Europe Is Entering the Age of Humiliation

Europe has been through many ages in its busy history: the age of discovery, the age of reason, the age of expansion, the age of destruction, and the age of unification. Now it is entering a new one: the age of humiliation.

Europe’s tussle with Donald Trump over whether the US can forcibly buy Greenland from Denmark may be surreal. But it fits a broader pattern. The US (or China) acts. Europe reacts. The US (or China) moves decisively. The EU debates and dithers. This week Europe’s elite went into paroxysms over Trump’s threats to use force or tariffs to gain control of Greenland only for Trump to perform a pirouette and claim that he had made a deal with NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, a deal that had, in fact, been on the table for some time. The storm has now blown over until Trump fixates on something else — or decides that the Greenland deal is a rip-off — and Europe has to respond to external provocation once again.