Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
With the exception of far-right allies like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, European leaders are still scratching their heads, trying to answer the question of the day: How do they handle the 47th U.S. President Donald Trump?
It will be a topic much discussed by the great and good at this week’s Munich Security Conference. Should he be approached with kid gloves and talked to more in sorrow than anger? Should he be ignored and told to stand in the corner until he behaves himself while the other children play? (Though, ignoring the leader of the most powerful nation on earth is impossible.) Or is kowtowing the best strategy?
So far, some have resorted to taking their cues directly from the Trump administration by getting tougher on migration or slowing down on net zero — an approach that has the added benefit of helping to fend off their own nationalist populists. However, they appear almost plastic as they do so, as if caught in a hostage video.
British leaders, meanwhile, hope to curry favor by employing King Charles and Prince William as Trump’s point men. The president has long been an admirer of the royal family, and so they’ll be the ones to bend the knee, kiss the ring and roll out high tea at Windsor Castle while a Guards band plays the “YMCA.”
Of course, Trump is famously transactional, so many leaders have been showing their eagerness to strike the kind of deals he covets: Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince has floated the idea of investing more than $600 billion in the U.S.; European governments are considering purchasing more American liquefied natural gas; India is talking about the possibility of importing more U.S. oil; and Vietnam is thinking of buying planes from Boeing, at a time when most are fleeing America’s top civilian aircraft manufacturer.
Offering a deal to the great dealmaker is the strategy Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy has adopted as well. And over the past few weeks, he’s been brandishing one he hopes will stick: opening Ukraine’s critical minerals up to investment from allies — in short, the U.S. The idea was first floated as part of Zelenskyy’s “victory plan” last year, but now it’s front and center of Kyiv’s strategy to keep the U.S. on side.
And earlier this month, Trump took the bait, telling reporters he’s ready to exchange Ukraine’s valuable rare earth minerals for U.S. aid. “We’re looking to make a deal with Ukraine where they will secure what we’re providing them with their rare earth materials and other resources,” he said.
Until Trump took office, Ukraine’s wartime leader was channeling his inner Winston Churchill to maintain the West’s support, using inspirational rhetoric and spellbinding oratory about democracy and freedom. Now he’s been reduced to a salesman, unfurling maps of the vast deposits of rare earths his country has, saying: “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal.”
Downplaying the importance of democracy is is probably wise, given Trump didn’t mention the word once in his inaugural address — in stark contrast with that of his predecessor Joe Biden, who mentioned it 11 times.
The past scripts simply don’t work in Trump’s Washington anymore. They have no traction — even when it comes to international human rights and the promotion of democracy, which MAGA loyalists claim were grotesquely inflated anyway. They’ve all been fed, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development, into Elon Musk’s woodchipper.
And yet, human rights advocates are resolutely sticking to what they know, their words plummeting into the deep fissure dividing them from Washington. Take, for example, Oleksandra Matviichuk — an indefatigable Ukrainian human rights lawyer who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2022. She’s been patiently lobbying in Washington, trying to impress upon all who will listen that any peace deal to end Russia’s war must not overlook accountability for war crimes.
Her pitch, as she told POLITICO, is that “first and foremost, we are all humans. When I tell about horrible atrocities — which have been documented — about the 20,000 illegally kidnapped children, about religious persecution in the occupied territories … and about illegally detained civilians who are tortured and sexually abused, all this resonates among people in the U.S. and American officials.”
Maybe with some — but not with Trump and his MAGA loyalists. Last week, as Matviichuk was lobbying, Trump was sanctioning the International Criminal Court, which has issued an arrest warrant for Putin.
So, as European leaders try to stumble upon the best method to handle Trump — whether by defiance, confrontation (think retaliatory tariffs), deference, offering deals or all four — they might want to consider this: What’s unfolding isn’t just about Trump anymore. There’s a noticeable difference between this new administration and his first term. They are better prepared, more disciplined and arguably more ideological.
Neither Trump and his MAGA loyalists, nor Musk and his Muskovites, are aiming to improve or fix anything — whether that’s America’s political system, institutions, established foreign alliances or the international order it has painstakingly developed since 1945. They’re here to crash them wholesale, arguing that demolition has to come before rebuilding. And they’re much more prepared to swing the sledgehammer this time.
The MAGA hardcore believe the entire system is rotten. They believe it’s rotten largely because of leftists, but also because of traditional conservatives going along to get along. Every single governing body, the judiciary, the media, bureaucracy, universities, civil society and international organizations — all needs to be razed. The ideologues haven’t been hiding what they believe or what they’ve been planning either. It’s been audaciously and openly expressed in their books, fervently discussed on their news shows and podcasts.
We’re in a new world now, and while it may be simpler to frame the issue around Trump, it goes beyond that — these are two different, entirely hostile ways of thinking. And in many ways, MAGA has much more in common with Putin’s aides and ideologues than with anyone else. Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, an informal and indirect influence on the Russian leader, is admired by the MAGA crowd.
And according to author Benjamin Teitelbaum, who has examined the intellectual underpinnings of the populist right, another favorite among hardcore MAGA loyalists is Julius Evola — the eccentric philosopher of Italy’s postwar radical right. Evola used an Asian parable to explain the strategy his followers should adopt in a classical liberal world: When confronted by a tiger in the wild, he said, you can’t outrun or attack it. You have to leap on its back, hang on to avoid bites and wait for it to grow exhausted.
And that may be what Europe’s mainstream leaders and Trump’s opponents will have no choice now but to do — while trying to avoid the bites.
The post Riding out the Trump tiger until he’s exhausted appeared first on Politico.
