As Europe wanes, the distance between it and America grows

According to Pew International polls, Trump is now intensely disliked in Europe. His endless spats over European trade, the costs of NATO, and differing approaches to Vladimir Putin’s Russia acerbated already tense U.S.–European relations. But Trump neither created European or transatlantic crises nor can be of much help in solving them. In part, they are Western in origin and to a degree shared by all Western allies, but mostly they are innate to Europe and self-induced.

We often refer to the “West” of nearly 1.5 billion people without really defining it or appreciating just how predominant Europe should be in all …