America’s Long Fight With Europe and the UK—And Why It’s Heating Up Again
A clear history of US strains with Europe and Britain—and why today’s fights over defense, trade, and tech rules are converging.
The United States’ relationship with Europe looks stable in the way a bridge looks stable right before a storm: the structure still holds, but the stress fractures are easier to see.
The headline tension is familiar—security, trade, and values—but the modern version is sharper. Washington now treats alliances less like permanent architecture and more like negotiable contracts. Europe, meanwhile, has learned that regulation can function like power, especially against American technology and capital.
This trend isn’t new. The transatlantic relationship has always been a cycle of dependence and resentment, gratitude and suspicion. What’s new is that the old glue—cheap confidence, surplus defense capacity, and rising shared prosperity—has thinned.
The story turns on whether the alliance can be renegotiated without turning into coercion.
Key Points
US-Europe tensions have never been a single “good era” followed by a single “bad era”; they rise whenever economics, security, and sovereignty collide at the same time.
The UK’s “special relationship” has often worked as a bridge, but it can also become a pressure valve—absorbing friction from both Washington and Europe.
The post-1945 bargain (US security umbrella, European rebuilding, shared rules) is under strain as the US pivots attention and resources, and Europe asserts regulatory sovereignty.
Modern flashpoints increasingly sit in “gray zones”: tech regulation, content rules, sanctions, tariffs, industrial policy, and extraterritorial law.
The next phase is likely to be shaped less by grand speeches and more by enforcement tools: trade retaliation, legal instruments, defense procurement, and market access.
Background
America’s early relationship with Europe was defined by distance, commerce, and insult. The fledgling United States desired to engage in trade without becoming entangled in imperial conflicts. European powers wanted the profits of trade without accepting American independence as a full political equal.
The first lasting friction point was neutral rights at sea. Britain and France treated American ships as pieces on a chessboard during their wars. American anger hardened into policy: resist entanglement, build leverage, and punish interference. Each side of the Atlantic remembers the War of 1812 differently, serving as a crucial test for American sovereignty and a reminder that both the UK and the US could still misinterpret each other's intentions.
By the late 1800s, the US had grown into an industrial power with a different instinct: Europe was no longer just a trading partner; it was a strategic variable. The US oscillated between isolation and intervention, depending on whether European conflict threatened American prosperity or security.
Two world wars forced the deepest alignment. America entered late, helped decide outcomes, and emerged as the decisive financial and military pillar of the postwar order. After 1945, the transatlantic bargain became explicit: US protection through NATO, European recovery through integration and trade, and a shared commitment to rules that reduced the risk of another continental catastrophe.
But even during the Cold War’s “unity,” tensions never disappeared. They simply moved. Britain learned during Suez that the US could veto its imperial instincts. France periodically resisted American dominance. Europe and the US clashed over missiles, markets, and methods, even while sharing the same enemy.
After the Soviet collapse, the relationship drifted into something looser: cooperation without existential urgency. That made disagreements more visible—especially over interventions (the Balkans, Iraq), surveillance, financial regulation, and trade.
Analysis
The Alliance Bargain Keeps Changing—and Nobody Agrees on the Price
The US has historically offered Europe something irreplaceable: security guarantees backed by real capability. Europe has offered the US something equally valuable: legitimacy, bases, markets, and political alignment that makes American power feel less unilateral.
The problem is that both sides now question the return on investment. In Washington, alliance costs are easier to count than alliance benefits, and domestic politics rewards visible toughness over patient reassurance. In Europe, reliance on US protection feels riskier when US priorities shift and when American politics swings sharply between administrations.
One plausible scenario is a “managed renegotiation,” where Europe increases defense capability in visible ways and the US recommits with clearer boundaries. Signposts would include sustained increases in European defense procurement, faster industrial scaling of munitions, and NATO messaging that emphasizes capability rather than symbolism.
Another scenario is “transactional drift,” where cooperation continues but only after repeated public threats and bilateral bargains. Signposts would include more conditional language around commitments, more country-by-country deals, and greater use of tariffs or sanctions as negotiating tools inside the alliance.
Trade Fights Are Back—Because Security and Economics Have Merged
For decades, trade disputes were treated as separate from security. That separation is collapsing. Industrial policy, export controls, sanctions, and tariffs now operate as instruments of statecraft.
Europe fears a squeeze between US demands and global competition. The US fears European rules that function like discrimination—especially when they land most heavily on American firms. Meanwhile, both sides worry about supply chain dependence, and both want to protect strategic industries.
A plausible scenario is a “retaliation spiral,” where trade tools become routine responses to political disputes. Signposts would include formal trade investigations, sharper public threats tied to regulatory enforcement, and countermeasures aimed at services rather than goods.
A second scenario is “selective deconfliction,” where both sides carve out protected lanes—defense supply chains, energy security, and certain technologies—while letting other sectors fight. Signposts would include carve-outs in tariff packages and new joint industrial initiatives that look more like wartime procurement than free trade.
Tech Regulation Has Become a Proxy War Over Sovereignty
Europe’s great advantage is not aircraft carriers. It is rule-setting. When the EU regulates privacy, competition, content moderation, or artificial intelligence, it can shape global corporate behavior because access to Europe’s market is too valuable to ignore.
America’s instinct is different. Washington tends to treat technology as both an economic engine and a strategic asset. When European regulation constrains US firms, US politics often frames it as a strategic challenge, not just a legal debate.
This is why modern tensions can look culturally charged—speech, misinformation, platform power—but the underlying mechanism is simpler: who gets to set the rules of the digital economy, and who pays the compliance cost?
A plausible scenario is “regulatory hardening,” where Europe accelerates enforcement and the US responds with trade retaliation or targeted restrictions. Signposts would include faster timelines for enforcement actions, public language about “discrimination,” and explicit linkage between regulation and tariffs.
The UK’s Role: Bridge, Amplifier, or Escape Hatch
The UK sits in a structurally awkward position. The UK has a tight connection to US security strategy, a deep economic connection to Europe, and political exposure to both. At its best, that makes Britain a translator—able to reduce misunderstanding and keep cooperation moving. At its worst, it makes Britain the place where pressure accumulates.
The UK also faces a practical constraint: outside the EU, it has less ability to shape the regulatory environment that increasingly defines Europe’s power. That means London can be caught responding to rules it did not write while still being expected to influence outcomes.
One scenario is “bridge diplomacy,” where the UK acts as a stabilizer during disputes, preventing single issues from contaminating the whole relationship. Signposts would include UK-led frameworks on defense industrial cooperation, careful choreography around trade, and coordinated messaging on shared threats.
Another scenario is “squeeze politics,” where the UK becomes the arena for conflicting demands—trade alignment with Europe and security alignment with the US—forcing painful compromises. Signposts would include sharper disputes over standards, tariffs, and market access that land directly on UK firms.
Russia, China, and the Two-Front Problem
Europe’s core security fear remains Russia. America’s larger strategic fear is China. The alliance holds best when both sides believe the other is prioritizing the threat that matters most to them.
That balance is fragile. If Europe perceives that the US may reduce its commitment to Europe, it will take precautionary measures. If the US believes Europe is economically soft on China, Washington applies pressure. Both dynamics create resentment, and resentment invites domestic politics to weaponize alliance disputes.
The plausible outcomes are not a neat “split” but a gradual reweighting: fewer shared assumptions, more explicit bargaining, and more frequent moments where allies talk past one another.
What Most Coverage Misses
The hinge is that US power in Europe is mostly about security, while European power over the US is increasingly about regulation and market access.
That changes incentives. When Europe tightens rules that hit American firms, Washington is tempted to respond with trade or security pressure. Europe responds to US threats of tariffs or conditional commitments by hardening its regulatory posture or retaliating economically. You end up with a modern form of intra-alliance coercion: not tanks, but tools.
Two signposts would confirm this dynamic in the coming weeks and months. First, there will be a clearer connection between tech enforcement and trade retaliation. Second, alliance negotiations that quietly shift from “values talk” to “enforcement talk”—what will be fined, what will be taxed, what will be withheld, and on what timeline.
What Happens Next
The short-term risk is not a dramatic break. It is accumulated mistrust, because mistrust makes every new dispute harder to contain.
Over the upcoming weeks, monitor the framing of disagreements as isolated policy disputes or as tests of loyalty. The difference matters because loyalty framing invites escalation, while policy framing invites bargaining.
Over months and years, the bigger shift is structural: the alliance may evolve from a shared postwar identity into a managed partnership defined by capability, compliance, and cost-sharing. That is not automatically bad, but it is less forgiving. The price of miscalculation rises because there is less emotional surplus to absorb mistakes.
The main consequence is simple: bargaining replaces assumption, because the old bargain no longer feels self-evident to either side.
Real-World Impact
A US-based software firm selling into Europe budgets more for legal and compliance than for new hires, delaying launches and shifting investment toward less regulated markets.
A European manufacturer reliant on US components faces sudden price jumps when tariffs are threatened or imposed, forcing rushed supplier changes that reduce quality and increase downtime.
Opportunities for a UK defense contractor grow in one quarter and stall in the next, as multi-year programs rely on political trust as much as engineering.
As "normal trade" becomes increasingly conditional, a logistics manager in Northern Europe dedicates more time to preparing for customs and sanctions friction.
The Next Transatlantic Bargain
The US and Europe don't fight because they are strangers, the last 250 years show. They fight because they are entangled.
The relationship swings between partnership and irritation depending on whether power feels mutual or one-sided. When one side believes it carries the load, it demands gratitude. When the other side believes it pays the price, it demands autonomy.
Now, the pivotal point is whether the alliance can modernize its commitments, including security, trade, technology, and rules, without escalating every disagreement into a threat. Watch for enforcement tools replacing rhetoric and for whether leaders choose containment over escalation. If they fail, historians may describe this era not as a collapse, but as the moment the West stopped assuming itself.
