First, let Europe be Europe: as an ever closer and stronger Union whose members think, speak, and act European. 

There is more to the making of Europe than the United States, and other U.S. presidents have questioned the idea of a united Europe, although not to the point of declaring the EU “a foe” and NATO “obsolete” and “brain dead.” A second four-year term for Trump would be extremely consequential for the military alliance, and everyone should plan accordingly.

Less NATO calls for more EU, not as a matter of choice but as a matter of necessity. This is not a new condition, as has been seen often since the 1956 Suez Crisis shaped the ratification debates of the Rome Treaties. To each transatlantic crisis its relance and for each relance its crisis. Admittedly, there is enough ambivalence and confusion about EU institutions to end this pattern—across the continent, across the channel, and across the Atlantic. But post-Trump, post-Brexit, and closing on post-Putin (but not post-Russia), there is an opportunity for EU members and the growing peloton of Euroskeptics to come to their senses. For while the idea of Europe has lost much of its past clarity and efficacy, it has lost none of its relevance and has regained much of its urgency. For those who have failed to notice, Brexit confirms that there is no credible plan B, for the states of Europe relative to the Union, but also for the United States relative to its alliance.

Second, as Europe struggles to be Europe, it must also learn how to let Trump be Trump, and America be America. A limited liability partnership can do—still intent on U.S.-EU cooperation and EU-NATO complementarity.

Over the past three decades more specifically, Bill Clinton neglected the defeated state, Russia, and most of the former Soviet Republics; George W. Bush mismanaged the wars of 9/11, in Afghanistan and Iraq; and Barack Obama misunderstood the Arab Spring and its consequences without improving his predecessors’ unfinished business. As a result, it is not surprising that European states have taken to questioning American leadership with renewed intensity. But still, there is one conclusion at least about which history’s verdict is final: America, Europe, and the world are better off when America stays in (1945) than when it stays away (1914, 1939), steps down (1919) or stands aside (1991). Whatever the outcome of the next American presidential election, this verdict will still hold. 

Without a doubt, Trump’s second presidential term would be stressful. It would test Europe’s will and America’s capacity to salvage whatever it can of the relationship. Intent on his divisive anti-EU strategy, Trump would promote the deceptive benefits of privileged trade relations with other EU exiters-to-be in Eastern and Southern Europe while seeking congressional approval of a trade agreement possibly signed with Britain prior to or shortly after his re-election. Tariffs would remain a weapon of choice, aimed at adversaries and allies alike, and with more consequences on intra-European and global trade patterns—threatening a dangerous “de-integration” of the world’s economy. Anticipate, too, an interest in a phase-out from NATO by a date Trump would want to make certain of—meaning no later than 2024 for the end of his mandate and the seventy-fifth anniversary of the 1949 Washington Treaty. By that time he would have completed his long-awaited bilateral entente with Putin’s Russia back into a reconstituted G8. As compensation, closer bilateral security relations hors NATO might be offered to some countries in Europe, in but also hors EU. In short, a new geopolitical map for Europe would begin to emerge, closer to what is remembered of the nineteenth century but hardly compatible with what had been expected for the twenty-first—sanctions-driven rather than rules-based, lacking moral clarity, and with little strategic consistency.

And yet… patience, patience—there is more to America than Trump and less to Trump than America. There would remain much room for cooperation in a second Trump term on issues of shared interest to the EU and NATO countries—even when these interests are not evenly shared and responsibility for those interests not evenly assumed by both institutions and all of their members.

Third, don’t let Russia be Russia, and Putin, Putin: an integrated Ostpolitik that involves NATO, the EU, and their thirty-five members is needed. 

This is not about Putin because of Russia with and in spite of Trump, but about Russia with and in spite of Putin. Always a rival, this complex but also complexed power resists the idea of having just foreign countries in its vicinity—they can only be either vassals or enemies. Strategic prudence is how the Cold War was won, with quite a few compromises along the way. With Europe still the strategic centerpiece of its imperial envies, more prudence—meaning also more patience—is needed. 

Looking already beyond the end of his current mandate in 2024, Putin is not merely an opportunist and an improviser: he is also a strategist and a survivor. He chooses his time to pick his fights, but when he does he is prepared to fight the time-tested Russian way: hard, long, and dirty. Don’t wait for him, therefore, to change course without trying to preserve or add to previous gains. In Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, but also in regions less known to Russia like the Middle East, Putin manipulates facts and fiction—weapons he does not have, money he cannot spend, allies he cannot get, or time he is lacking. But better than most, Putin can separate the fiction he creates from the facts he knows, which keeps him open to negotiations after he has shown his resolve—don’t indulge and don’t provoke but do engage. For in the end, history tells us that Russia’s attempts to go global neither last long nor end well, and as an exhausted post-Soviet Russia runs out of resources, people, capabilities, and even security space, it will run out of time. At this point, turning to the West will come naturally—echoes of Gorbachev’s strategic dead end after Brezhnev’s final attempt to challenge the United States for primacy in Europe and for influence in the world. 

Fourth, don’t give China a pass, a strategic reset is needed.

Expectations of a quick transformation of a prosperous China into a constructive partner were exaggerated. Feared in Europe, which has forever anticipated a U.S. pivot to Asia, this early experience of economic collusion between the United States and China now comes with fears of a collision between them. At issue, then, is not an overdue economic and military reset with China, but whether the unilateral and improvised methods used to-date are threatening to open a quagmire for all.

Hegemonic upgrades do not come easily—just ask Imperial Germany and Japan about their own bids for power in 1919 and 1941, and check with Soviet Russia in 1991 too. Timing is everything, but don’t overlook the need for sustainable capabilities and competence. Take the United States of America: what made its rise to hegemony especially effective is that its leaders took their time while building up their resources and gaining experience.

Whether China will do as well during the coming decade is, at best, unclear. Indeed, both its capabilities and competence may be exaggerated. Consider its economic miracle: according to researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Chicago, annual growth has been overstated by an average of 1.7 percentage points for at least nine years (2008–2016), leaving the nominal size of the economy at about eighteen percent lower than its official level of $13.4 trillion at the end of 2018. Other statistical claims of strategic parity or even superiority extend to China’s military capabilities and technological advances relative to the United States are doubtful and in need of confirmation over time—echoes of the misleading projections of Soviet economic growth in the 1950s and emerging strategic superiority in the 1970s. At issue is not the rise of China to shared primacy but a reminder of the obstacles along the way. In short, China is a power in the world but it is not yet a world power; and even as the foremost power in Asia, it is not Asia’s partner of choice. While the behavior of a rising power cannot be predicted, increasingly tumultuous relations with China will be handled best if the United States and Europe act jointly as powers in Asia, though not Asian powers.

WE ARE left with a few assumptions about an incomplete and unfinished Europe, still the strategic priority of a revanchist Russia; in an unbalanced Asia, where an ascending China stands as the most serious new bidder for global hegemony; and in the pivotal Greater Middle East, where the rise of Iran serves the ambitions of eager newcomers like Russia and traditional bystanders like Saudi Arabia. This is not an agenda imposed by Trump on America, by America on Europe, and by the West on the world, but one imposed by the world on all.

First, the transatlantic partnership is and will remain vital for any sort of rules-based order to emerge over the next decade. Yes, America’s leadership has been fading pre- and post-Trump. But even so, the United States and Europe are indispensable partners which remain united by the interests and values they share with each other more evenly than with others. Alternatives—like a so-called “Anglosphere” of democratic states, or an allegedly European “Europe” stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals, or a geostrategic pivot to a Pacific pas de quatre choreographed by the United States with Australia, Japan, and India—lack the compatibilities and complementarities of the Euro-Atlantic co-partnership.