Donald Trump announced the outbreak of war in late February, telling Iranians, “When we’re done, take over your government.” “You will receive it.”
Weeks later, the US president delivered a similar message to Europe, which is grappling with a new energy shock after Iran effectively closed off the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil normally flows.
“Go to the Straits and just take it, protect it and use it for yourself,” President Trump said in a speech Wednesday night. “They have to seize it and cherish it. They could do it very easily. We will work together, but they should take the initiative to protect the oil they depend on.”
As usual, there were contradictions in President Trump’s speech. After calling on Europe to “must belated courage” and use force to secure the Strait of Hormuz, he insisted the waterway would “open up on its own” once the war was over. But the gist of President Trump’s message was clear. It is not America’s job to keep the Straits open.
Richard Haas, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said President Trump’s attempts to reduce responsibility signal new principles for U.S. policy in the Middle East. Reversing the old Pottery Barn rule of “if you break it, you buy it,” President Trump is now telling European allies, “We broke it, and you own it,” Haas said.
This position puts Europe in a predicament. President Trump did not consult his European and NATO allies before going to war, and now he is demanding that they take responsibility for returning things to the way they were before.
“There were ways to bring NATO allies into the discussion and talk about how we could increase pressure on Iran. The president has decided not to do any of that,” former U.S. ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder told CNN.
“He decided to go to war without telling Congress, without telling the American people, without telling our allies,” Dalder said. “And after 31, 32 days, he realized he had to choose between escalating and getting into an eternal war or, quite frankly, turning tail.”
President Trump could still find a way to declare victory and exit the war, but Europe would still be left with two dire consequences.
First and most pressing is the energy shock caused by the de facto closure of the Strait. Europe has barely recovered from the previous energy crisis, sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the subsequent painful process of phasing out Russian energy imports.
Brussels-based think tank Bruegel has warned that the EU’s heavy dependence on gas imports could lead to higher energy prices as countries, including the United States, engage in bidding wars for alternative gas supplies.
If the energy crisis continues for a long time, countries may question the EU’s decision to halt purchases of Russian fossil fuels. With the exception of Hungary and Slovakia, EU member states no longer buy Russian oil, but the EU still buys Russian gas. Full phase-out is agreed in November 2027, but new energy shocks could test the EU’s resolve.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Weber crossed ranks last month when he called for normalization of relations with Russia to regain access to cheap energy. He has been reprimanded, including by his own government officials, but those voices could become even louder if the strait remains closed.
The second consequence of President Trump’s “we broke it, you own it” position is more fundamental.
The president expressed anger that U.S. allies who were not consulted about the war with Iran, which he called illegal, did not then rush to support the United States. In an interview published Wednesday, President Trump suggested he was considering withdrawing the United States from NATO, citing what he called the alliance’s lackluster response to the Iran war.
“They weren’t our friends when we needed them,” Trump told Reuters. “We’ve never asked them for much…It’s a one-way street.”
Although there are legal and constitutional obstacles to a unilateral U.S. withdrawal from NATO, the damage has already been done in many ways, said Daalder, the former U.S. ambassador.
“Military alliances, at their core, are based on trust: trust that if I am attacked, you will come to my defense,” he wrote. “It’s hard to imagine how European countries would trust the United States to protect them now, or be willing to do so. Perhaps there is hope, but they cannot count on it.”
Each new rhetorical blow to the alliance brings new shockwaves, but analysts say Europe got the message long ago. If the first year of Trump’s second term saw European leaders bow to his wishes, the start of the second year has brought clarity and signaled they are standing their ground.
After President Trump threatened to annex Denmark’s autonomous territory of Greenland in January, much of the trust that had survived the first year evaporated, raising the once-unthinkable prospect that one member of NATO, an alliance based on the right of collective self-defense, could attack another member.
Since then, European leaders have pushed back more firmly against Trump’s demands. On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron said President Trump’s idea of ”forcibly opening” the Strait of Hormuz was “unrealistic.”
Macron criticized the president’s inconsistency in an unusually sharp rebuke. “When you want to be serious, you don’t say the opposite of what you said the day before,” he said.
Realizing that the United States is no longer a reliable ally, Europe is now working to diminish its need for the United States as an ally. Just as Europe is rushing to build its own defense industry to reduce its dependence on American weapons, it is also rushing to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels (which President Trump wants to sell to the world) and transition to renewable energy.
Europe is troubled by President Trump’s insistence that the United States “will not be there” if it is needed. Now that President Trump has made it clear that the United States is “not there” for its allies, Europe is working to make that less of a problem.
