From WSJ, July 5, 2026: It was almost midnight in Brussels and the leaders of Europe were locked in their fifth hour of an emergency meeting with a single theme for discussion: how to manage a breakup with America.
The new year was only three weeks old and President Trump, after removing Venezuela’s autocratic strongman, had briefly threatened to seize Greenland from Denmark. Around a circular table in the European Council headquarters known as “The Space Egg,” heads of government were venting so emotionally about the 47th president that some of the nearly 30 leaders present would later call the session “therapy night.”
“We are drawing a line here,” began Emmanuel Macron, president of France . For a year, America’s closest allies had tried to placate Trump with a mix of flattery and concessions on mutual defence and trade issues, hoping to buy time.
A clutch of European leaders chimed in to complain that the administration seemed more interested in mining and energy deals than upholding America’s traditional role in the world. Europe risked becoming “a miserable slave” to the U.S., groused the prime minister of Belgium.
Hours passed as people talked over each other in a conversation with such seismic implications it seemed surreal: In its 250th year, had America, protector of Europe, now become a threat?
Several participants mentioned a man who wasn’t in the room. Mark Carney, the new Canadian prime minister, had been regularly messaging Europe’s major leaders using a British phone number from his time in London, trying to persuade them that “the old America isn’t coming back.” Now, on the heels of a blistering speech at the annual Davos gathering, his arguments were gaining ground. “Canada,” said the prime minister of Spain, “is openly saying what we should do.”
In the months to come, the January crisis meeting would be remembered by Europe’s most powerful figures as the moment that countries bound together by blood and a sense of shared destiny since the aftermath of World War II began to explore separate paths.
WSJ: ‘There Is No Going Back’: The Inside Story of Europe’s Rupture With America (Archived)