“Eastern Europe is no longer at the heart of American foreign policy. ... People question whether NATO would be willing and able to come to [its] defense.”

You might expect to hear these views in Brussels today, with European leaders spitting tacks over being snubbed by Donald Trump as he prepares Ukraine talks with Vladimir Putin while shifting more of the burden of continental security onto his allies.

Yet those words were written over 15 years ago in a 2009 letter to Trump predecessor Barack Obama, by leading figures from former Iron Curtain countries like Poland, Bulgaria and Czech Republic. Even back then, the fear was that the U.S.’s push for a reset with Russia while pivoting to Asia would make Europe’s Eastern flank more vulnerable. Today, when the Trump administration says it’s unlikely that Ukraine will return to its pre-2014 borders and that the bigger security priority is China, one imagines U.S. allies feeling a sense of deja vu as well as anger.

In fact, there are so many past examples of “America First” being “America as Usual” that it’s surprising to see Europeans so surprised. In 2013, hours before the U.S. and France were set to lead a combined strike against Putin’s Syrian ally Bashar Assad, Obama left Paris in the lurch with a last-minute U-turn. In 2021, the Biden administration’s chaotic unilateral pullout of troops from Afghanistan betrayed and infuriated European allies like France that had for years been mocked for a supposed lack of military resolve. These events emboldened Putin and fueled expectations of a post-American world. Trump’s push for his own Russia reset, along with his tariff threats on a $1.3 trillion U.S.-European Union trading relationship, will do the same.

The question is therefore not whether the U.S. will throw its allies under the bus, but what EU leaders are finally going to do about it when it happens.

Outraged demands for a seat at Putin and Trump’s table, however justified, aren’t enough. They reinforce U.S. views that Europeans are followers and are as unprepared for peace as they were for war. Like a diplomatic backseat driver, the EU has supported Ukraine financially, militarily and morally without defining its own plan or interests for fear of disunity. That may have helped keep up sanctions pressure on Moscow and military aid to Kyiv. Yet the cost has been an absence of strategy in anticipation of Trump or a clear policy to bolster morale among war-weary voters who have been turfing out governments they associate with high wartime inflation and a weak economy.

It’s as though European leaders just assumed the early wave of public support for Ukraine would last forever, much like applause for nurses during COVID-19. Instead, across many countries, backing for a ceasefire in exchange for territorial concessions has grown. Financial markets are already taking Trump’s cue and betting on the rewards, including falling energy prices. EU diplomats worry that years of talking about a more assertive Europe have led to complacency, comparing it to a call for retirement saving that gets roundly ignored. Initiatives like the broader European Political Community or the opening of EU accession talks with Ukraine have failed to change the game.

Given the urgent need to define and defend their interests and Ukraine’s, it’s time leaders set aside pan-EU consensus-building and forged nimbler coalitions. A grouping of (non-EU) U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Poland would bring together Europe’s two nuclear powers, its biggest economy, an influential Trump-compatible government and its biggest defense spender relative to gross domestic product.

The EU will also have to make a concerted push on defense — its biggest weakness and biggest bone of contention with Washington — to show it can act strategically without U.S. marching orders. That will mean not getting bogged down in a German-centered debate about money or a French-centered debate about leadership. Given the trillions of dollars needed to prepare for a postwar Ukraine, maximum flexibility has to be the name of the game: EU budget rules could be more lenient, crisis-era bailout funds could be reinvented and more borrowing could be encouraged for initiatives like air defense.

Europe has good reason to worry about the outcome of Trump-Putin talks, as my colleague Marc Champion has written. But it’s also stronger than it looks. More than a quarter-century after the EU set off on its own geopolitical path, America First can’t just mean Europe as Usual.

Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist writing about the future of money and the future of Europe. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.