Trump’s first term included the assassination of Iranian general Soleimani, and withdrawal from from the WHO and Paris Climate Agreement. The policy actions taken by the Trump administration since his second inauguration in January of 2025 have compelled European states to start moving away from reliance on the US for intelligence and digital infrastructure. In particular, it was Trump’s repeated unilateral insistence in acquiring Greenland that concerned European citizens and leaders. Taken together, these actions signify an overall pullback from the ‘rules based international order’ built after the second world war that is beginning to be accepted by figures around the world. Increasingly, US actions that are both coercive, such as punitive tariffs, and aggressive, such as the idea of annexing Greenland, become more likely.
Coercion and aggression by the US against other states is not new. States around the globe employ these tactics to protect their populace, economy, business interests, and overall goals. The turning point signified here lies within the idea that the US aggression might outweigh its cooperation in the world to the extent that other states need to take novel decisive action. What reasonable and viable long-term countermeasures can regions around the world take to protect their own interests against an unreliable United States? This article series explores by region what possibilities may exist to that end, beginning with the European Union.
To begin, it is possible that Europe as a region and the EU as an actor has a comparatively strong position in negotiating its own interests against the US. Europe has great power in shaping global markets and certain member states in the EU have some of the strongest economies in the world, such as Germany, the UK, France, and Italy. In terms of what viable long-term actions states can do to counter US coercion, these include both economic and security-oriented steps.
In the fall of 2025, when Trump had been in his second presidency for seven months, Ursula von der Leyen utilized these powerful words in her State of the Union Speech.
“Europe is in a fight… For a free and independent Europe… A fight for our liberty and our ability to determine our destiny for ourselves. Make no mistake – this is a fight for our future.”
While von der Leyen did not make this statement explicitly in connection to US administration and much of it was thematically tied to Russia’s war in Ukraine, this portion might serve to reveal an overall novel way that the EU asserts itself in the world in the 2020s and beyond. For example, in the economic sphere, she said in this speech that Europe needs to diversify and create new economic ties and partnerships with more countries around the globe, referencing new bilateral agreements with Mexico and India, both populous nations with robust workforces. Bringing her attention to the US, she said explicitly to her audience that the trade relationship with the US is the most important that the EU has, with exports alone totaling 500 billion EUR per year. She iterated that a trade war would have massive ramifications, saying, ‘I would never gamble with people’s lives and livelihoods’, suggesting a trade war or severance of economic ties is a measure she would be unlikely to take before certain conditions change.
The Economic Dimension
One dimension of the dynamic that underpins von der Leyen’s point about the strong trade relationship between the US and the EU is that after oil and gas bans against Russia increased due to the Ukraine invasion, imports of fuel from the US increased to fill the vacuum. In 2025 fuels were the most imported product group from the United States, after which it is pharmaceuticals and machinery. In fact, The US is the largest provider of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe, comprising 58% of total imports. For countries not connected by a pipeline to a major gas exporting country, LNG is crucial as it replaces pipeline gas. The share of LNG in total EU gas imports in 2025 was at a robust 45%. It is worth noting that just 10% of EU gas needs in 2024 were met by domestic production. This betrays a vulnerability that has to be met by trade with other countries, otherwise the functionality of European society grinds to a halt. While the EU is not wholly dependent on the US for fuel, the US does act as a crutch for some fuel needs. To phase out the relationship, the EU would need to find a new supplier of LNG to fill the vacuum, which can be feasible but will take time. Qatar for one could step forward to fill that gap, but certain reports suggest that the EU might have a different long-term energy plan. EU countries aspire to have around 66% of all EU electricity generated by renewable energy by 2030, and to achieve this they aim to double wind and solar capacity over the next five years.
Furthermore, in a trade flow going the opposite way across the Atlantic, the EU exports to the US its own pharmaceuticals such as the popular GLP-1 weight loss drugs, high-tech goods such as semiconductors, and European machinery like transport equipment. These are highly valuable relationships that the EU in part depends on for its economic machine. The implication here is that the EU’s economic health is very dependent on the US.
The Security Dimension
In the security sphere, at Davos 2026 German Chancellor Friedrich Merz dared to cautiously call out the US by name, contrasting with many of von der Leyen’s public addresses, while still highlighting that Europe and the US are bound together. He said as time goes on that the US claim to leadership may be shaky, saying:
“They [the US] have drawn radical conclusions in their national security strategy. They are doing this in a way that does not put brakes on this trend, but rather accelerates it [the return to power politics in the world].”
He went on to say that Europe is realigning the way it pursues its goals. Merz acknowledged that the US-EU partnership is decreasing due to the fact that several key values are not shared. Despite this, he is unwilling to leave behind the US as an ally entirely. Urging a cooperation-based international order and for the US-EU partnership to be reignited because it is in both parties’ benefit, he also highlighted that Europe is building alliances with Canada, Japan, Turkey, India, Brazil, South Africa and the Gulf Arab states. He emphasized that closer relations with a spirit of mutual respect are wanted for the long-term. Merz is conveying here that it is unwise to discard the US entirely, and that simultaneously Europe is carefully building its own future by investing in key strategic security partnerships.
Von der Leyen at Davos also underlined the need for Europe to have new security partnerships with nations around the globe. These include partnerships with India, Canada, Albania, North Macedonia, Japan, and Moldova among others. These are countries that have some history of cooperation and bilateral relations with the EU, yet these new and expanding security pacts signify a stronger relationship and therefore a turning point. What do these security pacts consist of? For example, in the EU-India agreement document, the two countries deepen maritime cooperation in the form of ‘joint exercises’ and ‘port calls’ and deepen information sharing. This document explicitly says that in the future new ways to strengthen and develop the cooperation will be searched for. In the EU-Japan Security and Defense partnership, they speak of enhancing concrete naval cooperation, and increasing joint study of threats. It is significant that the EU and India would go so far as to have joint military and navy exercises, as this was not done before a mere few years ago. It signifies that the EU is serious about its expanding security relationships with new nations.
All this shows that in the past few years, even predating Trump’s second presidency, the EU has tried to diversify its links with other states, likely largely due to Russian aggression in Ukraine. This conveniently set the groundwork for an overall diversification of global ties that the EU could continue with greater fervor over the foreseeable long-term, should the US administration intensify actions that make the EU want to rely on it even less. For one, these past EU links could have begun to lay the foundation for an overall de-coupling from the US when it comes to matters of security. France’s Macron also underlined the need for France to play a larger military part on the world stage, saying France must act fast and strong and re-arm, increase defense spending by 36 billion EURO in the next four years, and reach 42,500 volunteers by 2035.
While several key leaders in the EU seem to have a consensus around being more careful with the Trump administration, this is not shared by every single EU government. For example, Hungary’s Viktor Orban has a closer relationship with Trump, with the two countries holding press conferences, expanding Fulbright program research ties, and Orban not only accepting an offer to be on Trump’s new ‘Board of Peace’, but speaking glowingly about the initiative. Trump and Orban are often framed as being ideologically aligned. However, there are calls among some in Europe for Hungary to leave the EU because it does not enact European values, signifying how different Orban’s way of thinking is from most EU leadership, which is not always a uniform bloc.
The Path Forward
It is clear then that strong economic initiatives against the US to counter coercion before the trade dependency changes are largely unrealistic. Visibly, European leaders would like to rely less on the US for security and are creating new relationships to base this on. It then seems that the EU’s viable current long-term strategy to counter US aggression is to ‘hedge’ while decreasing dependencies in multiple spheres.
Before the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war, Russia was 6th largest trade partner of the EU. Due to its comparatively less important trade position, it was easier for Europe to decouple from Russia following the war. Knowing that the US is a significantly more important trade partner, it is hard to say at exactly what point the EU would be willing to take measures toward the US anything like what they did with Russia. The placement of European military officers and personnel in Greenland as a response to Trump’s bids to buy it signals a noteworthy turning point in EU-US relations. Because the EU is not eschewing the US entirely in several key dimensions due to dependencies, yet simultaneously is making itself and relationships with others stronger, it could be postured that the EU’s current plan is this: placate US leadership in the short-term while protecting the European economy, and over the long-term working to reduce dependency in trade, energy, and security.
This article is the first in a series of installments that explores the EU’s situation. Articles to follow will examine different world regions with different positions.
This article is the first in a series of installments exploring regional responses and countermeasures to the increasing unreliability of the US. Having focused on the EU here, Articles to follow will examine different world regions and their different positions.
Suggested further readings:
Modern History and US Foreign Policy: Europe and Eurasia, the Council for Foreign Relations. Access at: https://education.cfr.org/learn/reading/modern-history-and-us-foreign-policy-europe-and-eurasia
The Evolution of a Common EU Foreign, Security and Defense Policy, European Foreign Policy Unit. Access at: https://www.lse.ac.uk/international-relations/assets/documents/efpu/CFSP-Chronology-Institutions-updated2019.pdf
EU Economy Explained, the European Commission. Access at: https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/eueconomyexplained_en
Questions for Further Reflection:
- Among the countries that the EU chose to expand security partnerships with, what were the criteria motivating these choices?
- At what point in the future could the EU no longer be economically dependent on the US?
- If the EU and the US fail to stay allies in the future, how strong would the US relationship be with its new allies and why?
image sources
- eu-us-maps-visual: European Council | CC0 1.0 Universal
- P065236-465394: European Commission | CC0 1.0 Universal
