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Team

Zaki Laïdi photo

Zaki Laïdi

Zaki Laïdi, a former special advisor to the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Policy and Security, is a professor at Sciences Po.

Articles

US President Donald Trump in the White House in Washington, DC, on Feb. 11, 2025.

Europe can no longer view Trump’s foreign policy through a binary lens

by Zaki Laïdi
Like people in other regions, Europeans face the challenge of discerning what motives underlie U.S. President Donald Trump’s verbal provocations. After all, what Trump really wants is often unclear, which makes it difficult to devise a strategically effective response. Traditionally, Europeans have interpreted American foreign policy through a binary lens: either a U.S. administration is Atlanticist, in which case all is well (for the most part); or it is isolationist, which spells trouble. But