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In his acceptance speech for the prestigious Peace Prize of German book trade, historian Karl Schlögel said that Europeans have been “spoiled by times of relative peace.” With Russia waging war in Ukraine and a president in the White House who does not seem to care about Europe’s security, he said that Europeans must now “think everything through again from the beginning—a kind of stocktaking and examination by a generation that has been enormously lucky and is now finding it incredibly difficult to bid farewell to its preconceptions and to adjust to the war in Europe, with all that it entails.”

Schlögel, one of Germany’s finest historians, is right: What Europeans are grappling with today are not just major security and defense challenges, but also fundamental questions of a more psychological nature. The war in Ukraine and Washington’s open hatred of Europe have turned everything they believed in for decades completely on its head. The way they look at the world needs an overhaul—and the way they look at themselves even more.

In his acceptance speech for the prestigious Peace Prize of German book trade, historian Karl Schlögel said that Europeans have been “spoiled by times of relative peace.” With Russia waging war in Ukraine and a president in the White House who does not seem to care about Europe’s security, he said that Europeans must now “think everything through again from the beginning—a kind of stocktaking and examination by a generation that has been enormously lucky and is now finding it incredibly difficult to bid farewell to its preconceptions and to adjust to the war in Europe, with all that it entails.”

Schlögel, one of Germany’s finest historians, is right: What Europeans are grappling with today are not just major security and defense challenges, but also fundamental questions of a more psychological nature. The war in Ukraine and Washington’s open hatred of Europe have turned everything they believed in for decades completely on its head. The way they look at the world needs an overhaul—and the way they look at themselves even more.

For decades, Europeans believed they had finally managed to make war on the continent impossible. While many thought European integration was imperfect or flawed, few would disagree that its underlying motivation—no more war—was a resounding success. It was so successful, in fact, that most Europeans believed they were beyond war until recently. They could not imagine attacking each other again, let alone........

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