The defining image of relations between Europe and the first Trump administration was a photo taken at the G7 summit in Canada in June 2018. President Donald Trump, who had just announced tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the European Union, Canada, and Mexico, sits isolated behind a table. Across from him are the leaders of America’s allies, united in remonstration.
French President Emmanuel Macron is making the European case to Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton. Bolton is laughing in Macron’s face. Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May is Macron’s wingperson. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hedges his bets, stands at the head of the table next to and echoing Trump’s arms-crossed body language. German Chancellor Angela Merkel leans on the table to hector him like a trade union shop steward or an East German apparatchik.
In case anyone at the back of the class missed the symbolism, the BBC confirmed that the image was “reminiscent of a schoolteacher telling off a naughty student (President Trump).” Like all defining images, it was partially defined by editorial selection.
In another photo, Trump has his arms down and is joking back at Merkel. She is twinkling in a thin-lipped way reminiscent of a schoolteacher flirting with a naughty student. Macron has finally stopped talking and picked up a card, which he studies like a wine list. May has edged forward and hinted at the Special Relationship by seductively planting her right buttock on the table. Now it’s safe for the host to come out, Canada’s Justin Trudeau pops up and is obsequiously amused by Trump’s gag.
The defining images of relations between Europe and the second Trump administration derived from Trump summoning Europe’s leaders to the White House on Aug. 20 after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. One image shows the European leaders lined up outside the Oval Office like errant schoolchildren. The image is perfect, so of course it’s an AI fake. You can tell because Macron has three legs. As Candace Owens insists, if anyone in the Macron ménage has a third leg, it’s Mrs. Macron.
Details, details. The impression is much the same in the photographs from the Oval Office meeting. Once again, Trump is isolated — this time on his home turf, behind the Resolute Desk. But now the Europeans are sitting in a row, not unlike the naughty children in the AI image. One shot, taken from behind the visitors, captures Trump in mid-lecture. Another, taken from over the president’s shoulder, shows the docile Europeans absorbing his wisdom. Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is there. So are the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. This photo was also released in cropped form, minus Britain’s Keir Starmer, who was sitting on the edge of the group. No one missed him.
A lot has changed since 2018. Trump fired Bolton in 2019. Shinzo Abe was murdered in 2022. Three of the four European leaders lost power but dodged a reckoning with their voters. In the same year, May’s party overthrew her. Merkel did not seek reelection in 2021. Trudeau stood down in 2025. Only Macron and Trump have survived. Each has become his own grimacing caricature, with the health of his combover-quiff combo an index of his career. Trump’s now sags under the gravity of procedural constraint. Macron’s is whipped up like an airy confection, a pavlova or a piece of French oratory.
At the NATO summit last July, NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte called Trump “daddy.” Teachers are used to this kind of Freudian slip from children. Rutte was crying, “Uncle!” The Europeans tried to gang up on Trump the first time around. They failed. They thought that normal service resumed under former President Joe Biden, and that they could advance an independent policy on the Ukraine war under American cover. They were right, in a way, because that served the Biden administration’s plans. But now they are wrong again, because Trump is back and, despite all the warnings from former President Barack Obama, Trump, and Biden, they still lack the military capacity to act independently.
Whatever Trump and Putin agreed in Alaska, they did it over the heads of the Europeans, Zelensky included. Trump then summoned the Europeans on the fly to Washington, D.C., to knock them into line. In the three-and-a-half years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Europeans have insisted that they want peace but also war: peace on their terms and war subsidized by the United States. The hypocrisy and entitlement are mindboggling, even for the Europeans.
Europe has never mattered less. Its share of the global economy, military capacity, internal coherence, and its external leverage are all in sharp decline. Of course, they asked for it. But it’s not just their problem. If Europe keeps going downhill this fast, it’s going to create a new set of problems for the U.S. Preserving American interests in Europe and western Asia, and holding the balance with Russia, may even require a return to the hands-on management of the Cold War era. Call it the pivot to Europe.
Dominic Green is a Washington Examiner columnist and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Find him on X @drdominicgreen.