When European leaders were blindsided in January by Donald Trump’s unilateral abduction of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, their immediate response was to hedge their bets. Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, affirmed that the principles of international law must always be respected, but also asserted that Mr Maduro lacked legitimacy. As a new Trump-compliant leadership emerged in Caracas, Europe’s attention drifted to crises closer to home.
The dilemmas and dangers posed by Mr Trump’s war of choice in Iran – again initiated with no attempt to consult allies or gain US congressional approval – are not so easily swerved. The US president has berated and mocked Sir Keir Starmer over a lack of full-throated support for his latest military adventure. He has threatened Spain with a trade embargo, after its prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, described the joint US-Israeli assault on Tehran as “unjustified and dangerous”, and refused to sanction the use of military bases. Even Mr Trump’s close ideological ally, the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is under pressure from an electorate deeply hostile to involvement in another open-ended Middle East conflict with unpredictable consequences.
