The tragedy of the "Vestalgia"

European leaders were relieved when US President Donald Trump left the recent NATO summit in Ankara. Despite a few unpleasant episodes - in which he reiterated his desire to annex Greenland and, completely pointlessly, demanded a halt to all trade with Spain - the gathering passed without major disasters.

Most importantly, Trump did not announce a significant withdrawal of American troops from Europe or any move toward the United States’ withdrawal from the alliance. He even offered warm words of encouragement to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and promised to grant Ukraine a license to domestically produce Patriot air defense missiles. Trump himself ended by declaring that “love is in the air.”

But despite the good set design and carefully staged imagery, the summit was an absurd spectacle. NATO leaders celebrated promises to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, even though it is clear to everyone that this arbitrarily set figure means almost nothing unless accompanied by a serious discussion of actual military capabilities. That percentage was practically pulled out of a hat last year to appease Trump.

In the months leading up to the summit, those same leaders feared that Trump might pull the United States out of NATO or drastically reduce the American military presence in Europe, leaving the continent at the mercy of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. That is why so much energy was invested in preparing for a summit that was to be free of any unforeseen moments. The fear that the unpredictable American president might use the gathering to undermine the Alliance was almost palpable. When the moment arrived, European leaders were reportedly praising Trump, with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte leading the wave of flattery.

Some commentators believe that saving NATO and preserving the Western alliance was worth such self-abasement. But by bowing to Trump and nostalgically recalling the “good old days” of transatlantic relations, European leaders are risking much more than their own dignity.

It is enough to recall the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall. After the initial euphoria, many parts of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) were left virtually desolate, as residents moved out, while property prices rose under the pressure of wealthier immigrants from West Germany. The result was a wave of nostalgia for a lost world, immortalized in films such as Good Bye, Lenin!

The term coined to describe this feeling was Ostalgie (“ostalgia,” or nostalgia for East Germany), and it has shaped German politics and culture for nearly four decades. While many East German writers have criticized such sentimentality, believing it trivializes decades of repression in East Germany, others see it as a key to understanding the problems that still plague the eastern states today. There is a widespread refusal to accept that the world has changed, an ingrained habit of relying on outside help, and, occasionally, a penchant for making oneself look ridiculous—as when some East Germans repeat Russian propaganda narratives about Ukraine.

Ironically, Europe's problem today is not only that Ostalgie has hindered the development of East Germany, but also that a new disease has gripped Europe - Westalgia ("vestalgia", nostalgia for the West). At the Ankara summit, it was visible in full glory.

Vestalgia has several key features. The first is a refusal to acknowledge that the world has moved on. By acting as if American security guarantees are still as strong as they were during the Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush administrations, and by continuing to buy American weapons, European leaders are trying to turn back the clock. A much more sensible strategy would be to start from the fact that the United States has fundamentally changed. Even if a Democrat enters the White House in January 2029, America’s withdrawal from international commitments will not stop.

Those who want to turn back the clock naturally view the past through rose-colored glasses, even though some elements of the post-Cold War order were not in Europe's interest. First of all, Europe's almost total dependence on American power has clearly had an infantilizing effect. Even when caught between a predatory Russia, a fickle United States, and a China that increasingly openly uses coercion as an instrument of policy, Europeans still tend to downplay their own strength and underestimate their own influence.

Another characteristic of vestalities is a tendency to “smuggle” at someone else’s expense, or to rely on other people’s resources. Just as East Germans after reunification became accustomed to transfers and subsidies from the West—including the infamous Solidaritätszuschlag, or “solidarity tax”—so Europeans became accustomed to the United States financing their security. The result was that for years Europe underinvested not only in defense, but also in its own industrial base, technological sovereignty, and energy independence.

Instead of complaining that the citizens of the United States no longer want to bear the burden of European defense, and instead of spending billions of dollars to satisfy Trump’s vanity, Europeans would do far more good to have a serious conversation about how, if necessary, they could wage a high-intensity war themselves. Instead of arbitrarily allocating a certain percentage of GDP to defense, they should carefully assess where their real military capabilities are lacking and align their investments with their own needs. Public coffers are under pressure everywhere, but spending on weapons will be much easier to justify if it doesn’t come across as yet another attempt to flatter Trump.

The third characteristic of vestalities is that Europeans often make no attempt to hide their subservience to the American president. That is why they are not taken seriously by Trump, Putin, or Chinese President Xi Jinping. If there is a man who probably respects Mark Rutte less than he respects himself, it is Trump. Europe will gain respect in the world only when it shows that it is ready to rely on its own strength and represent its own interests.

Unlike Ostalgia, which was a social phenomenon that emerged from below, Vestalgia is a project of political elites. Of course, European politicians need to calm an anxious electorate and allay its fears. But if Europe is to succeed in the 21st century, they will have to stop selling nostalgia and finally turn to the future.

The author is the director of the European Council for Foreign Affairs

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2026.