The Inside Story of Europe’s Breakup With the U.S.

Summary

The Journal. — “The Inside Story of Europe’s Breakup With the U.S.”

Date: July 8, 2026
Hosts: Jessica Mendoza & Ryan Knutson
Reporters: Joe Parkinson & Drew Hinshaw

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into how the U.S.–Europe relationship, centered for decades around the NATO alliance, is now fracturing under the second Trump administration. Citing sources among world leaders, government aides, and leaked documents, The Journal's investigative team uncovers the inside story: Europe’s attempts to appease an increasingly combative U.S., culminating in an unprecedented unraveling of the Western political and military alliance as European leaders prepare for a future less tied to America.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. State of NATO Under Trump’s Second Term

• President Trump is openly hostile to NATO, suggesting tariffs, threatening to annex Canada and Greenland, and considering pulling out of NATO.
• European leaders are unsettled by Trump’s unpredictability and his diminished commitment to NATO.
• (00:25) Donald Trump: “I’ll say it publicly. We’re very disappointed with NATO because NATO has done absolutely nothing.”

2. Mark Rutte: The “Trump Whisperer”

• Mark Rutte, long-serving Dutch PM, is made NATO Secretary General in 2024 due to his relationship with Trump.
• His main mission: keep the U.S. in NATO by playing to Trump’s ego and demands.
• Flattery diplomacy becomes the main European tactic.
• (05:38) Drew Hinshaw: "NATO is built around a single superpower, and that's the U.S."

3. Flattering Trump: Behind-the-Scenes Diplomacy

• European leaders coordinate tone, wording, and even the format of their messages to Trump (using all caps, pithy texts, aligning on who texts and when).
• Detailed examples include leaders editing each other's texts to send to Trump’s personal phone via Signal.
• At times, the strategy is effective, winning Trump’s temporary goodwill.
• (06:16) Joe Parkinson: "They were having coordination calls, speaking together about who should say what, when, how. Even down to editing text messages together…"

4. Policy Concessions: The 5% Defense Spending Pledge

• Europeans offer to increase defense spending (labeling unrelated spending as defense) to appease Trump, hitting his demand for 5% of GDP contributions.
• Trump revels in the attention and praise during summits.
• (09:32) Joe Parkinson: "Trump basically sat there and the leaders took turns to compliment him. So really, it was kind of a love in."
• (10:04) Donald Trump: “It’s not a ripoff, and we’re here to help them protect their country.”

5. Trump’s Pivot to Russia & Europe’s Panic

• After promising meetings, Trump meets with Putin in Alaska, discussing the Ukraine war and a potential Arctic mining deal, sidelining Europe.
• Europeans redouble their efforts, flying en masse to Washington to plead with Trump, again resorting to flattery.
• (12:07) Drew Hinshaw: "They shower Trump with compliments, they praise him for kicking off peace conversations with Putin."

6. Annexing Greenland: The Breaking Point

• Early 2026: Trump announces interest in annexing Greenland, causing alarm across European capitals.
• European leaders debate: is the U.S. merely disengaged, or now a direct threat?
• NATO countries deploy troops to Greenland as a symbolic tripwire; Denmark and France send forces, and explosives are staged to deny American landings.
• (14:10) Joe Parkinson: "The tweet [from Trump's camp] sort of detonated like a bomb across Europe. It was like a fire alarm going off…"

7. Canada’s Mark Carney: The First to Break Ranks

• Canadian PM Mark Carney gives a pivotal speech at Davos, declaring unapologetically that the Western alliance can no longer rely on the old U.S.
• Emphasizes building a “bigger, better, stronger, more just” alliance without U.S. dominance.
• (18:46) Mark Carney: “Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
• Carney becomes a rallying point for European leaders considering decoupling from the U.S.

8. European Emergency Summit: A Collective Turning Point

• Inspired by Carney, European leaders meet for five hours behind closed doors to candidly discuss a path away from U.S. dependence.
• Quotes from that meeting:
  • Belgium’s PM: Europe risks becoming “a miserable slave to the U.S.” (21:44)
  • Spain’s PM: “Canada is openly saying what we should do.”
• The consensus by the end: the world has irrevocably changed, and Europe must rapidly chart its own course.

9. Practical Steps Toward Decoupling

• Europe starts investing billions to build its own tech infrastructure—satellites, communications, critical data storage, and even video platforms for civil servants.
• American companies and workers face losses; the U.S. stands to lose significant revenue and partnership.
• (23:32) Drew Hinshaw: "Europe is spending hundreds of billions of dollars replicating systems that America traditionally supplies."

10. Interdependence and Retaliation Threats

• The hosts stress that the relationship is deeply interdependent—it’s not just Europe dependent on the U.S., but vice versa.
• The Pentagon warns it will retaliate against EU favoring domestic arms; the rhetoric grows more heated.
• US-European coordination breaks down: during a crisis in Iran, Europe refuses Trump’s request for military support in the Strait of Hormuz.
• (25:46) To mend fences, Rutte again attempts to appeal to Trump in person, but with little effect.

11. Where This Leaves NATO

• At the 2026 NATO Summit in Turkey, Trump continues to air grievances publicly, criticizing European leaders over Greenland and Iran.
• European and Canadian officials, though still within NATO, are openly preparing for a future less entwined with the U.S.
• (26:53) Joe Parkinson: “If what we’re witnessing is the end of this unprecedented military and political alliance, we are very much at the beginning of the end. We’re in the foothills of it.”

12. Final Reflections: A Loveless Marriage

• The alliance continues, but “the interconnectivity that was part of its strength… is fading away.”
• (27:17) Drew Hinshaw: “It’s like a loveless marriage that neither side can really afford to leave.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Europe’s tactics:
  Jessica Mendoza (06:50): “It is remarkable…these European leaders… putting their heads together, looking at text messages… ‘Is this the right word?’”

• On Greenland as a turning point:
  Drew Hinshaw (14:19): “It’s the episode in Greenland that tilts the balance and convinces a critical mass of European leaders that America is not just losing interest in NATO, but is actively turning hostile to it.”

• On interdependence:
  Drew Hinshaw (24:18): “What’s really going on is they’re just really, really interlinked. So this is a story of, like, interdependency.”

• On the breakup:
  Jessica Mendoza (22:29): “One official close to that meeting said this was a before and after moment, a moment where the debate shifted from whether to move away from the U.S. to how fast.”

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Trump’s grievances with NATO: 00:25–00:54
• Mark Rutte’s appointment & role: 04:08–05:12
• “Flattery diplomacy” details: 05:38–07:24
• European defense spending “victory”: 08:13–10:04
• Trump’s Alaska meeting with Putin: 10:41–11:22
• The Greenland crisis: 13:26–14:48
• Carney’s speech at Davos: 17:59–19:09
• European leaders’ private summit & reactions: 21:20–22:29
• Tech decoupling efforts: 23:32–24:10
• Breakdown over Hormuz crisis: 25:12–25:46
• Trump’s final NATO complaints: 26:07–26:53
• Reflections, “loveless marriage”: 27:17–28:13

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Summary Takeaway

This episode offers a rare, inside-out chronicle of a historic rift in the Western alliance, vividly capturing the desperation, improvisation, and shifting alliances within NATO. As Trump drives an “America First” agenda, European leaders swing between appeasement and independence, ultimately facing a future where Western unity—long assumed to be a bedrock of global politics—is no longer assured. The episode ends on a note of uncertainty: the end of the old order is only just beginning.

Transcript

[Jessica Mendoza]

Today, leaders from all over the world are gathered in Turkey for an annual meeting of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's a major alliance of more than 30 countries that's historically been celebrated by leaders across Europe and North America. But one key person is very unhappy with it.

[Donald Trump]

I'll say it publicly. We're very disappointed with NATO because NATO has done absolutely nothing.

[Jessica Mendoza]

President Donald Trump has a long list of complaints with NATO. He's threatened tariffs. He said he'll take over Canada and Greenland, and he's even talked about pulling the US out of NATO entirely.

[Donald Trump]

I think NATO's making a very foolish mistake, and I've long said that, you know, I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Now it seems like Trump's adversarial stance toward NATO is finally taking its toll. The relationship is. Is breaking down.

[Joe Parkinson]

Hi, I'm Joe Parkinson. I'm Drew Hinshaw, and we run the Wall Street Journal's World Enterprise team.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Our colleagues, Joe and Drew have been looking into how this alliance of Western powers is splintering. They've spoken with heads of government and their top ministers and aides, and they've parsed through meeting notes and classified intelligence documents all to piece together how this partnership that's been in place since the Cold War has started to fracture.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Clearly, something is happening inside this marriage. No one's filing for divorce, but the two sides are estranged. We wanted to know in the closed door rooms where European allies and Canadian allies talk candidly about the US what do they see as the future of this alliance?

[Joe Parkinson]

What we tried initially to do was to find out what was happening, but then what we discovered was that there were incredibly dramatic conversations happening between the most powerful leaders in Europe. We had seen, of course, since Trump has been sworn in for the second administration, a lot of rhetoric, a lot of crossed words. We wanted to really understand what was happening in the real conversations that are deciding whether the west, as an idea can continue.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Welcome to the Journal, Our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Wednesday, July 8th. Coming up on the show, how things fell apart between the US and its Western allies. This episode is presented by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn [e-mail] Spotify this episode is brought

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[Jessica Mendoza]

To prepare for a second Trump term, NATO turned to Mark Rutte, who was the longest running prime minister of the Netherlands. He'd kept a close relationship with Trump for years.

[Drew Hinshaw]

After Trump lost the 2020 election, Rutte, who was prime minister at the time, reached out to Trump and they kept in contact throughout Trump's interlude as president.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's our colleague Drew Hinshaw again.

[Drew Hinshaw]

And so in October 2024, Trump is leading all the polls. And so they say we need someone who can be a Trump whisperer, so to speak.

[Jessica Mendoza]

NATO appointed Rutte to lead the organization.

[Drew Hinshaw]

It is a great honor to be here and to take up the position of NATO Secretary General. And first of all, I want to thank all of your nations for trusting me with the responsibility.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Here's our colleague Joe Parkinson, and he

[Joe Parkinson]

really just has one job, and the one job from the Europeans perspective is to keep the US in NATO. Use that relationship with Trump, use that warmth that they've developed together to try to understand what he needs, what he wants, so that the Europeans can keep America as that hub of the wheel of the military alliance.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Rutte believes that the main thing keeping peace in Europe is the United States.

[Drew Hinshaw]

When leaders talk about, oh, we need to have a new world order that's less dependent on America, he kind of says, get keep on dreaming. Are you going to spend 10% of your economy on defense? Are you going to create a nuclear umbrella to protect Europe? Who has a military that can project power globally the way the US Can? NATO is built around a single superpower, and that's the U.S.

[Jessica Mendoza]

rutte's approach to Trump was all about trying to appease the American leader, a tactic the European press have called flattery diplomacy. And at first, most European leaders were behind the idea, hoping that it would keep Trump engaged with NATO.

[Joe Parkinson]

So there was a consensus, and a relatively strong consensus that the best way to deal with Trump would be to flatter him and talk about the things that he was doing that they agreed were positive.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Following Rutte's lead. European leaders spent much of the last year telling Trump what he wanted to hear and learning to speak the way he does.

[Joe Parkinson]

So that means communication, communicating with him in the way that he likes to communicate. Shorter, pithier messages, it means using all caps for emphasis. They were having coordination calls, speaking together about who should say what, when, how. Even down to editing text messages together, the Prime Minister of Norway and the President of Finland would sit down with one another, editing the text messages, discussing workshopping them, before firing them off to Trump's personal phone. And for a while, this was actually very effective.

[Jessica Mendoza]

I just want to take a moment to say how remarkable it is to picture these European leaders kind of like putting their heads together, looking at text messages, being like, is this the right word? Should I. It's just, yeah, such a.

[Drew Hinshaw]

They did a lot of this over the encrypted messaging app signal. And they would talk to each other like, how are we going to do this? For example, at one point, Trump sort of lectured one of the European Union's top officials, Ursula von der Leyen, because she was advocating for sanctions on Russia. So she starts calling economic pressure tariffs because she thinks that that will go down better.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But Rutte's strategy was about more than just communicating with Trump. It was also about giving Trump policy wins. In particular, the president's demand that European countries spend more on NATO. The organization spends a lot of money on defense for its member countries. It is, after all, mainly a military alliance. Russia and the US Is the biggest contributor. Trump has complained about this for years. Here he is back in 2017.

[Donald Trump]

This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States. And many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years and not paying.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Trump has demanded over the years that European countries pay more. And when Trump was reelected, European leaders got together to decide how to address the issue.

[Drew Hinshaw]

European leaders met in Brussels in this beautiful palace, this 16th century palace, the Egmont palace, and they were there to all get on one page about what we're going to do. As they're meeting here in this palace, Rutte, the Secretary General, is saying, let's give the President a win.

[Jessica Mendoza]

After that meeting in the palace, Rutte kept lobbying throughout 2025. His hope was to get enough NATO countries on board with the increased payments. But before a June NATO summit in the Hague.

[Drew Hinshaw]

So before they even get there, there's this frantic diplomacy by Rutte, and he needs them all to do one thing, which is pledge that at some point they will spend 5% of their GDP on defense, 5%. That's the number Trump wants.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And Rutte came up with a creative way to hit that 5% target. He convinced some of the nations to label other spending as defense.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Airport runways, meteorological stations, even like bridges and tunnels that you might technically need to drive down to get to the front lines in a war with Russia. We'll call that defense related spending.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Ultimately, Rutte convinced enough countries to pledge that higher amount. And Joe says Trump saw this as a win.

[Joe Parkinson]

It was something like a victory march. And the way that it was described to us again by the leaders who described what happened behind closed doors, was that Trump basically sat there and the leaders took turns to compliment him. So really, it was kind of a love in.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And how did Trump react?

[Drew Hinshaw]

He smiled. He was enjoying it. He had some of the most powerful people on earth lining up to compliment him.

[Jessica Mendoza]

After that summit, Trump held a press conference where he said that NATO was no longer a bad deal for American taxpayers.

[Donald Trump]

I left here saying that these people really love their countries. It's not a ripoff, and we're here to help them protect their country.

[Jessica Mendoza]

So Trump comes out of this meeting, he's feeling good. He's saying nice things about NATO. I mean, is it fair to say that Ruta's flattery diplomacy was working?

[Drew Hinshaw]

At this point, I would say yes. At this point, I would say yes. But there are warning signs.

[Jessica Mendoza]

A few weeks after this European love fest, Trump had another big meeting with an important international leader. This time, he flew out to Alaska to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

[Narrator/Announcer]

The president is expected to greet Putin with a real red carpet arrival. And we have actually seen that red carpet. It has been rolled out already. Today's meeting is a historic one, marking the first time Putin has stepped foot on US Soil in about a decade.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The two leaders talked about the war in Ukraine. And afterwards, Trump seemed apparently skeptical of Ukraine's chances in the war. At the same time, an intelligence report started circulating among European countries. It said that the US Was considering a deal with the Kremlin, one that would include jointly mining the Arctic force rare earth minerals. For Europe, this was an emergency.

[Drew Hinshaw]

A few weeks earlier, they'd been offering Trump all these concessions and kind of praising him, one leader after the next. And now, just a few weeks later, they are in a situation where he seems to be working out some kind of peace plan and maybe even economic deal with Russia that doesn't really include their input.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The European leaders found themselves scrambling. They decided to double down on flattering Trump to try to get him back on Their side, the French President Emmanuel Macron rallied his fellow heads of state.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Macron gets a big encrypted group chat with all of them and says, listen, we all need to go to Washington. All told, six European presidents and prime ministers, plus Rutte, they're all going to go to the White House and try to just get the President back on side a little bit.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And the same cycle takes place. They shower Trump with compliments, they praise him for kicking off peace conversations with Putin.

[Donald Trump]

Let me very brief.

[Drew Hinshaw]

I really want to thank you, President of the United States, dear Donald, for the fact that you, as I said before, broke the deadlock.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Something has changed, thanks to you.

[Donald Trump]

The path is open. You opened it.

[Drew Hinshaw]

And the news cameras are there, rolling. And the President is visibly pleased. He thanks Mark Ruta. He says, thank you, Mark. You're a great leader. You're doing a fantastic job. Things seem to be going well.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The next morning, Trump goes on Fox and Friends and speaks warmly about his relationship with European leaders.

[Drew Hinshaw]

They're very good people.

[Donald Trump]

They're very good leaders of their countries.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But the reprieve is short lived. Just a few weeks later, Trump is again talking about a deal with Russia.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Within weeks, Trump is once again expressing doubt that Ukraine can win this war. And he is entertaining, pursuing a Russian peace plan that touted opportunities for US Businesses. And for the European leaders, it's a bit like two steps forward, one step backward. They're pretty close to where they started.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Finally, at the beginning of 2026, things hit a breaking point. And it had to do with something Trump had been talking about on and off since his first term, annexing Greenland.

[Donald Trump]

I'm seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Just after the New Year, Trump was at his Florida residence, Mar a Lago, having dinner with some of his staff and their families. And the wife of Trump's deputy chief of staff looks over at the president

[Drew Hinshaw]

and she sees that he's in an oddly ruminative mood. And he is saying, I wish I had more time. If I had more time, I would do Greenland. And that weekend, she pulls up her phone and thumbs out a provocative single word tweet soon. And the image is an American flag covering Greenland.

[Joe Parkinson]

The tweet sort of detonated like a bomb across Europe. It's safe to say it was like a fire alarm going off across the continent in the chanceries and the prime ministries.

[Drew Hinshaw]

I think there's a debate that's going on within NATO all throughout Trump's second presidency, which is, is America just losing interest in NATO? Or is America turning into something much scarier, which is a hostile threat, a country that wants to take Greenland from Denmark. And it's the episode in Greenland in January 2026 that tilts the balance and convinces a critical mass of European leaders that America is not just losing interest in NATO, but is actively turning hostile to it.

[Joe Parkinson]

On certain places, after the constant push and pull of the previous few months, the voices within Europe that had always said, we think actually we can't rely on this administration start to become louder, start to become stronger.

[Jessica Mendoza]

One voice actually didn't come from Europe at all, but from an ally even closer to the U.S. canada. That's after the break.

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[Jessica Mendoza]

As 2026 kicked off, tensions between Europe and the Trump administration continued to escalate. The feud over Greenland in particular, had snowballed into one of the biggest crises among Western nations the since the Second World War. For his part, NATO's leader Mark Rutte stuck to his strategy of appeasing Trump.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Rutte is furiously texting the president personally on his phone. Rutte is lobbying Trump's team. He's trying to figure out, what can I offer Trump that will feel like a concession that will give him a win politically but will allow him to walk away without owning Greenland.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But even as that was happening, other European leaders started preparing for something that had seemed unthinkable, a possible war with

[Drew Hinshaw]

the US There are Danish troops in Greenland that have brought blood bags in case they're shot by American soldiers. They can do blood transfusions. They've brought explosives to blow up Greenland's own runways so that American planes can't land. France has deployed 15 mountain infantry to Greenland. A bunch of European countries have sent soldiers who are basically a tripwire in case America launches a invasion against its own ally.

[Jessica Mendoza]

It was during this historic low in the US Europe relationship that the World Economic Forum was set to take place in Davos, Switzerland. One of the conference's speakers was the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, and he took the stage with an impassioned speech.

[Mark Carney]

I'm going to start in French, and then I'll switch back to English.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Carney didn't mention the US by name, but it was clear that he was talking about the relationship between America and its Western allies.

[Mark Carney]

We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy. But we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just.

[Joe Parkinson]

The speech actually ended up being exactly what Carney and his closest advisors had wanted, which was to throw a bucket of ice water over the west and say, look, we've been telling you this is the time for you to listen, that the world has changed. The old America has not come back. We can't pretend that things haven't changed.

[Mark Carney]

Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Carney's speech echoed something he'd been saying since before he took office in 2025, that Western powers needed to stand up to the U.S. in fact, he'd been elected in part because he spoke up against Trump's calls to make Canada the 51st state.

[Mark Carney]

President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never. That will never, ever happen.

[Drew Hinshaw]

His party had been suffering a 20 point poll deficit. But Trump makes this threat to turn Canada into the 51st state, and almost overnight, Carney surges in the polls, wins, becomes unbelievably this prime minister who has somehow jumped out of the political grave.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Usually, the first tour abroad for a new Canadian prime minister is a visit to Washington to meet with Canada's strongest ally. Instead, just two days after taking office, Carney went to Paris and he met with France's President, Emmanuel Macron, to get in his ear about an unprecedented that Europe should start decoupling from the United States on everything from critical minerals to AI.

[Drew Hinshaw]

What Carney is talking about is creating a dense web of connections that doesn't necessarily rely on America. So countries like France, Canada, the uk, Germany, they can turn to each other for all these critical things that we just use America for. If you tap your phone to pay for something in Europe, it's probably bouncing off an American satellite and being processed by an American company. And we don't even think about this. It's the hidden plumbing of the world. And Carney's saying, we need backup pipes. Basically, we need backup plumbing because we can't only count on America.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And how does Trump take this speech?

[Drew Hinshaw]

Trump watches this speech from Air Force One, and he tells his aides, Carney's ungrateful.

[Donald Trump]

I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn't so grateful that they should be grateful to us, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.

[Jessica Mendoza]

What about other European leaders? What do they make of this moment of Carney's, his speech at Davos?

[Joe Parkinson]

What we discovered was that almost in real time, as Carney was speaking, leaders were messaging each other, saying that this is the message that we need to get behind.

[Jessica Mendoza]

A day later, European leaders held an emergency meeting that lasted five hours.

[Joe Parkinson]

The leaders are told again to come into this room with no phone, no aids, no chance of making a record, because they all need to speak candidly about what they've just seen and what's unfolded. And it was described to us afterwards as like a therapy session because people were. People were venting so much.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Francis Macron said Europe's overreliance on America was a security risk. The prime minister of Belgium said that Europe risked becoming, quote, a miserable slave to the US And Spain's prime minister said, quote, canada is openly saying what we should do.

[Joe Parkinson]

Although Carney wasn't there, his name was mentioned by a number of leaders who said, you know, we're looking for a way forward. We're looking for a new strategy. We have to recognize the world as it is. And Canada is showing us one way forward.

[Drew Hinshaw]

It's this incredible moment. And the more we reported, you know, we spoke with heads of government, their top aides, their ministers, and the more people we spoke to, the more it just seems like that night something really deep in the Western alliance broke.

[Jessica Mendoza]

One official close to that meeting said this was a before and after moment, a moment where the debate shifted from whether to move away from the US to how fast. This is an unprecedented new phase for Europe and Canada. NATO countries have never attempted to decouple from the US in this way. It'll also be a massive undertaking. NATO countries, their economies, their militaries, their technology are incredibly intertwined with the US as the center of gravity.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Visa and MasterCard process virtually every payment that happens in Europe, at least on a consumer level. If you beep your phone to pay for something in Europe, There's a good chance that that payment is going through a satellite that's owned by an American company. A tremendous amount of Europe's data is stored in the US or by US Companies. And this is before you get to the really cutting edge stuff where we're talking about new AI models.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But now, with the US Looking like a less reliable ally, Europe is trying to break away.

[Drew Hinshaw]

Europe is spending hundreds of billions of dollars replicating systems that America traditionally supplies. The EU is speeding up its schedule to launch several hundred European satellites that will let their governments communicate securely over non American Networks. France ordered 2.5 million civil servants to replace Microsoft Teams and Zoom with their own domestically built video conference platform, Vizio. Several governments, Germany, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium. They've started rolling out their own homegrown texting services, discouraging civil servants. WhatsApp, which is owned by the Facebook company Meta.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But Europe isn't the only one who'd bear the costs of disentangling from the U.S. the U.S. also has a lot at stake in the relationship.

[Drew Hinshaw]

It's easy to draw a caricature where Europe is sort of living the sweet life and depending on American technology. And that's true to an extent, but what's really going on is they're just really, really interlinked. So this is a story of, like, interdependency.

[Jessica Mendoza]

For one thing, if Europe succeeds in manufacturing its own technology, AI, even military weapons, that would be a huge loss of revenue for American companies and fewer jobs for American workers. The US Also relies on Europe's military assets in the region. Already we've gotten a glimpse of what it could look like if this military partnership fractures with the war in Iran. This past spring, when Trump turned to Europe and asked them to help with reopening the Strait of Hormuz, Europe refused. President Donald Trump says NATO allies have rejected his calls for help to get oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. Germany's response has left no room for interpretation.

[Drew Hinshaw]

We are ready to ensure safe passage

[Donald Trump]

through the Straits of Hormuz diplomatically. However, there will be no military participation.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Those called upon don't seem to want to enter a war that they haven't

[Jessica Mendoza]

started in the meantime. I mean, we were talking about this as sort of a relationship that is interdependent is the word I think you guys used. But are there signs that the US could retaliate?

[Joe Parkinson]

I mean, the Pentagon has said it's going to retaliate if the EU enacts policies to favor domestic arms manufacturers. So the rhetoric is already there.

[Drew Hinshaw]

To smooth things over, Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General, visited the Oval Office in April. He brought papers listing all the ways Europe was helping with the war and how many billions of dollars in American weaponry Europe was still purchasing. The president threatened to leave NATO, and Rutsa pushed back and said, no, you won't.

[Jessica Mendoza]

This week, during the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump made clear he still wants more from member countries. In a press conference, sitting next to Mark Rutte, he listed out some of his issues.

[Donald Trump]

I'm not happy with NATO because of what they did with Greenland, and I'm not happy with NATO because of the fact that they didn't want to help us with the number one state sponsor of terror. That's Iran.

[Jessica Mendoza]

A White House spokeswoman told the Journal that, quote, President Trump has effectively restored America's standing on the world stage and he has done more for NATO than anyone else. She also said that the NATO summit was a success and reiterated Trump's perspective that when it comes to defense, Europe needs to, quote, take greater responsibility.

[Joe Parkinson]

If what we're witnessing is the end of this unprecedented military and political alliance, we are very much at the beginning of the end. We're in the foothills of it. The end itself is something which is totally untested and could unfold in so many ways that we could never predict.

[Drew Hinshaw]

We've all been living in a world where interconnectivity is part of the strength of modern societies, where a military alliance is so powerful because its allies pool all their forces and share their resources. And now we're living in a world that is just much more mistrust between Europe and the US and the alliance will go on and muddle on, probably. But that interconnectivity, that was part of its strength, that part is fading away. And in it, we have everybody doing their own thing a lot more. Yeah, it just gets at how this relationship is like a. It's like a loveless marriage that neither side can really afford to leave.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's all for today. Wednesday, July 8. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Daniel Michael. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

[Narrator/Announcer]

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