All sides agree on one thing: Europe is in great danger.
“We are Russia’s next target. And we are already in harm’s way,” Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte has said. "Russia has brought war back to Europe."
US President Donald Trump puts a different spin on it, saying a decaying Europe "doesn’t know what to do". The White House National Security Strategy states the continent faces “civilisational erasure”, largely as a result of migration. A leaked copy also suggests Mr Trump wants to pull four countries – Italy, Hungary, Poland and Austria – away from the EU.
European governments are locked in perma-crisis meetings, with national security advisers gathering this weekend to toughen up Ukraine ceasefire proposals and leaders planning to convene in Berlin on Monday.
For some though, the entire transatlantic security architecture is long gone. "The strategic malaise between Europe and the US was paused during the Cold War, which created a transactional relationship in everybody's interest," leading French international affairs analyst Bertrand Badie told The National. "After that, Europe went from being viewed as an asset to a burden.
"Fundamentally, there is nothing truly new about Mr Trump's comments, except maybe a tone that leads to unbelievable excesses. But behind this tone there is also a new ideology. There is an attempt at compensating the post-Cold War loss of US hegemony over the western world with American supremacism in order to satisfy the US middle class, which is anxious about not reaping the expected profits from globalisation."
American-born Pope Leo XIV sounded the alarm when he said the US President's remarks were “trying to break apart” an “important alliance".
France has a long history of viewing Europe's dependency on the US for security with suspicion but President Emmanuel Macron has remained silent in the face of the latest attacks. His advisers have signalled to the press they do not want to waste time with controversies and will instead forge ahead with their plans to support Ukraine.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has resisted the US tone of alarm. "I see no need for the Americans to now want to save democracy in Europe. If it were necessary to save it, we would manage that on our own," he said this week.
Save Ukraine
Overall, public figures who have been at the forefront of Ukrainian support – from France, the UK, Germany, Nato and the EU Commission – have tried to keep the focus on the embattled country.
Mr Trump says he is willing to provide security to Ukraine to end the war but continued to express frustration with the pace of talks.
The stakes are such that few Europe leaders have dared say publicly what an increasing number of former diplomats and analysts are asserting – the US never really wanting a strong Europe in the first place. The crisis over the ceasefire talks is the moment Washington makes that clear.
"The US has never supported the reinforcement of the EU," said former French ambassador to the US, Gerard Araud, now an influential commentator.
He said former US president Richard Nixon and secretary of state Henry Kissinger "were already worried by the EEC [European Economic Community]" in the early 1970s. He added: "The US has always actively opposed the notion of an autonomous European defence."
By remaining largely silent in the face of what many describe as humiliating criticism, European heads of state also appear to have accepted their position as the weaker party – much to Mr Trump's apparent satisfaction.
Old ways
In an interview with Politico this week, Mr Trump hailed comments made this summer by Mr Rutte in which he called him "daddy". Allies agreed to his demand to raise defence spending from 2 per cent of GDP to 5 per cent. Despite this, Europe was "being destroyed", Mr Trump said.
"What is most crucial and most painful at the same time is that Europe is unable to do without the protection of the United States," said Mr Badie, emeritus professor at Sciences Po Paris university. "The European Union remains stuck in a 17th century Westphalian competitive model and unable to forge a common foreign policy."
"Europe needs two sources of oxygen to survive, otherwise it will die: internal integration and openness to globalisation," Mr Badie added. "But Europe remains faithful to its old demons: internal rivalry and contempt for the outside world. That's what needs to change."
Divisions have more recently been laid bare by Belgium's refusal to accept the EU Commission seizing frozen Russian assets that are largely held in Belgian banks. This would be the easiest way to continue to financially support Ukraine, which may run out of war funds as early as April 1.
But Belgium is worried about having to foot the bill alone if Russia sues for its assets in an international court. A crucial test to see if a compromise can be reached will come with a meeting of heads of state in Brussels on December 18.
The underlying issue is that there are "no more rules" equivalent to the 1975 Helsinki Accords that legitimised European state borders, Mr Badie said. "A new security pact would give Russia a status that it currently does not have. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's fervour stems from the feeling that Russia has no place anywhere and that is very dangerous."
New US ideology
The first signals of US disengagement from Europe came in the 1990s when the Clinton administration expressed hesitancy at intervening in the Balkan war. In 2003, president George Bush retaliated against France for not giving its full support to the invasion of Iraq. During Barack Obama's presidency, Europe was urged to spend more on its own defence.
Under Mr Trump the goal appears to be shifting to fragmenting Europe – the world's biggest market economy. This is part of Washington's strategy to strengthen its global trade bargaining position. Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin highlighted this in comments this week. "Europe is one of the strongest continents in the world in terms of economic strength," he said. "That's manifested in the EU-US trade agreement."
Mr Trump has pushed back against assertions that Russian and US interests converge towards a weaker Europe. "I have no vision for Europe. All I want to see is a strong Europe," he told Politico. He has, however, commended Russia's closest European ally, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, for "doing a very good job in a different sense on immigration".
With the Russia-friendly French far-right expected to seize power in the France's presidential race, some analysts have predicted the forming of alliances from Washington, Paris, Budapest, Rome and Moscow.
"If nationalist parties win in the main European countries, that's the end of the idea of a powerful, sovereign Europe with strategic autonomy," Mr Badie said. "That way, Trump can strike bilateral instead of multilateral deals. That is his ideal model of international relations."
