European Union flags flap in the wind outside EU headquarters in Brussels, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) I recently spent a week in Brussels and Strasbourg, where I met with European government officials and business leaders, and other European Union-adjacent groups to discuss energy and climate policy.
Although the bulk of the trip was positive and constructive, it was painful to see how much U.S. standing has collapsed, how vulnerable we are to those fraying relations, and how long it will take to restore the trust that the Trump administration has despoiled.
To be sure, we still have so much in common. We both benefit from a robust rule of law and from the stability that comes from the post-World War II multilateral institutions. We both face shared challenges: AI-driven labor disruptions, the rise of China, the political destabilizing effect of climate refugees, and the way free-market neo-liberalism inadvertently fueled the rise of reactionary populism. Within that commonality, Americans are still respected.
But the backdrop of every conversation, despite our reassurances that there are those in our country who care about addressing those issues, was the hard truth that — thanks to the Trump administration — Americais increasingly seen as an unreliable partner. It is often said that trust is “gained in drops but lost in buckets.” Our tariff policies, threats over Greenland and foreign misadventures, from Venezuela to Iran, have poured out buckets of that trust that will take decades to restore.
In one of our meetings, it was observed that U.S. actions in Iran have accelerated the deployment of electric vehicles in Europe. In another, NATO officials noted the strategic challenges of maintaining their historic single-fuel policy across NATO nations when energy policies of member nations diverge. It was also noted that U.S. saber-rattling in Greenland that seeks to expressly leverage European dependence on U.S. liquefied natural gas has direct parallels with Russian saber-rattling in Ukraine that seeks to expressly leverage dependence on Russian natural gas.
As allies, we should be uniting against Russia and not wasting time debating the laws of physics. In practice, too many Europeans now see one science-denying bully to their east and another to their west.
In the short term, that is pushing Europe towards China, who, it was said, “is being much nicer to us than you are right now.” That is understandable, but it is hard to see how it is in our interest for American foreign and economic policies to drive up Chinese electric vehicle sales in Europe, even if that is exactly what we are doing.
In the longer term, this could have some positive effects. A stronger Europe is in the U.S. national interest, after all, so long as they remain allied with the United States. A Europe that spends more on NATO, that makes structural reforms in their economy to facilitate growth, and that accelerates their decoupling of economic growth from fossil fuel consumption is probably a net positive.
But only probably. In a multilateral world, stronger U.S. allies — in every sense of the word — facilitate global stability and peace. But in an isolationist world, individual pursuit of strength devolves into conflict. Eighty years of post-World War II peace proves the former. The circumstances that led to World War I prove the latter.
The challenge for Europe right now is that they don’t know which one of those futures the U.S. is pushing for. They don’t want to be isolationist, but they know they have to be stronger. And it’s not hard to envision circumstances that would tip that strength towards isolationism. If the U.S. were attacked, would Danish soldiers be as willing to support us under NATO Article V as they did when they served — and died — alongside our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan? How ruptured is our Arctic intelligence sharing in Greenland, and what happens if that gives us less information on Russian or Chinese incursions?
The French used to help us monitor Iranian nuclear enrichment. How much information have we lost without their presence?
So, how do we heal? Democrats winning at least one chamber in 2026, and the White House in 2028 would certainly help — not because Europeans prefer Democrats per se, but because they are keenly aware that the Republicans have consistently voted against supporting Ukraine, just as they refused to impeach President Trump for withholding congressionally-approved Ukrainian assistance.
But that’s ultimately not enough. For Europe to know that America is a reliable partner, they need to know that our support does not depend on which party wins the White House.
Waiting for a normal future Republican president is a dangerous bet, spending time we don’t have on a future we cannot guarantee. But Democrats could move sooner to rebuild and future-proof our multilateral institutions them.
Specifically, we must acknowledge that the U.S. has never allowed our multilateral, international institutions to gain enough strength and independence to function in the absence of U.S. support. That worked as long as the U.S. (mostly) agreed to operate under their norms. But that’s clearly no longer true, and our multilateral institutions aren’t equipped to hold us to account. The World Trade Organization is not facilitating claims against the U.S. for Trump’s tariff policy, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is not being charged with war crimes, even though those institutions have prosecuted smaller countries for nearly identical crimes.
If we are committed to multilateralism, and if we understand that Trump’s Republican Party is not, then the work falls to us not only to rebuild those institutions, but to rebuild them in ways that immunize them against a future American despot.
That is a tall order. After all, Jefferson Davis was never prosecuted. Those who attacked our Capitol on Jan. 6 were pardoned. If we cannot hold Americans to account domestically, why would we give up some portion of our sovereignty to hold them to account internationally?
That won’t be easy. But given the stakes, we would be fools not to try. Politics may be the art of the possible, but leadership is the art of making the impossible inevitable. And where would the world be without that kind of U.S. leadership?
Sean Casten represents the 6th Congressional District of Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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