A man looks at the city skyline from the observation deck of the Varso Tower, one of Europe's tallest skyscrapers, in Warsaw in October, 2025.SERGEI GAPON/AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. versus Europe. One has become, in the words of President Donald Trump’s administration, an economically dysfunctional place of violent threats and no-go streets, restricted freedoms and censored media, escalating crises over immigration and a non-growing population whose unwise political choices threaten the ruin of a once-great civilization.

And then there’s Europe.

True, the old continent is not without its own challenges. Its major economies are only now recovering from a lengthy downturn provoked by the transition away from Russian energy, a shortage of public investment, and Mr. Trump’s tariffs. Its countries face serious political threats from extremist opposition parties backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mr. Trump’s circle. And in recent months, the Trump administration itself has targeted Europe, using the white-supremacist language of its National Security Strategy and Mr. Trump’s menacing Davos speech to paint the continent as a threat, a failure, a place too weak to withstand a threatened U.S. invasion.

China, U.K. to work on ‘strategic partnership,’ Xi says after meeting Starmer

In fact, this is a profound moment of continental reinvention and newfound unity – a moment in which, as we watch the United States become the........

© The Globe and Mail