This is excerpt from a post over a Resilience Media where I’m helping out with editorial. It discusses what Europe needs to do now that the U.S. is down for the count.

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

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Napoleon once offered that old chestnut to strategists who were too focused on victory to notice failure. But what if we aren’t talking about an enemy, but a temporarily addled ally?

All signs point to four years of chaos from the White House while existential threats—military, economic, and societal—mass on Europe’s borders. With all eyes on Wall Street, what must Europe do to protect Marszałkowska, the Champs-Élysées, and Unter den Linden?

Europe, in short, will have to stop waiting and start acting.

Failed States

America under Trump is a failed state—focused inward and committed by holy decree to nationalism and isolationism. The polarization seen across the country today, marked by ongoing protests in every state and major city, and today’s violent economic volatility, won’t end until at least the midterms—when the “silent majority” of Trumpist boomers and Gen Xers may finally go quiet for another decade.

Further, Trump’s tariffs and anti-globalist stance—while good for Fox News headlines—are straining the compacts the U.S. once maintained with the rest of the world. Foreign policy usually swings between administrations, but rarely has it gone to such extremes as it has under Trump 2. Like Orbán, Johnson, and Kaczyński before him, Trump is a nationalist leader whose ideas appeal to an uneducated minority. This leads to a weak commitment to NATO and transatlantic cooperation—and it will push the intelligent, or at least the business-savvy, to ignore the globe and focus inward.

Paralysis

Europe has spent decades shaping its policies around the assumption that the United States would always provide a stabilizing anchor. In security, energy, and technology, Washington has acted as both shield and engine. NATO, long funded and driven by the U.S., has allowed many European states to underinvest in their own defense. U.S. tech firms dominate Europe’s digital infrastructure. Even energy decisions—like the slow pivot away from Russian gas—often lagged behind American pressure rather than growing out of unified European planning.

Obviously, this is an exaggeration for effect. But what’s clear is that Europe has adopted a posture that’s fundamentally reactive. European leaders rarely make big moves unless Washington moves first. Even when U.S. choices are flawed or incoherent, there’s still reluctance to step out alone. Strategic autonomy is discussed but rarely pursued. The war in Ukraine should have triggered a permanent rethinking of defense and energy policy. Instead, there’s been a cautious—but increasingly frenzied—scramble to respond.

Part of the hesitation comes from internal structure. The EU isn’t built for fast or bold moves. Decision-making often stalls in endless rounds of consensus-building. Member states worry more about offending each other than projecting power abroad. In this environment, risk aversion isn’t just habit—it’s built into the machinery. But in a world that’s speeding up and shifting quickly, that machinery needs to change.

Fear of internal division is real, and very potent, when it comes to pan-European politics. At a time when every country must stand together, the old Euro habit of staying quiet until someone else pipes up is no longer enough.

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