Europe misread Trump as an isolationist. It's now clear he's an imperialist.
Gaza, Panama, Canada and Greenland are all in the crosshairs of Trump's manifest destiny. Europeans thought the risk was that America would leave them alone. Now the risk is that America will attack.
European capitals have today been reacting to the US President’s shock announcement overnight that America intends to take control of Gaza and deport its inhabitants in an act of ethnic cleansing. German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said the plan is “unacceptable” and against international law. A spokesperson for French President Emmanuel Macron said said the same, adding that France is “fully opposed to the displacement of populations” and said the idea is “dangerous.” “Gaza is the land of the Palestinian Gazans - the Palestinian Gazans must stay in Gaza,” Spain’s foreign minister told a news conference in Madrid.
What has unfolded over the past two weeks is not just the worst fears of Europe’s leaders being realized - it is going far beyond their worst fears or even the limits of their imagination. For decades, Europe’s Atlanticist leadership has refused to even consider the idea that one day America might not be there as an ally to protect this continent, making their citizens ever-more dependent on the whims of American voters over time. With Trump’s election in 2016, following his threats to pull the US out of NATO, Europe’s political and intellectual elite were finally able to entertain the idea that a newly-isolationist America might not be as reliable as they thought. Baby steps were taken toward boosting Europe’s capability for self-defence, and following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the EU made some half-hearted efforts to develop an EU Defence Union. But even then, they were not seeing the forest for the trees. They thought the biggest risk Europe faced was America abandoning them. Never in their wildest dreams could they imagine a scenario where the risk is that America attacks them. But that scenario is becoming more and more likely with each passing day of Trump’s unrestrained second term, which will clearly be nothing like the first.
The list of territories Trump has suggested invading an annexing is growing ever-longer. First it was Panama, then it was Greenland, now it’s Gaza. He has also floated annexing Canada and making it the “51st state”. Not since the end of the 19th century has the United States been so focused on building a global empire of expanding territory. After a century in which the US saw its strategic interests better served by building a global empire of military dependencies and vassal states just with military bases in other peoples’ countries, rather than maintaining a territorial empire, Trump has returned America and the world to an era of 19th century big-power expansionism. None of this should have come as a surprise to Europeans. Over the past eight years, even as Trump and the MAGA movement praised Russia for its ‘might make right’ approach, Europeans convinced themselves that the biggest risk they could face was American isolationism. Now, welcome to the new era of American violent and clumsy expansionism.