Europeans got blue blinders in wake of midterm sweep

The Democratic sweep of the midterm elections has been greeted with a wary relief across Europe. After two years of President Donald Trump's tariffs, threats to annex Greenland and scolding of European NATO allies on defense spending, many European politicians see the Republican defeat as a welcome course correction.

Yet the reactions also expose the contradictions of the European Union’s own foreign policy, particularly toward the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

Rather than examining the causes of Trump’s defeat, EU leaders have chosen to interpret it as a vindication of their own ideological beliefs.

The EU high representative for foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, unsurprisingly, saw in the election a hope that the new Congress will strengthen transatlantic unity and support for Ukraine, presumably reversing Trump’s insufficient devotion to the Ukrainian cause, which she criticized earlier.

In a similar vein, Christel Schaldemose, a vice president of the European Parliament, voiced “cautious optimism” that the results could “benefit Ukraine and the green transition.” Spain’s center-left prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, meanwhile, interpreted the vote as a “rejection of inequality, hatred, sexism and climate denial.”

Yet there is no evidence that the GOP debacle was caused primarily by Trump’s perceived lack of support for Ukraine or that it was a vindication of a progressive social agenda.

Rather, the polls, including Associated Press-NORC, New York Times/Siena, Fox News, and Gallup, consistently showed that, on average, around 75% to 80% said the “cost of living” (gas prices) and Iran war played an important role in how they planned to vote. In exit polls, 74% of voters said the war was a “crucial” or “major” factor in their decision Tuesday. Vice President JD Vance himself rated the Iran war as the top reason for the Republican wipeout.

Those in Europe who quickly seized on the anti-war sentiment were, revealingly, not the centrists opposed to Trump for ideological reasons, but his erstwhile admirers on the nationalist right.

Jordan Bardella, leader of France's National Rally, and Alice Weidel, the leader of Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD), both parties leading the polls in their respective countries, blamed Trump’s defeat on the economic consequences of his war in Iran.

This was an astute political move by the nationalists. They opposed the Iran war from the start, while some of the European leaders who initially welcomed the war are now complaining about its consequences.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is a particularly revealing example. When Israel attacked Iran in June 2025, he praised it for doing the West's "dirty work." He defended the much larger American-Israeli bombing campaign launched in February 2026, declaring that this was “no time to lecture our allies on international law.”

Now Merz laments that the war has cost Europe more than €100 billion through higher energy prices. The “dirty work” has come with a hefty bill.

The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who spoke of a “democratic transition” in Tehran as the U.S. and Israeli bombs began falling, now places the war’s price tag at €127 billion ($143 billion) in additional fossil fuels. Neither Merz nor von der Leyen are on the record of connecting publicly the outcome of the elections to the war on Iran, however.

Merz and von der Leyen epitomize a broader European failure. EU governments had little meaningful influence over Washington's decision to go to war. Nevertheless, some, like Germany, supported it. Others, like France, acknowledged that the war violated international law, but put emphasis on Iran’s “destabilizing behaviour” in the region. Still others, like Italy, Portugal, Bulgaria, and Cyprus cooperated by allowing the U.S. to use military bases on their territories to attack Iran. Spain's Pedro Sánchez was a notable exception, fully opposing the war from the outset.

Now, EU leaders find themselves in a bind of their own making, being blamed by the opposition for enabling a war that impoverishes their own citizens. And the cost of that support is no longer measured in inflation and prices alone, but also security. Iran made it clear that, should the U.S. and Israel attack again, it will retaliate against any country that facilitates those attacks. The NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte foolishly boasted that “5000 sorties” of U.S. aircraft were launched from Europe. European countries that cooperated in these actions are becoming legitimate targets, from Tehran’s perspective.

The only way out of this predicament is for EU leaders to follow Sanchez’s lead and refuse to play any role in supporting, in any way, any further U.S. or Israeli attacks against Iran. Instead, they should work to recover their own diplomatic role in the Middle East, including engagement with Iran and working with regional countries, like Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman, to de-escalate tensions.

Yet Europe’s inability to distance itself from Washington’s war on Iran wasn’t simply a matter of bad judgement. It reflected EU leaders’ belief that submission to Trump was a necessary price to keep him on the side of Europe and Ukraine against Russia.

That was an obvious miscalculation; Trump has consistently shown his preference for cutting a deal with Moscow. European leaders must now understand that hoping Democratic control of Congress will simply mean a restoration of hawkish trans-atlanticism would be no less delusional than appeasing Trump has proved to be.

It is possible that a Democratic Congress could seek to increase military assistance to Kyiv and impose tougher sanctions on Moscow. But there is another possibility: Democrats may well choose to concentrate on domestic affairs and the economic consequences of the Iran war, leaving Trump considerable room to pursue negotiations with Moscow. The elections, after all, had little to do with Trump’s Ukraine policy.

The inherent uncertainty about the U.S. approach is part of the problem. EU elites must finally recognize that their security cannot remain hostage to the shifting fortunes of American domestic politics.

Fortunately, two European countries have recently demonstrated a way forward. On October 27, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre spoke directly with the Russian President Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine and prospects for renewed negotiations.

Both Finland and Norway are NATO members, share borders with Russia, and strongly support Ukraine. Yet their leaders recognized that deterrence and diplomacy are not mutually exclusive. Although their initiative did not produce an immediate breakthrough, it showed that Europeans can engage Moscow without abandoning Kyiv or waiting for Washington to act.

The wars in Iran and Ukraine expose two sides of the same European predicament. In the Middle East, Europe has paid an enormous economic price for military decisions it did not control – and failed to oppose. In Ukraine, it has committed substantial resources while hoping for Washington to take the lead in confronting Russia.

Both gambits failed. A Democratic Congress cannot rescue Europe from the need to pursue its own strategic autonomy. That means more than higher defense spending or buying fewer American weapons. It also requires rejecting unnecessary wars, engaging adversaries, and pursuing diplomatic initiatives independently.

Contrary to the claims of many EU elites, the vote in the U.S. appears to be less a sign of a global rollback of national populism than a reflection of a growing backlash in the West against endless wars. The governments in Europe can only ignore that sentiment at their own peril.