ArcaMax

PARIS — U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration routinely treat Europe like it’s a golddigger who always forgets her purse at home. Being the self-appointed alpha, he’s only too keen to remind her how much of a drag she is on his wallet. He sighs and lets the whole restaurant know that he’s “protecting” her.

Well, guess what? Europe has finally excused herself to the powder room, looked in the mirror and realized that she can cover her own tab. She’s come back to the table with her card in hand and announced that she’s splitting the check and will pay for her own meal from now on, thanks. The result? A “buy European” defense strategy. And suddenly it’s Trump who sounds like he was counting on her subsidizing his dessert.

“The United States fully supports European rearmament and a revitalization of the European defense industrial base,” the Pentagon wrote to the European Union last week. “However, these efforts must not weaken the transatlantic defense industrial base, jeopardize our collective ability to deliver equipment to our warfighters, or pose risks to shared economic benefits.”

The memo insists that “European preference … would undermine European rearmament and weaken NATO interoperability and readiness.” In other words, sure, you can be independent, sweetie, but only in a performative sort of way.

Let’s face it, the only thing “buy European” undermines is the revenue stream of the U.S. military-industrial complex. America insists on “buying American” as formal policy, but when Europe tries it on, suddenly it’s accused of sabotaging the relationship.

The reaction exposes the real reason behind Team Trump’s push for Europe to double its defense spending. It wasn’t about safety, but rather about supersizing the order. The bigger the platter, the bigger the portion for U.S. contractors, courtesy of European taxpayers who are already coughing up more after swapping cheap Russian energy for premium- priced American imports.

But Trump always acts like he’s the one being stiffed. “We’re protecting them. They’re not protecting us. … They should up their 2% to 5%,” he said last year of primarily European allies’ defense spending as a percentage of their GDP.

“I think they have been freeloading. The European Union has been absolutely terrible to us,” he added shortly thereafter.

“I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s pathetic,” War Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote in a leaked group chat with other administration officials.

More recently, Trump threatened to militarily invade Europe — specifically Greenland, a Danish territory under the U.S.-led NATO security umbrella — but only to better protect it … from invasion. “And the fact is, no nation or group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland other than the United States,” Trump said during a speech in Europe at the World Economic Forum, repeatedly citing Russian and Chinese Arctic threats.

That’s less “concerned boyfriend” than control freakish “I’ll hold onto your house keys for safekeeping.”

Europe wasn’t buying Trump’s possessive partner routine. “Let no one be mistaken in thinking that the true intention of the U.S. was simply to confront a geopolitical threat. It was not the Russians or the Chinese who posed the threat,” French President Emmanuel Macron recently told El País.

Macron has been running around Europe lately like a friend whispering, “You know you deserve better, right?” He’s floated the idea that Washington represents a risk in more ways than one. Recently, he’s been calling out the myth that American social media platforms are some kind of haven for free expression: “Some of them claim to be in favor of free speech. We are in favor of free algorithms, totally transparent,” Macron said. “Free speech is pure bulls**t if nobody knows how you are guided through this.”

The French president is also acting like Europe needs to stop using America’s Netflix account, almost literally, spearheading a sovereign European tech ecosystem, having already decided to ditch government use of Microsoft Teams and Zoom.

Trump’s Greenland theatrics have handed Europe a makeover moment. The Russian threat has been the scary background music for the past four years, but this is the record scratch that has incited real soul searching across the board. Gone is the obsession with Russian President Vladimir Putin barreling into downtown Paris in a tank by 2030, the scenario long invoked to keep wallets open. Even the establishment scolds who have tried to frighten taxpayers into financing an arms buffet have found a new focus.

Europeans tend to take Trump seriously, particularly when he keeps rattling sabers from Venezuela to Iran, and Canada to Cuba. His cheerleading of Israel’s actions in Gaza, in the same breath as he gushes over his likeminded mega-donors, reinforces the impression that foreign policy is less about romance than transaction.

Europe seems to be done waiting around for the relationship to be weaponized against it, to the point of insisting on separate accounts. Enough to push Macron to resume talks with Moscow, “because we have European interests to defend. And I’m not going to delegate them to anyone. Not even to the U.S.,” he told El País.

It took Canada’s prime m inister, Mark Carney, standing up at Davos last month and delivering a speech giving Western nations permission to prioritize their own citizens. That was all it took for Macron to swap the Napoleon Bonaparte role playing and Russia obsession for Charles de Gaulle energy with a focus on carving out sovereignty independent of superpowers.

Now Europe seems keen to adjust its posture. Step one: realize that you don’t have to bankroll someone else’s defense industry. Check. Step two: accept that doubling your order to impress the loudest guy in the room is futile. Step three: remember that gross domestic product isn’t a masculinity contest scored in missiles. Trump’s manospheric defense policy casts him as the alpha, forever picking up the check and complaining about it. Europe’s glow-up isn’t anti-Americanism. It’s a sovereignty move as it attempts to redefine security outside of a toxic patron-client dynamic.