How strongmen mastered the art of dividing Europe

It takes weeks of haggling by ministers and their diplomatic underlings to craft what the leaders of the European Union later announce as the “conclusions” of their regularly scheduled confabs. Settling into a windowless conference room for a summit that will nonetheless drag well into the night is a time-tested ritual for the continent’s presidents and prime ministers. But a spectre hung over the group even as they prepared for yet another gabfest in Brussels on June 26th, as The Economist went to press. For in the same time it takes EU leaders to sign off on a communiqué that few will ever read, Donald Trump may well post a slew of social-media posts reversing, un-reversing then finally re-reversing American policy on precisely what his many counterparts sitting in Brussels are discussing. Europeans might rather prefer the deliberative ways espoused by their leaders to Trumpian chaos. Yet in foreign policy the contrast between the EU’s genteel, consensual decision-making rhythms and the brusque ways of strongmen even beyond America has grown starkly of late. Autocrats from China, Russia, Turkey and beyond are too often able to run rings around Europe.