For decades a core objective of the Soviet Union was to “decouple” the United States from Europe. Decoupling, as it was called, would break the Western alliance that kept Soviet tanks from rolling across the Prussian plains. Now, in weeks, President Trump has handed Moscow the gift that eluded it during the Cold War and since. Gripped by a sense of abandonment, alarmed at the colossal rearmament task before it, astonished by the upending of American ideology, Europe finds itself adrift. “The United States was the pillar around which peace was managed, but it has changed alliance,” said Valérie Hayer, the president of the centrist Renew Europe group in the European Parliament.

Source: The Times March 08, 2025 22:35 UTC