“Guns, not butter!” – European imperialism’s doomed attempt at asserting its role in the world

It is just six weeks since US Vice President JD Vance spoke at the Munich Security Conference in February and told Europe that the decades-old relationship the US had with the old continent was over. Ever since, the European leaders have been frantically running around from one summit to another – from a virtual meeting to a gathering of the ‘coalition of the willing’ – looking in all directions and none at the same time to try and deal with this major shift in world relations.