“When we are finished, take over your government,” Donald Trump told the Iranian people late February, announcing the war. “It will be yours to take.”
Weeks on, the US president is delivering a similar message to Europe, which is battling a fresh energy shock after Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil ordinarily flows.
“Go to the Strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves,” Trump said in a Wednesday night address. “They must grab it and cherish it. They could do it so easily. We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so depend on.”
As ever, Trump’s address was laced with inconsistencies: He both called on Europe to “build up some delayed courage” and use force to secure the Strait of Hormuz, before claiming that the waterway will “open up naturally” once the war is over. But the thrust of Trump’s message was clear: keeping the Strait open is not America’s business.
Trump’s attempt to offload responsibility suggests a new doctrine for US policy in the Middle East, said Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. In an inversion of the old Pottery Barn rule – “you break it, you buy it” – Trump is now telling his European allies: “We broke it, but you own it,” said Haass.
That position has put Europe in a bind: Trump did not consult his European and NATO allies before launching the war but now is demanding that they take responsibility for returning things to how they were before.
“There was a way to bring our NATO allies into the discussion and have a discussion about how we can increase pressure on Iran. The president decided to do none of that,” Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to NATO, told CNN.
“He decided to start a war without talking to Congress, without talking to the American people, without talking to our allies,” Daalder said. “And he finds himself 31, 32 days later, where he has to choose between either escalating and getting involved in a forever war or, frankly, (turning) tail.”
Although Trump could yet find a way to declare victory and walk away from the war, Europe would remain saddled with two grim consequences.
First, and most pressing, is the energy shock resulting from the Strait’s effective closure. Europe has scarcely recovered from its last energy crisis, sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – and the painful ensuing process of phasing out Russian energy imports.
Bruegel, a think-tank in Brussels, warned that because the EU is highly dependent on gas imports, its energy bill could soar as countries engage in bidding wars for alternative supplies of gas – including from the US.
A protracted energy crisis could also cause countries to question the EU’s decision to stop buying Russian fossil fuels. Except for Hungary and Slovakia, EU members no longer buy Russian oil, but the bloc still buys Russian gas. A total phase out is agreed for November 2027 – but the fresh energy shock could test the EU’s resolve.
Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, broke ranks last month in calling for the normalization of relations with Russia to regain access to cheap energy. Although he was rebuked, including by members of his own government, such calls may grow louder if the Strait remains closed.
A second consequence of Trump’s “we broke it, you own it” position is more fundamental.
The president has expressed anger that America’s allies – who were not consulted about the war with Iran and called it illegal – did not then rush to help the US. In interviews published Wednesday, Trump suggested that he is considering withdrawing the US from NATO over what he cast as the alliance’s lackluster response to the Iran war.
“They haven’t been 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 hurdles to a unilateral US withdrawal from NATO, in many ways the damage has already been done, said Daalder, the former US ambassador.
“Military alliances are at their core, based on trust: the confidence that if I am attacked, you will come help defend,” he wrote. “It’s hard to see how any European country will now be able and willing to trust the United States to come to its defense. Hope, perhaps. But they can’t count on it.”
Although each new rhetorical blow against the alliance brings a fresh shock, analysts say that Europe got the message some time ago. If the first year of Trump’s second term saw European leaders bend the knee to the president’s desires, the start of the second year has brought clarity – and a willingness to hold their ground.
Much of the trust that survived the first year evaporated after Trump’s threats in January to annex Greenland, an autonomous part of Denmark, raising the once-unthinkable prospect that one member of NATO – an alliance based on collective self-defense – might attack another.
European leaders have since pushed back more firmly against Trump’s demands. On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron said Trump’s idea of “forcibly liberating” the Strait of Hormuz was “unrealistic.”
In an unusually sharp rebuke, Macron criticized the president’s inconsistencies. “When we want to be serious, we don’t say the opposite of what we said the day before,” he said.
Understanding that the US is no longer a reliable ally, Europe is now working to make it a less necessary one. Just as Europe is rushing to build up its own defense industry to reduce its reliance on American weapons, so too is it now rushing to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels – which Trump says he is keen to sell to the world – and hasten its transition to renewable energy.
Europe has been puzzled by Trump’s claim that it would not “be there” for the US if it needed them. Now that Trump is making clear the US will not “be there” for its allies, Europe is working to make sure that poses less of a problem.
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