Don't lead Europe by triggering its fears

For a long time, Europe's strategic chattering class has been wondering what would happen if you took the US out of Europe's security architecture.

Optimists assumed that the absence of the great protector would lead to increased European cooperation and a strengthened sense of strategic togetherness.

Pessimists reckoned that the opposite would happen: take the external stabiliser out of the notoriously unstable European political market and what you get is a return to Europe's ...