Donald Trump's most cunning move: He has portrayed America as a victim of the Europeans

This nightmare scenario is making those in charge in Copenhagen sweat with fear: To force Denmark to sell Greenland, the White House could cut off all internet connections in the small Scandinavian kingdom and deny it access to Facebook, Instagram, X, and Starlink until it gives in. How can you resist Trump's decree if you can no longer communicate with your loved ones?

On July 27, at a meeting at the president's Scottish golf resort, Ursula von der Leyen, with a contrite expression and a forced smile on her face, agreed to an agreement with Donald Trump that represents a total capitulation for Europe: 1.2 trillion euros in commitments to America in exchange for a few crumbs for the alliance.

But the subjugation would be incomplete if the White House chief didn't also demand that Europe repeal the Digital Services Act, which subjects the activities of American tech companies in Europe to stricter regulations. This regulation was concocted by Thierry Breton, who served as EU Commissioner for the Internal Market from 2019 to 2024.

On August 19, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent openly stated on Fox News: "We sell weapons to the Europeans, who resell them to Ukraine, and the president imposes a 10 percent markup on the weapons. This covers the cost of air defense." This is no longer aid; it is blackmail.

How could things have come to this after the Russian invasion in February 2022? When our politicians had pledged to increase defense spending and expand weapons production to help Kyiv?

Anyone who wants to understand the mentality of our continent must go back to the time after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1989, Western Europe entered the age of fairy tales: it only listened to the idea of ​​the end of history. Our political elites never doubted that our small Western Cape anticipated a glorious future. The combination of a market economy, parliamentary democracy, and the rule of law would forever submerge the old theater of conflict and discipline the aggressive instincts of the people.

Europe, of all places, was guilty of dragging the world into two world wars and giving rise to both imperialism and colonialism. The continent promised to reform and impose peace on the rest of the world. This admirable commitment, however, did not withstand the return of violent passions and armed conflict.

At the same time, however, military budgets were drastically cut in all affected countries, including France and Great Britain. Europe no longer believed in evil, but only recognized misunderstandings that had to be resolved peacefully through discussion and diplomacy.

Since, despite such noble convictions, religious and imperial fanaticism was resurging everywhere, the Old World ceded responsibility to the United States where diplomatic means failed. And because we in Europe wanted to wash our hands of any guilt, we simultaneously criticized the USA for its archaism and brutality. We were the wisdom of the world, while America, and incidentally Israel, were the irrationality.

As Putin's Russia awoke and Islamist terrorism struck from all corners, Europeans realized with dismay that their wisdom was merely another name for self-inflicted impotence. They quickly placed themselves under America's protective wing. Thus, they found themselves once again in debtor's complex: Without the help of the Allies in 1917, but especially in 1944, the Old World would have simply been wiped off the map or permanently colonized by Soviet troops.

Such generosity is not without cost. Donald Trump, a belligerent pacifist, will perhaps be remembered as the first American president to speak aloud what his predecessors whispered. Europe must pay for its defense, take responsibility, and grow up.

Trump is exploiting this dependence to mockingly reactivate an old Marxist concept of the economic exploitation of African and Asian countries: the theory of unequal exchange. Once again, the president's intuition has proven spot on: He only had to convince Americans that they were the new damned of the earth, but that they were now emerging from the democratic Middle Ages into the light of the republican golden age.

However, it took a propaganda effort to portray the United States, the richest country in the world, as humanity's whipping boy. In this respect, Trumpism, like wokeism, is characterized by the ideology of victimhood, which it simply extends to the entire American people and is no longer limited to minorities.

Wokeism, a misguided progressivism, has spawned Trumpism, a revolutionary conservatism. Its new herald is seeking revenge and could thus undermine some of the foundations of American democracy. Hence the exorbitant tariffs imposed on all countries, to which Europe has failed to respond decisively.

The American president has managed to capture a mood and anger, embodying America's imperial arrogance. His novelty lies solely in his style, not in his content. He is broadly following a policy already quietly pursued by Obama and Biden, but now presented with blunt openness.

With an ally like Trump, Europe no longer needs enemies. It suffers from dependence and humiliation. Even when he praises his interlocutors, one feels like this president is insulting them. Didn't he say that all the world's heads of state would come to him to "kiss his ass"? The White House is now the seat of a kleptocracy that no longer even hides.

Essentially, Trump is the best thing that could have happened to Europe. He is a brutal wake-up call and the complete opposite of the sweet hypocrisy of his predecessors, who bowed down to stab you in the back. His harshness and vulgarity have a refreshing effect: like a glass of ice water thrown in the face of a sleeping person. He has said what he will do, and he will do what he says.

How should Europe deal with this? First, it must take everything Trump says literally. And it must free itself from the military vassalization that has persisted for seventy years and emancipate itself from this intrusive paternalism. Instead of buying weapons from across the Atlantic, Europe must produce them itself again and then give preference to European suppliers. And it must develop its own digital technology.

Europe is stronger than we believe, and the US weaker than it thinks. On August 18, the European heads of state and government, together with Volodymyr Zelensky, persuaded the American president not to sell off Ukraine to its Russian neighbor in the Oval Office in Washington.

To stand up to the twin brothers Putin and Trump, three virtues praised by the ancients are sufficient: courage, willpower, and tenacity. It would be enough to no longer allow oneself to be paralyzed by pressure from Washington. But here, too, what Spinoza states in the last sentence of his "Ethics" applies: "Everything sublime is as difficult as it is rare."

Pascal Bruckner is a philosopher and writer. He lives in Paris. – Translated from French.