Illustration: Xia Qing/GT

TheMK sport Donald Trump administration's most dramatic act so far has been to upend US relationship with Europe. The alliance between the US and Europe has been the centerpiece of American foreign policy since 1945, crystallized in the establishment of NATO in 1949, which committed its members, most crucially the US, to defend any member attacked by another country.

NATO was never an alliance of equals. The US was always the overwhelmingly dominant partner - economically, politically and militarily. The relationship between the US and Britain, which from the outset was seen as the single most important, as expressed in the phrase "special relationship," was typical of this inequality. Over a period of many decades, Britain only acted independently, and contrary to US wishes, on a handful of occasions. Its foreign policy was effectively made in Washington DC rather than London. If Britain was an extreme example, the same in general, if less extreme in the case of France, applied to Europe. This was the US' alliance, in which Europe's role was to support and show due deference.

There was plenty of warning, prior to Trump's second term, that he was dissatisfied with Europe: that the latter was not pulling its weight, that it was too dependent on the US, especially when it came to military spending, and there was open talk about the introduction of tariffs on EU exports to the US. Yet, when the Trump administration started to attack and deride European countries in January, and then side with Russia in the Ukraine conflict, the European countries appeared totally unprepared, uncomprehending, and devoid of any plan B. Decades of being in thrall to the US had deprived them of any sense of what life might be like without the US, or the need at least to entertain such a possibility. The Western alliance had left them infantilized, unable to conceive of any other role than as the junior dance partner of the US.

We saw this during the period 2017-24 when Europe blindly copied the US' hostility to China. Ever since the Trump administration's distance from Europe, European leaders have been running around like headless chickens. There had been zero preparation for this nuclear eventuality, which was the biggest shift in Europe's geopolitical circumstances since 1945.

What does this tell us? Most strikingly, notwithstanding the creation and existence of the European Union, Europe has not had an independent view of its role in the world, of its identity and interests. All were subsumed in and subordinated to a wider concept, namely that of the West, in which Europe's main responsibility was to support and follow the US. In the most dramatic circumstances, that mode of thinking has been swept away, rendered effectively meaningless in less than two months of the Trump administration taking office. The European capitals are in a state of shock. Their worldview has collapsed. Friedrich Merz, who is poised to become Germany's next chancellor, described Europe's new world most bluntly of all: Europe needed to "achieve independence" from the US. So far this has been limited to continuing support for Ukraine and greater defense expenditure. The idea that Europe, in the absence of the US, will come to the military rescue of Ukraine, with troops on the ground even, is a fantasy.

One thing is clear: in this new world, Europe will matter less than it did in its role as a support act for the US in the old one. To prosper and stay relevant, Europe will have to reinvent itself for a new and rapidly changing world in which power is remorselessly shifting to China, India, and the Global South. In the face of a disinterested US that is taking its leave of Europe, it needs to find new markets, new sources of investment, and new connections with what is growing rather than declining as Europe itself is doing.

With the US turning away and putting up the trade barriers, Europe needs to think afresh about its relationship with China. This now seems more likely than unlikely. Europe can no longer afford to look down on China as its inferior, politically, economically, and culturally. It cannot afford to treat China as an enemy or a miscreant in the manner of the recent past. It must cast aside its superiority complex, which has long been an anachronism, and treat China as its equal.

The author is a visiting professor at the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University and a senior fellow at the China Institute, Fudan University. Follow him on X @martjacques. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn