Europe's Five Stages of Grief
It's taken an entire year, but Europe has finally come to accept that the transatlantic relationship as they've known it for the past 75 years died with Trump's return to office.
In the year since Donald Trump returned to the global scene, Europe has steadily moved through the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It’s taken an entire year to move from denial to acceptance, I write in my final “From Across the Pond” column this year.
Trump’s reelection and inauguration represented the end of Pax America — a period of over 75 years where the U.S. was the undisputed Leader of the Free World, and successive presidents and administrations in Washington placed relations with Europe at the core of America’s global engagement.
It was clear Trump would end this era and instead adopt a narrow, regionally focused policy of “America First.” And yet, few in Europe believed this would truly be the case.
At a lunch attended by some dozen NATO ambassadors in mid-December 2024, one envoy after another declared that with a little more European spending on defense, everything would be okay. When I suggested they were in denial about how fundamental the change would be, one of them turned to me and said: “You can’t seriously believe that the United States will no longer see its security as tied to Europe’s, do you?”
But not long after, Europe’s refusal to accept the fundamental transformation that Trump’s reelection entailed was put to the test by a series of events in February.
Read the entire article at Politico Europe.
A sharp framework. What feels new is how Europe is no longer moving linearly through these stages, but oscillating between them — acceptance in rhetoric, denial in policy. That tension defines the current moment.
The problem with what's pushing the world to the far right is the controllers. The money men who have been honing their craft since the end of WW2. They wanted to separate the US from Europe and found the perfect person to do it. Donnie little dick. He and his tech bros are all into creating a system that steals wealth, just as Putin allowed to happen after he was elected. Those oligarchs, some were only 20 years old! Took over the businesses, either by kneecapping or killing or blasting away the company heads so that they could get at the cash. The fact that it's now happening in the US is no surprise to me. It worked didn't it. Of course those Russian oligarchs couldn't remain in Russia so now they live in the US and in the UK. Nobody has the spine to resist their "investment" income. So there will be more people leaving the US for where? Their own private Islands like Ivanka, who's inherited all her dads worst traits, and her far stupider husband Jared. Staying in the US will get them kneecapped and they know it.