Europe Must Stop Whining and Start Winning

by Rajnish Singh

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” Charles Dickens’s famous opening line from A Tale of Two Cities, captures the widening divide now shaping transatlantic relations between Washington and Brussels. The recently published US National Security Strategy (NSS) landed in the EU capital like a grenade.

Trump’s paper paints Europe as weak, decadent, and losing its identity, and even suggests that the United States should interfere in European domestic politics to bolster far-right parties. Donald Trump has since doubled down on these claims in an interview with Politico, confirming that the NSS is not just an aspiration but a political roadmap.

EU leaders responded with predictable condemnation and outrage. But indignation is not a strategy. If Brussels wants to avoid becoming a passive vassal in the evolving power contest between Washington, Beijing, and Moscow, it must move beyond complaints and begin to act.

Europe’s first and most obvious vulnerability is its over dependence on the US security umbrella—a longstanding source of irritation in Washington dating back to the Obama presidency. Trump’s strategy makes it unmistakably clear that this dependency is now viewed as a liability. If Washington questions NATO’s purpose or threatens to walk away, Europe could find itself dangerously exposed, especially given the continuing war in Ukraine.

To address this, the EU must accelerate efforts to integrate fragmented national armies, pool resources, and invest in indigenous capabilities—from missile defence to cyberwarfare. Yet Europe continues to undermine its own security independence: 12 EU countries have already purchased the US F-35 fighter jet; the continent still fields 19 different main battle tanks; and continues to have countless areas of defence duplication. Which wastes money and deepens reliance on foreign arms manufacturers, especially US ones.

Europe’s second structural weakness is technological and economic vulnerability. Washington has already demonstrated its willingness to use trade relations as leverage, from reacting to fines against tech companies to tariff threats to industries where Europe may be perceived as having an unfair advantage.
Elon Musk recently called for the dismantling of the EU on his X platform after his company was fined €120 million by Brussels—a reminder of how exposed Europe remains to American corporate and political influence.

If Europe wants to resist such pressure, it must seize control of its technological future. That means investing in digital sovereignty—developing European alternatives to US platforms, securing data autonomy, and competing at the frontier of AI. It also requires accelerating the reduction on dependence of imported fossil fuels, and shoring up critical supply chains in semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and defence manufacturing.

Economic sovereignty and growth is the founding stone of the EU and it badly needs to return to this, or it will remain open to manipulation by Washington, Beijing or even Moscow. Implementing the recommendations of both the Draghi and Letta reports will be essential.

Yet the EU continues to undermine its own ambitions. Member states are awarding essential digital and defence contracts to US companies—Italy integrating Elon Musk’s Starlink into military communications, German drones relying on Californian software. While in the UK, the National Health Service has paid Palantir €377 million to manage patient data, alongside a €1.7 billion defence contract granting access to its AI systems. Europe talks about sovereignty while outsourcing it.
Compounding these vulnerabilities is the NSS’s explicit call to “cultivate resistance” within Europe. Washington is openly betting on exploiting divisions between member states—something Brussels, with its fragmented political voice, makes all too easy.

Migration pressures have fuelled the rise of far-right, illiberal parties, while the NSS correctly pointing out Europe’s falling birth rates as another challenge for which Brussels has yet to find an adequate response. These internal differences create fertile ground for manipulation.

Therefore, countering Trump’s NSS will be difficult. With some EU capitals prefer alignment with Washington, and political will is in short supply, weakened further by the fragility of key European leaders, such as Macron in France, Merz of Germany, and even UK’s Keir Starmer. Trump likes dealing with winners and not the weak.
The NSS is not just rhetoric; it outlines a deliberate reshaping of transatlantic relations in ways that diminish the EU’s role. Europe can no longer afford to simply complain. It must fight back. In Dickens’s terms, it must choose whether this moment becomes its “season of Light” or its “season of Darkness.”