The scene took place in Washington, DC, in March 2024, during the last year of the Biden administration: A small group of European experts was meeting with senior US foreign policy officials. The question of possible negotiations on the fate of Ukraine came up. Who would be at the table? The Americans put forward a number of scenarios: There would be Russians, Americans, Ukrainians, Chinese perhaps... In no hypothesis was there any mention of the presence of Europeans at these negotiations, even as they would be affected first and foremost. Worse still, the American officials didn't even seem to realize that this omission could shock their European counterparts – who, obediently, didn't let it show.
Because this was a meeting "among friends." Wasn't the Democrat Joe Biden celebrated as the "most European" president the United States had given us in a long time? Unquestionably, he was more pleasant to deal with than his predecessor, Donald Trump. And, without massive American aid from 2022 onwards, Ukraine would have been swallowed up by Russia.
So Europe swallowed the painful pills the Biden administration had forced on it: The AUKUS defense partnership, signed with Australia and the United Kingdom, a stab in the back for France; the withdrawal from Afghanistan that was decided without the slightest consultation with the European forces on the ground; the Inflation Reduction Act, a gigantic protectionist plan that ended up sucking European industry back to the US; the hesitant strategy in Ukraine, which had to be complied with even though it prolonged the war.
The Europeans were not the only allies to suffer from this casual attitude. Japan also experienced it when Biden, just before leaving the White House in early January, opposed the acquisition of US steel giant US Steel by its Japanese counterpart, Nippon Steel, in the name of "national security."
And now Trump is back. Stronger, crazier, with more backing. He took power the day after his election, in defiance of the rules of transition. Already, the world was bending to his modus operandi – essentially, the law of the strongest.
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