President Donald Trump spent last weekend in Ireland. The main purpose of his two-day visit was to attend the 2026 Irish Open golf tournament, held this year at the Doonbeg course he has owned and operated since 2002. But he also found time to meet with the Irish president and prime minister, to call for a united Ireland, which effectively means the end of British rule in Northern Ireland, and to promise to end all tariffs on Irish whiskey sold to the US.
What gained no mention during his visit was that it occurred in the middle of the Irish presidency of the European Council, which began in July and ends in December 2026. This presidency rotates between EU members every six months. The holder of the office plans, coordinates and chairs the meetings held by the council, except for those dealing with foreign affairs.
On one level, the presidency’s focus on internal, rather than external, EU matters explain why the Irish presidency gained no mention during the Trump visit. But the visit does provide an interesting opportunity to consider the actual state of US-EU relations, and by extension the transatlantic relationship between America and Europe, the foundational partnership of the post-World War II international order.
Things on that front are not good. As the ‘Wall Street Journal’ recently reported, the possibility of a strategic “breakup” with Washington is an increasingly common subject of discussion among senior EU officials. One driver of such thinking is the Trump administration’s Nato 3.0 approach. This aims to reduce the US military presence in Europe and place more responsibility for Europe’s defence on Europeans. Leaving aside the issue of who pays for Nato and the interconnected tensions over how to handle the Ukraine-Russia war, during the last six months there have been several other substantial and substantive foreign policy differences that illuminate the broader deterioration of transatlantic relations.
These include the refusal of EU countries during the war with Iran to back President Trump’s call for the formation of an international coalition to secure shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. “This is not Europe’s war”, explained Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat. President Emmanuel Macron of France was even more to the point: “We are not party to the conflict and therefore France will never take part.” Outside of the Middle East, US and EU officials also recently clashed over the appointment of a new High Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, after Washington demanded, and gained, the removal of the German official who held the post. In response, the EU threatened to pull funding of a US-backed regional energy pipeline.
Those in Europe who do not view these and other US-EU tensions as evidence of a coming transatlantic split consider the current crisis as a temporary phenomenon that will correct itself once Donald Trump is no longer in the White House. Many Republicans and Democrats in Congress who remain keen advocates of the transatlantic alliance share this hope. But it is also worth remembering that this growing rift did not begin with Trump’s presidency. Ideological differences, including over Europe’s preference for the non-militarisation of disputes, multilateralism and internationals institutions, are by no means new. Two decades ago, the American strategic thinker Robert Kagan argued that on many of the issues that matter most, including these ones, the US and EU no longer “share a common view of the world”.
The downward spiral in relations has also been fuelled by EU attempts to compete with the US for global influence since the early 1990s. During the Cold War, Europe resented playing second fiddle to the US but had little choice. Instead, it took advantage of the US willingness to pay for keeping Russia out of Europe to focus on reducing its military spending and building-up socio-economic development and the expansion of the EU.
Once the Soviet Union collapsed, the EU hoped that it could transform its economic success into political power. The goal was to offer itself as an alternative to US leadership on the foreign policy issues that mattered most to Europe. The first opportunity to do so came in the early 1990s in Yugoslavia – the location of the summer’s EU-US diplomatic stand-off.
But “the hour of Europe”, as the Luxembourg politician Jacques Poos described it at the time, was short lived. The EU could not agree on the use of force in Yugoslavia and its attempts to prevent war by offering economic incentives and making economic threats was a complete failure leaving the US with no choice but to step in and take the lead. President Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia summed up the situation in 1993: “Only the US can save us from annihilation: If they do not come there will soon be no Muslims left. The Europeans will debate till we are all dead”.
The Yugoslav debacle—and the US success in forcing the warring parties to the negotiating table in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995—highlighted Europe’s ongoing need to rely on US military power and political influence in the post-Cold War era.
So did Washington’s almost total domination of the security and diplomacy tracks of the Iran and Israel-Palestine issues since the 1990s. Europe has always believed that history, geography and trade relations give it a right to play a central role in the Middle East. But the more the EU attempted to assert itself as a player on these key regional issues during the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies, the more it was marginalised, rebuffed or obstructed.
Whether driven by ideology or competition or both, the deep-rooted differences that divide the US and the EU on the world stage have been evident since the end of the Cold War. While the upcoming US mid-term elections may mark the beginning of the end of the Trump era, these differences will continue to fuel US-EU tensions in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and elsewhere long after the current president has left office.
- The writer is professor of International Politics and director of the Small States and Energy Studies Programs at Georgetown University in Qatar @RoryDavidMiller