By Thierry Meyssan
Voltairenet.org
February 6, 2026
The European Union, having just woken up to the United States under Donald Trump, doesn't know how to react to the breakdown of the transatlantic link. It can only respond as it always has, in every political crisis, by strengthening its federalism and its dependence on Washington. This maladjustment inevitably leads to its failure.
The European Union has been shaken by:
- Washington's murky dealings with Moscow regarding Ukraine;
- the creation of the Peace Council by President Trump;
- Operation " Absolute Resolve " against President Maduro and his wife;
- US claims on Greenland.
She realized, belatedly, that President Trump wasn't joking when he told Europeans, during his first term, that they should take responsibility for their own security. Similarly, Vice President JD Vance was serious when he stated at the Munich Security Conference that what worried him was "the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America." [1]
In this context, the members of the European Union (not to be confused with Europeans-a geographical and cultural term that also includes Russia) were stunned by the release of the US National Security Strategy 2026 [2]. They read there, explicitly, that EU production had declined, in thirty-five years (that is, not since the Maastricht Treaty, but since the completion of the single market), from 25% to 14% of global output. "But this economic decline is overshadowed by the very real and darker prospect of civilizational collapse." Its restoration depends on controlling immigration (some member states could soon have a non-European majority) and abandoning "its sterile obsession with excessive regulation" [3].
The EU had only two options:
1. Or that of Mark Carney, Canadian Prime Minister-and former Governor of the Bank of England-who said that Westerners must admit that the "rules-based international order" was nothing but lies from which they benefited. International relations now need to be completely rebuilt [4].
2. There is also the view of Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General - and former Prime Minister of the Netherlands - who believes that all is not lost since the Ukrainians are winning against Russia (?), but that Europeans in the Union must admit that the EU cannot guarantee their security alone. It must invest more in its defense, while remaining in NATO [5].
Based on this, the European Union decided:
- to remain within NATO for the time necessary to acquire military means, without being under any illusions about the permanence of the transatlantic link (even if many think that Donald Trump will lose the midterm elections next November):
- to invest massively in its defence - that is to say, to go from 2.5% of GDP to 5% or even 10% in a few years;
- to increase partnerships with powers other than the USA. Hence the sudden conclusion of the EU-Mercosur and EU-Bahrat free trade agreements.
As soon as President Trump's intentions became known to European federalists, that is, at the very end of 2025, they sent a letter to the President of the European Council, António Costa [6].
To achieve "genuine strategic sovereignty in the face of the transatlantic divide," they propose to:
- suspend the Turnberry agreement of August 21, 2025 (which set the conditions accepted by the EU for not being subject to prohibitive tariffs in the United States);
- implement the €93 billion countermeasures prepared in response to the escalation of April 2025;
- activate the anti-coercion instrument;
- to place troops deployed in the Arctic under European command;
- replace the US satellites protecting the EU;
- activate article 42.2 of the European treaty (common defence);
- abandon the unanimity rule.
Since the release of this letter, meetings have been held in Brussels. The European bureaucracy is trying to implement it. It's important to understand that historically, the EU has reacted to every political crisis it has faced in the same way, following the federalist agenda. While this was a logical reflex during the Cold War, since the ECSC, then the European Communities, and finally the EU were structures supported by the United States, this is no longer the case. The United States is no longer Western Europe's "big brother," but a partner like any other. European federalism, which was one of the objectives of the secret clauses of the Marshall Plan, is no longer relevant.
At the end of the Second World War, the British (who had founded the ECSC without being members) wanted to prevent the USSR from influencing Western Europe by transforming it into a coherent and homogeneous buffer zone. They were not concerned with preserving the national identities of Western Europeans, but solely with protecting their own. It was for the sake of effectiveness against the Soviets that they chose Walter Hallstein as the first president of the ECSC (the precursor to the EU). However, Hallstein was the strategist who had conceived the Nazi plan to occupy Western Europe. He had plundered it to finance the war of extermination in the East. The European aristocracies supported this Anglo-Saxon plan not out of fear of the massacres perpetrated by the Bolsheviks, but out of fear of the advance of communism, which threatened their privileges.
This is precisely what is happening today: Western states are financing Germany's expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. It's in the EU's DNA. We saw it, for example, when Germany imposed its energy policy on its partners. Or again, with the signing of the free trade agreement with Mercosur, to the detriment of French and Italian farmers. Once more, the EU's upper classes support this trend as the only way to preserve their privileges.
Contrary to what we have been led to believe, there has never been a structure conducive to cooperation among all European states. The ECSC, the European Communities, and the EU never sought to unite Europeans while respecting their diversity, but rather to fuse them into a single empire. This is the project that continues unabated, as if it were inevitable. The European bureaucracy has always thought this way and is incapable of adapting to the new reality.
JD Vance was right to observe that the danger "is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America." No one can do anything about it. Our politicians and senior civil servants have been trained this way. They don't know how to do anything else. The future of the EU, if it has one, lies in the dismissal of all its leaders.
An example of what awaits us has been provided by the Greenland crisis. The United States, reviving a very old claim, is demanding the annexation of this Inuit territory (Kalaallit Nunaat), located on its continental shelf (and not on that of the Europeans). They believed they could buy it and put forward their price as early as 1867, then again in 1910, 1946, 1955, 2019, and most recently in 2025. This has nothing to do with President Trump's arguments: the rare earth elements that could be exploited there, and the opening of Arctic shipping lanes.
Since June, this territory has been protected by Northern Command (NorthCom) and no longer by European Command (EuCom). In any case, it has been and remains under the military protection of the United States of America. The US illegally deployed nuclear weapons there, pursuant to a secret tacit agreement with Denmark and in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This matter was only revealed in 1995, during the investigation into the US strategic bomber that, while participating in a routine Cold War operation, accidentally crashed near Thule in 1968, contaminating the region with a cloud of enriched uranium.
Western Europeans reacted to US claims with the old colonial mindset. Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom declared on January 6th: "Greenland belongs to its people. It is up to Denmark and the Greenlanders alone to decide matters concerning Denmark and Greenland." But a choice must be made: does this territory belong to the Greenlanders or the Danes ? To the Greenlanders, of course, who have the right to self-determination, not to the Danish settlers.
Since then, European colonialists have sent about a hundred soldiers to the island, roughly the same number as the US garrison at the Pituffik Air and Space Force Station. Ultimately, beyond the bluster, the crisis was resolved in Davos. Not by a European state, but by NATO. As far as we know, the United States has begun reactivating the military bases it had in Greenland during the Cold War. They will be deploying NATO troops there. In other words, they will be protecting Greenland with European soldiers, paid for by the Europeans, but placed under the command of US officers.
Today, the EU is debating how it will ensure its own security, without the United States. If the Brussels bureaucracy handles it, it will end the same way. For example, Andrius Kubilius, the European Commissioner for Space, announced at the 18th European Space Conference in Brussels on January 27th that the EU will launch observation satellites at its own expense to guarantee its defense. But the United States will collect and analyze the data. Europeans will be no more independent than they are today. Yet, they will continue to accumulate debt while producing less.
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[1 ] " JD Vance Tells Munich Security Conference"There's A New Sheriff In Town"", by JD Vance, Voltaire Network, February 14, 2025.
[2 ] " The Pentagon adopts the Trump vision of the world ", by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, December 10, 2025.
[3 ] National Security Strategy, White House, November 2025
[4 ] "Dispatch 4648 - Mark Carney admits that 'rules-based international order' is a lie and that it has run its course," Voltaire, International News, No. 159, January 23, 2026.
[5 ] "Dispatch 4629. Mark Rutte in front of Renew Europe", Voltaire, international news, No. 158, January 16, 2026.
[6 ] " Proposal for Real Strategic Sovereignty in view of the transatlantic breakup ", Association Jean Monnet, The Spinelli Group, Union of European Federalists, Young European Federalists, Civico Europa, December 25, 2025.