U.S. President Donald Trump (center) delivers a speech next to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg (left) at NATO headquarters in Brussels on May 25, 2017 | Mandel Ngan/Getty Images Trump confirms Europe’s worst fears Worried continental leaders discover that the US president’s brash and unpredictable persona is not an act.

BRATISLAVA — If “hope dies last,” as a favorite German aphorism goes, Europe needs to find a Plan B for dealing with Donald Trump.

For months, Europe’s leaders quietly hoped the American president’s bark wasn’t as bad as his bite, that his cartoonish public persona was just that — a caricature that would give way to a more sober, statesmanlike approach once he took office.

No more.

Trump’s speech at NATO’s new Brussels headquarters on Thursday, in which he again berated U.S. allies for not spending enough on defense and suggested they “owe massive amounts” in back payments, confirmed to Europe's leadership that Trump doesn’t just play the Ugly American on TV.

His characterization of Germany as “bad” for selling too many cars in the U.S. (many of which are made there) betrayed what some European officials say is at best a crude understanding of transatlantic commerce and at worst, shocking ignorance.

For Europe, any remaining embers of hope that Trump could be reasoned with were doused in Brussels.

“It took him just a couple of hours to undo all of the goodwill Pence and Mattis and others in the administration had built with Europe over the past couple of months,” a recently retired senior U.S. defense official said, referring to a diplomatic offensive that included trips by Vice President Mike Pence and Defense Secretary James Mattis to reassure European allies after Trump’s inauguration.

While European leaders expected their discussions with Trump on trade and climate change this week to be difficult, they thought the security discussion around NATO would be less controversial. The U.S. president recently tempered the more provocative statements about the alliance he’d made before taking office — in particular by reversing his assertion that NATO was “obsolete.”

Instead of applying more rhetorical salve to that wound in Brussels, however, Trump appeared to be reaching for the salt.

“Over the last eight years, the United States spent more on defense than all other NATO countries combined,” he declared, as the leaders of other NATO member countries looked on uncomfortably.

Doubts reaffirmed

Further provocation may not have been his intention. Administration officials insisted Trump was there to build bridges. But allies hoping for an unconditional commitment from the U.S. president to come to the aid of any NATO member who comes under attack were forced to make do with a less categorical pledge: “We will never forsake the friends who stood by our side.”

Instead of reassurance, many European officials took Trump’s public and private comments in Brussels as reaffirmation of their longstanding doubts. For the legions of Trump skeptics in Europe’s capitals, the combative atmosphere marked an “I-told-you-so” moment.

That Trump views the western alliance more in financial terms than as a community of shared values unnerved even the EU’s most pro-American voices.

“My main message to president Trump was that what gives our cooperation and friendship its deepest meaning are fundamental Western values like freedom, human rights, respect for human dignity,” European Council President Donald Tusk said. “The greatest task today is the consolidation of the whole free world around those values, not just interest. Values and principles first.”

That Tusk, a former Polish prime minister whose country’s security depends in no small part on the U.S., saw fit to lecture Trump on democratic values, spoke volumes.

Tusk also raised alarm bells about Russia, saying he couldn’t say with certainty that he and Trump share “a common position” on Moscow.

“I am maybe less optimistic when it comes to President [Vladimir] Putin's plans and intentions,” Tusk said at the G7 meeting in Sicily on Friday. “I'm less sentimental."

Fears over Russia

What worries Europe is that Trump may be softening his position on the sanctions imposed against Russia for annexing Crimea. In the run-up to the G7 summit in Sicily, there was no indication that the administration’s support for continued sanctions until Russia had implemented the Minsk accords had changed. But on Thursday, Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn said the president was still considering the issue.

“Right now, we don’t have a position," Cohn said.

After making the comments and registering the European consternation, Cohn tried to walk them back.

“If anything, we would probably look to get tougher on Russia,” he declared at the G7 on Friday.

The contradictory signals appeared to confirm one of Europe's chief criticisms of the Trump administration — that it's often difficult to discern what they really think. Europeans complain that the Trump administration sends mixed messages, making it difficult for them to know how to react or even distinguish between policy and rumination.

As a result, the transatlantic relationship, long an anchor of international cooperation, has become unsteady.

While the EU establishment in Brussels and the capitals of Western Europe view Trump with a jaundiced eye, some of the bloc's newer members to the east are less distrustful. At least one leader in the region took a message of solidarity from Trump's words in recent days.

“Let’s be honest. In the months since the U.S. election, many of us were worried about what to expect,” Slovak President Andrej Kiska said upon returning home from the NATO summit, adding, “we finally delivered good news.”

"To feel safe, we need trust in collective will," Kiska said, stressing NATO now had that assurance.

The contradictory signals appeared to confirm one of Europe's chief criticisms of the Trump administration — that it's often difficult to discern what they really think.

Other leaders in the region responded to Trump’s assertion that many members aren’t pulling their weight by highlighting their contributions to NATO’s security initiatives.

“We are not only consumers, but providers of security,” said Polish President Andrzej Duda, who was speaking after Kiska at Bratislava’s Globsec security conference on Friday.

Not surprisingly, Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán, dismissed his EU colleagues latest handwringing over Trump, predicting that “everything will be fine.”

In other words, Europe’s capitals are as divided on Trump as they are any number of other issues.

That said, the most influential voices, those in Brussels, Berlin and Paris, remain wary of him, if not outright suspicious, a view that promises to shape the Continent’s relations with the new administration on issues from security to trade.