The refrain of 2025, since Trump and the MAGA movement took control of the White House, has been that Europe is irrelevant, that Europe is doomed, that Europe is too weak to react, that Europe is a clay pot among iron pots, that Europe is a prey among predators, that Europe is divided, that Europe is without identity, and every possible variation on this tune.

Europeans who follow the news or social media are becoming increasingly fearful and anxious, except for that particular psychological type (not very widespread according to the polls) that manages to worship both Putin and Trump together.

Even some mainstream newspapers leave continuous space for fearful editorials urging Europe to ‘unite or die’, to ‘abandon petty self-interest’ or to ‘stop just making communiqués’.
Editorials that resemble the famous Italian Tex comics: read one and you have read them all.

Now, that a pinch of healthy survival instinct is finally being rekindled in our fellow citizens is more than desirable.
After all, it is not easy for Western Europeans, after 80 years of peace and with a not-so-low average age, to get used to the idea that life is full of dangers.
At a time when most politicians pretend nothing is going on and flaunt a quiet servility to the leaders in Moscow and Washington, it is good to have a few Capitol geese raising the tone a bit.

This does not detract from the fact that we have a tendency to perceive ourselves as weaker than we really are and to tell ourselves we are weaker than we really are, fuelling bravado and self-confidence in our enemies.

A flaw? Not necessarily.
On the contrary: as countless historical examples show, on a strategic level this is an ideal situation, which we should strive to make last as long as possible.

Indeed, fear and anxiety are driving European governments to take steps forward that would have been unthinkable a few years ago, while the growing arrogance of Europe’s enemies (including Putin, Trump, radical Islam and anti-EU parties) is leading them to fail to see their limits and to make missteps.

So, between the foolish optimism of those who think that the moment is not serious and that everything will go back to business as usual and the gloom of those who see the apocalypse coming, it is possible to adopt a third attitude, honestly admitting three facts:

1) That our independence and our model of society are seriously at risk;
2) That so far as Europeans we have always shown ourselves to be quite flexible and reactive in the face of this risk;
3) That it is helpful if the rest of the world continues to think of us as defenceless and passive in the face of this risk.

The first fact is there for all to see: let us therefore spend a few words on the other two.

The common debt is now a reality

True, the major structural reforms that would revitalise the continent’s economy(single capital market and single energy market) are not yet on the calendar, nor will they be soon. But in the years of Covid and the Ukrainian crisis, the EU and its member states have been far from standing still.

The Next Generation EU and RearmEU programmes have broken the taboo of common debt, as has the recent 90 billion war loan to Ukraine.

It is a fact: since the days of Draghi’s ‘Whatever it takes’, whenever there is a need to open the purse strings, Brussels punctually opens them.
It opens them without causing major financial earthquakes (so much so that today European states have an average debt of 80% compared to 120% in the USA and China) and without drugging the economy too much (inflation, despite low interest rates, high energy costs and the closure of the Suez Canal, is back below 2%), but enough to solve immediate problems.

The ‘happy billion’

Where Trump declares trade wars and the Chinese amass monopolies, Europe weaves in the shadows.
If tomorrow, as it seems, the Mercosur psychodrama finally comes to an end, we will find ourselves at the centre of a free-trade network between the world’s peaceful democracies that is unprecedented in history: a ‘happy billion’ of human beings who between Canada, Japan, Latin America, Indonesia, Switzerland and Norway will share with us not only vital markets and raw materials, but also a balanced (albeit ‘old-fashioned’) vision of how international relations should work.

The ‘willing’: perhaps ridiculous but effective

On the diplomatic level, the ‘coalition of the willing’, however amateurish and at times ridiculous it may appear, has in fact been preventing the US from selling out Ukraine to Putin for a year.
True, it would not have succeeded if the US administration had not had deep internal rifts over the Ukrainian dossier, and if the US electorate had not been overwhelmingly hostile to Russia.

But Europe, like all the medium-sized powers in the new ‘multipolar world’, must try to exploit the rivalries between the ‘great powers’ and the internal divisions within each ‘great power’ to steer events in its favour.

It must try, and it often succeeds: for the past two months, the US has been placing harsh sanctions on Russian oil (which yields half as much as in January 2024 and a quarter as much as in 2023) and has forced Russian oil companies to sell refineries they control halfway around the world, including the notorious NIS in Serbia.

Enlargement started again

Which brings us to another silent but lasting change that is taking place in the European mindset.
In the light of Russian aggression, the enlargement of the Union, which used to be the subject of a learned debate with some tinge of racism, is now felt to be an absolute necessity.
Incorporating Ukraine without Moldova and the Western Balkans would be impossible, while not incorporating it would be immoral and strategically suicidal.

And so the opening and closing of ‘chapters’ by which would-be candidates align themselves with EU standards, with Montenegro in the lead, is back on track.
The problematic piece of the jigsaw, all along, was Serbia. But Trump’s sanctions against the NIS, followed by Putin’s attempt to profit from the sale of the sanctioned refinery instead of giving Belgrade a favourable price, in the context of long-standing student protests against corruption, has soured the historical brotherhood between Russians and Serbs and put President Vučić, by his own admission, “in a blind alley” at the bottom of which is Brussels.

Internal saboteurs no longer sabotage

If Putin, by dint of taking it for granted, has ruined his friendship with Vučić, his other great ally Viktor Orbán could be pulling the curtains off Budapest in three months’ time.
It would be another great success of European patience and supposed ‘passivity’ : for twelve years it has contained the damage Orbán could do to Hungarian democracy, resisting the imbeciles screaming to expel the Magyars from the Union.
And now the gamble might pay off.

There had also been cries of the end of the world for the re-election of Fico in Slovakia and Babiš in the Czech Republic.
But the most attentive observers were unperturbed. Fico’s parliamentary majority has quickly collapsed, while Babiš’s holds on to a dozen rowdy MPs from the Motor Party.
Result: no serious obstacles from their side, indeed even the continuation of the Czech initiative to buy ammunition for Kiev in Asian countries.

The Islamic immigration crackdown

After all, the success of far-right parties winking at Putin is mostly due to the polemic against immigrants, especially Muslims.
Well, a much underestimated effect of the Gaza war has been the coming out of the closet of a not insignificant part of Muslims living in Europe who still aspire to impose shari’a and are willing to mobilise collectively for this.
For decades we had been told that the danger of radical Islam was confined to ‘lonely wolves’ or a now defeated ISIS: from the Gaza-linked demonstrations onwards it became clear that this was not the case.

Europe and its member states, therefore, ran for cover, clamping down on regular immigration and including countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, India and Bangladesh among those ‘safe’ for repatriation.
The fall of Assad in Syria then halved irregular arrivals compared to 2023.
We may or may not agree on how right this reaction is: it is undeniable, however, that even in the face of this problem, Europe has shown itself to be anything but inert, which could also (not immediately but in the medium term) turn out some weapons of the pro-Putin far right.

Conclusion

These examples are not meant to show that ‘all is well’.
They are meant to show, however, that in chaos Europe is capable of defending its interests, and that the tendency of others to underestimate it often helps it to defend them better.
Let us hope that it continues like this.