The EU throws an epic tantrum as Trump meets with Putin

The European Union had been wailing about “transatlantic unity” in the run-up to US President Trump heading to the negotiating table with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday – without it. It sounded like a toddler stomping their feet because Daddy let go of their hand in the mall and now they’re lost between Cinnabon and Burger King.

A lot of good their dogmatic rhetoric has done them so far. If it wasn’t for Brussels getting drunk on its own transatlantic solidarity and unity propaganda, maybe it wouldn’t currently be in economic and political dire straits. The kind where you’re trying to duct-tape your economy back together with overpriced American gas.

They could have charted a different path vis-a-vis Russia. Maybe one that involved spearheading diplomacy rather than marching in lockstep behind the US-led NATO parade of weapons and fighters on Russia’s border with Ukraine, which helped supercharge the conflict in the first place. They could have insisted on keeping their cheap Russian energy instead of sanctioning their own imports like they were vying for a Nobel Prize in masochism.

Now, the US is daring them to even close their clever little loophole in their own anti-Russian sanctions. The one that lets them moralize about helping Ukraine and the need to avoid negotiations with Russia while guzzling Russian fuel on the down-low. Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told them to “put up or shut up” and sanction the Indian and Chinese importers of Russian petroleum through which the EU still buys Russian fuel.

While the EU indulges itself in rhetorical games, Trump has dropped all pretexts of serving any interests but America’s first, and isn’t following any agenda beyond trying to wrap things up with Russia in Ukraine and to score some economic wins in the process. Brussels has had more than three years to do the same. Instead, it kept repeating the mantra that Kiev had to win on the battlefield. There were no other options, it said.

Whoops! Now that the option has materialized, the Europeans are relegated to running behind Trump, pleading with him to indulge them by letting Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky decide where the post-conflict borders will be. What did they think the downside of their “win by force” gamble would be, if not changed borders? The EU insists on Ukraine fighting Russia with EU cash and weapons, and when Kiev loses, they say, “Ok, well this sucks – how about if everyone just pretends that none of this happened and we dial all the territorial gains and losses back to a point of our choosing, okay?”

The EU insisted on waiting for someone else to take the initiative for peace. Now all it can do is pick up its pom-poms and cheer Trump on. Then hope that he rewards it.

As Zelensky’s self-appointed babysitters, instead of spending the past week in the run-up to the Alaska summit insisting that Putin and Trump allow a high chair booster seat and a pack of crayons at the negotiating table so he can show them where he wants the borders, maybe the Europeans should have been calming him down and managing expectations. He sounded like he was treating his phone like a toy, calling up everyone in the contacts under “EU” – Estonia, Denmark, probably a few pizza places…

The EU has tried to gaslight Trump with the same rhetoric that it constantly firehoses onto European citizens about peace in Ukraine being a dangerous gateway drug for Russia to invade Western Europe – a convenient marketing pitch to justify boosting the weapons industry to the detriment of domestic priorities. Not even warhawk US Senator Lindsey Graham is saying that now, telling NBC News that “Russia is not going to Kiev”…let alone the EU.

European leaders treated Wednesday’s video call with Trump like a win. Perhaps because he didn’t explicitly tell them off, for once. But they really have no idea what he’ll actually discuss with Putin, nor do they have leverage over any eventual US–Russia deal. They don’t know whether Trump is just placating them because he doesn’t need a bunch of hysterical circus clowns in the mix. 

So how could the EU spin this to avoid looking completely irrelevant? “Today Europe, the US and NATO have strengthened the common ground for Ukraine, we will remain in close coordination. Nobody wants peace more than us. A just and lasting peace,” said unelected EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Yeah, sounds desperate for peace, alright. Which must be why the EU is building weapons factories at breakneck speed, according to the Financial Times. Nothing says “we’re committed to ending the war” like tripling down on weapons. What are you going to do with all those if peace breaks out? Toss them in the landfill and hope that taxpayers forget about the boondoggle, like you did with the hundreds of millions of unused Covid jabs?

Brussels talks like a co-architect of global policy, but in practice it’s more like a subcontractor who has to implement someone else’s blueprint. The Alaska summit exclusion exposes how little agency it actually has in resolving conflicts that it has been funding and fueling. So much for a “feminist” foreign policy. The EU is behaving like a geopolitical tradwife.

Whatever happens between Trump and Putin, the EU has already vowed to adopt Ukraine’s problems while crossing its fingers that Trump might pitch in with “assistance” – military or otherwise. Why would Trump want a piece of that when Brussels has already welcomed it being dumped on its lap? Why settle for normalization with Russia, business, trade, and peace when you can have endless soap opera reruns instead?