its European allies continued to work together on European security concerns, despite what existing leaders may have believed,” says Hamilton. “The EU strategy is buying time, so time will tell if it can withstand more of Trump’s diatribes over the next 11 months,” adds the Johns Hopkins University researcher, who believes that the midterm elections in the United States could give a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, which would mean the end of Trump’s extremely bad policies.
The threats are clear, the objective of the siege is to disintegrate Europe, to divide it, to destabilize it, but Europe must respond with more Europe, according to experts. Greater European integration, in particular the completion of the EU internal market by 2028; the expansion of the community club to include the 10 current candidate countries, including Ukraine, which will guarantee the security of Europe by eliminating the gray zone in which Russia operates and increasing the EU internal market. “This is about moving forward, not returning to the pre-EU and NATO era of nation-state Europe of the last three years and the beginning of the 50th century, because it seems to uphold Trump’s ideology by denying history and experience,” Shea says.
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