I’ve been very critical generally of Europe in its reactions and relations to the Trump administration. I thought that the cumulative effect of speeches from Vance and Rubio at consecutive Munich Security conferences drove home that the United States sees Europe as a partner in civilization, and wants to renew and reinstate that partnership.

But, if you’re Europe, in the last year, you basically dropped all your tariff barriers to U.S. trade while the U.S. raised tariff barriers on you. You took over the cost of arming Ukraine and are playing by the rules set forth, where you buy American-made weapons, thus reinforcing American military-industrial dominance within NATO.

And now, suddenly, the gas and oil supplies are getting cut in the Strait of Hormuz, sending retail electricity in Europe soaring 40–70 percent across swathes of the Continent, almost immediately. This is hitting you just after most of your member states recovered from a nasty bout of inflation and quality of life decreases. It certainly feeds the sense among some European statesmen that America is not the guardian of a stable order, but the chaos agent within it.

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