It doesn't matter if Trump or Harris win. Europe has already lost.
 
So long, America! It’s been real.
 
As U.S. voters choose a new president, Europeans are anxiously waiting to see if the victor will be Donald Trump — a nightmare for many — or Kamala Harris, who’s seen as much better for the transatlantic relationship.
 
Here’s a tip from a lifelong Euro-American: Worry less about the U.S. presidency and more about how Europe can hack it alone on a dangerous global stage. The uncomfortable truth is that American interest in Europe has been dwindling for the past 30 years. And neither candidate is likely to bring back the transatlantic heyday of the early 1990s.

That’s not to say this election won’t affect Europe. One candidate is an admirer of Vladimir Putin who wants to impose 100 percent tariffs on European goods and vows to end the Ukraine war the day after his election. His reported threats to pull Washington out of NATO should be taken seriously because, this time around, Trump probably wouldn’t be surrounded by “Deep State” restrainers. Harris, by contrast, pledges continuity in the U.S. global leadership role and has a Europhile adviser, Phil Gordon, in whom Europe places high hopes.
 
But if you take a step back, the bigger picture is this: Europe just isn’t as important to Washington as it once was.
 
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For Jérémie Gallon, a Frenchman who worked in Washington and authored a biography of Henry Kissinger, the waning of U.S. interest in Europe isn’t a bad thing, per se. But it is, in his view, an incontrovertible fact linked to a turnover in Washington’s foreign policy elite. “There was an entire generation of senior officials who had organic links to Europe, either because their parents emigrated, or because they were refugees from Europe. Kissinger, [former national security adviser Zbigniew] Brzezinski, [former Secretary of State Madeleine] Albright. They were all European on some level,” said Gallon.
 
The formal shift away from Europe started under former President Barack Obama, who drove the Pivot to Asia agenda, said Gallon. But Obama merely pushed along a process already in motion, which may well now accelerate. “Now we have a new generation rising which reflects American demographics,” he said. “They [U.S. government officials or diplomats] are either linked to the Spanish-speaking world, or they look toward Asia. Those with links to Europe are simply less present.”
 
The downgrading of Europe in the psyche of American elites is reflected in educational and career choices. Mastering Mandarin shows more ambition for an aspiring diplomat than, say, French or even Russian. Studying Europe as a geopolitical entity, by contrast, is a niche pursuit. Gallon took note: “At Harvard, the South Asian studies building is big, bright and modern, clearly a prestigious department. The Center for European Studies is just what you would imagine: small, kind of decrepit.”
 
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For Trump, who sees NATO as a burden, or his running mate JD Vance, who equates deterrence of Russia with “warmongering,” America’s overseas presence seems like an annoyance, a distraction from domestic priorities like deporting migrants or keeping prices low.  

As the clock ticks down to Nov. 5, Europeans are grappling with the prospect of further U.S. disengagement. If Harris wins, the thinking goes, the White House will keep backing Ukraine but ultimately steer Kyiv toward a deal with Russia in the not-too-distant future. Investment in NATO would remain consistent, though the underlying trend would be further prioritization of the Indo-Pacific over Europe.
 
If Trump wins, there is a growing sense that all bets are off. Some believe his administration would behave rationally, or at least rationally by his standards, and not flip the table on NATO, and that he’d pursue a deal on the Ukraine war that would allow both sides to claim victory (for example, by giving more weapons to Kyiv and threatening to lift all restrictions on their use, in exchange for Putin ending offensive operations and getting territory).  
 
But not everyone is so sure. “We want to believe Trump will be rational but nobody can be sure,” said a senior EU diplomat granted anonymity to talk frankly about U.S. politics. “The adults in the room aren’t likely to come back.”  
 
Caught off guard in 2016, EU officials now say they are getting ready for anything Trump could throw at them. Diplomats and trade officials promise they are ready to hit back “fast and hard” if Trump tries to start a trade war with the EU.  Yet this sort of trade tit-for-tat is, arguably, the easy part when it comes to envisioning Europe’s long-term relationship with the United States. Far more challenging is planning for a future in which the U.S. will be significantly and permanently less engaged in protecting Europe.
 
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The tune has been taken up by the European Commission in Brussels, which wants Europe to be more independent on tech, defense and raw materials. But the truth is that when it comes to envisioning a future with less America, the bloc is deeply divided. As enthusiastic as the proponents of European “strategic autonomy” may be, there is no momentum behind the creation of a European army or a European nuclear umbrella.
 
Some countries — namely the Nordics and some Central and Eastern nations — see the push from Paris as a ploy to bolster France’s companies. They regard proposals for a stronger Europe with unified strategic and military goals as a Trojan horse that would only deliver submission to the larger states, i.e. France and Germany. For others, Putin’s Russia is simply an existential threat. Losing America’s protective umbrella is simply unimaginable. It would expose them to the brunt of Russia’s nuclear and conventional arsenal, with no credible counterweight.  
 
Some believe these attitudes would have to change in the event of a Trump victory. But the alternative is just as likely — that faced with further U.S. disengagement, EU countries will retreat into an “every nation for itself” mentality, regarding one another with greater suspicion and seeking an edge via deals with other superpowers, namely Russia and China.  
 
“Without the United States, Europe is lost,” wrote French analyst Nicolas Tenzer last year. Far more dangerous is the risk that Europe won’t acknowledge that it’s already lost, and that it remains motionless and paralyzed as a result.

A Woman Died After Being Told It Would Be a “Crime” to Intervene in Her Miscarriage at a Texas Hospital
Josseli Barnica is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors delayed emergency care. She’d told her husband that the medical team said it couldn’t act until the fetal heartbeat stopped.

The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.
 
But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”
 
For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother prayed for doctors to help her get home to her daughter; all the while, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria.
 
Three days after she delivered, Barnica died of an infection.