On Sunday, March 22, three weeks into the US–Israeli war in Iran, Donald Trump received an unlikely pledge of support. The previous Friday he had taken to Truth Social to lambast his fellow NATO members, calling them “COWARDS” for refusing to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively blocked with threats to attack passing ships. Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, and the UK had by then all insisted that they would not help the US open the waterway. But in a pair of appearances that weekend on CBS’s Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday, NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, enthusiastically backed the war. Trump, he declared, was “doing this to make the whole world safe.” A former Dutch prime minister nicknamed the “Trump whisperer” for his sycophantic posture toward the US president, Rutte went on to announce that a group of twenty-two countries, most of them NATO members, were “coming together” to implement Trump’s vision to ensure “the Strait of Hormuz is free, is opening up, as soon as that is possible.”

Whether Rutte’s announcement is a bluff or an indication of actual commitment remains to be seen, and only time will tell what it means for the EU to “come together” to secure the Strait. In other, less visible respects, however, a number of European nations had already united in tacit support for the US and Israel’s war. To coordinate attacks, transport weapons, and move troops to the Middle East, the American military relies on an extensive network of bases in Europe, which make up roughly half of the approximately 750 American military bases abroad. Generally the US needs permission from host countries to use this infrastructure for combat operations, and over the past few weeks it has hardly been disappointed: most European countries have allowed its forces to operate from their territories, even as their leaders publicly claim that they want a swift end to the fighting.

Even on the level of rhetoric, European leaders have struck an ambivalent note. On the day that Russia invaded Ukraine, the European Council and the president of the European Commission swiftly called the war illegal, but after the first US–Israeli strikes on Iran they declined to issue similar condemnations, although most experts have judged the attacks to be without legal justification. In the days that followed, EU leaders denounced the Iranian regime and issued bland appeals to international law, but most of them avoided directly criticizing the US and Israel for deciding to bomb Iran, or Israel for resuming attacks on Lebanon.

The case of Germany, the EU’s most powerful country, has been particularly instructive. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz initially threw his support behind the US and Israel. “This is not the moment to lecture our allies, but to stand together in unity,” he posted on X before taking a pre-planned trip to Washington on March 3, three days after the first bombs fell. “We are on the same page in terms of getting this terrible regime in Tehran away,” he told Trump during a televised meeting. He added, after invoking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that “there are too many bad guys in this world.” Then he gushed about his second stay in the president’s guest house, “a very, very comfortable place.”

Often defined by his opportunism, the chancellor still refrains from strongly criticizing Trump and Netanyahu. But lately Merz has struck a more somber tone, evidently trying to position Germany on the sidelines of an escalating conflict: since his Oval Office visit in early March, diesel gas prices in Germany have risen around 30 percent, companies have reported that operating costs are up by roughly the same amount, and Trump has undermined EU aid to Ukraine by lifting sanctions on Russian oil at sea. “The war in the Middle East is not a matter for NATO,” Merz posted after Trump called on the alliance to intervene in the Strait of Hormuz. Germany, he said, would not engage militarily. These moves had created confusion even before Rutte’s remarks; now that Rutte has at least in theory committed NATO to the effort, the situation is even more unclear. “We don’t know what the real position of Germany is,” the Iranian ambassador to Germany, Majid Nili Ahmadabadi, recently toldPolitico. (On the matter of Israel’s announced ground incursion into Lebanon, Merz called it an “error.”)

Germany might claim that it is not involved in the war, but the American military bases in the country—holdovers from the American occupation after World War II and Germany’s strategic importance during the cold war—tell a different story. Among them is Ramstein Air Base in southwest Germany, the headquarters of the US Air Force’s European and African operations, which receives data that informs American drone and missile strikes on Iran. Ramstein is the largest air force base outside of the US, and the area surrounding it is colloquially called “little America” thanks to the roughly 50,000 Americans living there, along with a mall that boasts a four-plex theater, dozens of stores, and a food court, including a Popeyes and a Johnny Rockets. It’s not the first time Ramstein has supported US strikes: over ten years ago an Intercept and Der Spiegel investigation revealed that Ramstein was central to coordinating almost all US drone attacks in the Middle East and Africa.

Iran has asked the German government to clarify the role of Ramstein in the war, and opposition politicians are questioning whether US bases could provoke retaliation on German soil after Iran targeted US bases across the Middle East. On March 1 an Iranian drone also struck Britain’s Akrotiri military base on Cyprus; there have been conflicting accounts about an attempted strike on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Lea Reisner, a Die Linke (The Left) representative in the Bundestag, has called for Ramstein to close. And yet protesters have not taken to the streets as they did in the 1980s, when thousands of people demonstrated against West Germany’s decision to allow American nuclear weapons to be stationed in the country, or in the early 2000s after the US invasion of Iraq, which some 80 percent of Germans opposed.

About 60 percent of Germany’s population already believed that the US–Israeli attacks on Iran were unjustified just a week into the war. Still, most Germans seem to accept the bases as part of the landscape. Surrounding areas have benefited from the jobs the installations bring and the spending power of well-paid soldiers. (A 2001 study by the University of Trier showed that Ramstein Air Base and nearby Spangdahlem Air Base contributed some $1.7 billion to the local economy.) The other effects are less visible, from contaminated groundwater—army training exercises leave behind PFAS and other so-called forever chemicals that leach into the soil—to dead civilians thousands of kilometers away.

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French and British politicians, whose countries have long imperial histories in the Middle East, have been less supportive in their public communications but have implemented policies just as incoherent. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was initially more reticent than Merz, declaring that he would not authorize the use of British bases, but he quickly reversed course for “specific and limited defensive purposes.” A few days later he added that operations could expand to target Iranian missile sites and installations intended to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz. At least one UK base—RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire—is now a point of origin for long-range heavy bombers. On March 21, the first episode of Saturday Night Live UK imagined the scene at Downing Street. After a whimpering Starmer hangs up with Trump, he turns to his foreign secretary to say, “You don’t understand him like I do. I can change him!” On Truth Social on Sunday, around the time Rutte was making the rounds on morning TV, Trump shared the clip.

French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the US–Israeli strikes as “outside international law,” then permitted the US to land and refuel aircraft engaged in “the defense of the Gulf countries.” Switzerland does not have US bases, but the American military has requested to fly through its airspace. In typical Swiss fashion, the government cited the law of neutrality in rejecting two requests but waved through three others.

In Brussels, too, officials have contradicted themselves. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission and former German defense minister, stated a week after the first bombs fell on Iran that Europe “can no longer be a custodian for the old world order, for a world that has gone and will not return.” Two days later she walked back the comments after an outcry among progressives in the European Parliament: “Our unwavering commitment to the pursuit of peace, to the principles of the UN Charter and to international law are as central today as they were at our creation,” she said, “and we will always uphold these principles.” Still, she reiterated that she believes in “a more realistic and interest-driven foreign policy.”

These mixed signals are symptomatic of a larger dilemma. Europe’s politics were already divided between resurgent left formations, the liberal-internationalist old guard, and a growing right-wing nativism that seeks to undermine the EU. Now the bloc finds itself forced to respond to Trump and Netanyahu’s imperial violence just as it tries to redefine its place in the world. Since last year’s Munich Security Conference, when JD Vance made clear that the US would no longer provide for the continent’s defense, Europeans have embarked on a security spending spree. Military spending on the continent (including Russia) rose by 17 percent to $693 billion last year, and some countries have revised their military service laws or passed new ones, despite mixed public opinion. These efforts did not prevent Trump from threatening to seize Greenland by force earlier this year, though Europe’s united defiance may have deterred him.

No doubt at the front of European leaders’ minds is the grinding conflict in the east. EU politicians remain concerned about the possibility that Russia might expand its war beyond Ukraine’s borders, or that the US—which has greatly reduced security aid to Ukraine under Trump but still pays US companies $400 million per year to produce weapons for the country—could withdraw all support. Last December, Rutte exhorted Europeans to prepare “for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured.”

But remilitarizing is a complex endeavor, and few analysts, least of all Rutte, think the EU could win a broader war without US backing. “If anyone thinks here…that the European Union or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming,” Rutte told EU lawmakers in January. States closer to the Russian border, such as Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, are keen to retain US military installations, believing that they act as a deterrent. Many European leaders, then, remain willing to flatter and appease Trump as best they can. Nikolaus Blome, a conservative German commentator, wrote in Der Spiegel that for Europeans the Iran war “is our war, because it is being waged by our protector, the USA.”

At the same time, the Russian threat alone cannot explain most EU leaders’ incoherence on the US and Israel’s war. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has positioned this as a religious conflict, a Christian crusade. Netanyahu has invoked the Torah and for years likened Iran to an ancient biblical enemy. No mainstream European politician would use such crude religious terms, but some seem sympathetic to the notion that there is a struggle underway between the “West”—composed of the US, Europe, Israel, and Ukraine—and its civilizational enemies.

Merz’s statements have been particularly telling. A month after he assumed office in May 2025, a journalist asked whether the Israelis were doing Europe’s “dirty work” by bombing targets in Iran. He replied: “I am grateful to you for the term ‘dirty work.’ This is dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us.” In the past he has argued that immigrants should adhere to Leitkultur (“leading culture”), which in 2023 he defined as “the kind of Christian-Western cultural identity that is passed down through generations, that shapes our children.”

Merz has support in this regard from some politicians to his right: Karol Nawrocki, the Polish president, said in a recent interview that the Iranian regime “threatens a certain order of values shared by the US, Europe, and Poland,” on the grounds both that it “supports the Russian Federation” and that it “has persecuted Christians.” This is not to say, however, that the continent’s reactionaries have united around the war in one voice. Some of the far-right groups that have espoused dramatic civilizational discourse in the past—such as the National Rally in France and Alternative for Germany—have split over whether to support or condemn the war, mindful of the divisions the conflict exposes within their nationalist base and the possibility of increased immigration. 

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One major EU country, though, has stood apart in vocally opposing the war, even refusing use of its bases. “No a la guerra,” the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez of the Spanish Socialist Worker’ s Party, declared in a televised address from Madrid on March 4, condemning the war as a violation of international law and calling for a diplomatic solution. “Some will accuse us of being naive for doing so,” he went on. “But to be naive is thinking that the solution is violence. To be naive is believing that democracies or respect between nations arise from ruins. Or thinking that blind and servile followership is a form of leadership.”

US aerial refueling tankers have left Spain and headed to French and German bases, at least seven of them landing at Ramstein. Spain has also banned the use of its airspace, including from aircraft flying to the Middle East from France or the UK. The US has so many bases in Europe that Sánchez’s refusal likely matters little materially, but the political implications are meaningful: the Spanish premier has shown that it is possible to say no to Trump, and if other countries followed Spain’s example, US military capacity would be severely hamstrung. Trump has threatened to impose a trade embargo against Spain but has yet to follow through.

A former economist who assumed the premiership in 2018, Sánchez has few allies on the European stage in his forthright defense of the UN charter and the international legal system. (Another outlier is Slovenia, which condemned the US–Israeli attacks in the war’s first week as “unacceptable violations of international law.”) Sánchez has condemned the Israeli genocide in Gaza, recognized Palestinian statehood, and enacted an arms embargo on Israel. Perhaps as a result, Spain feels quite different from its northern neighbors. Last October, while hiking on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, I came upon Palestinian flags planted in riverbeds, adorning ancient village squares, and hanging from second-story balconies. Protesters campaigning for Palestinian rights have been targeted in Spain far less often and violently than in Germany, where Merz has been one of Netanyahu’s staunchest allies and refused to recognize the assault on Gaza as a genocide. When Sánchez and Merz met last fall, the latter admitted “divergent views” on Israel’s actions. Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chkili, speaking in Berlin, recently called Sánchez an “enemy of Western civilization.”

This is also not the first time Sánchez has taken on Trump. He criticized the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro in January; in June 2025, when the US pressured NATO members to increase their military spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product, Spain was the only country to refuse. In that NATO meeting Sánchez secured a last-minute exemption to cap Spain’s military spending at what he called a “sufficient” 2.1 percent, leveraging procedural rules that require unanimous approval among the thirty-two member countries to raise defense spending. In a letter to Rutte, he argued that a 5 percent increase would force Spain and others to purchase weapons from outside the bloc—namely, from American companies—to spend the funds, undermining plans for European defense autonomy. Spending such a large share of GDP, he wrote, “would be incompatible with our welfare state and our world vision.” His priorities, Sánchez has repeatedly signaled, lie elsewhere, such as in developing Spain’s economy and financing its green transition.

A recent poll shows that 68 percent of Spaniards oppose the war. Some of them may recall one of their country’s previous collaborations in the project of US imperialism: in 1953 the Eisenhower administration paid more than $1 billion in military and economic aid to Franco’s regime in exchange for the dictator agreeing to host American bases. Called the Pact of Madrid, the deal included three air bases (Morón de la Frontera, Torrejón de Ardoz, and Zaragoza), one naval base (Rota), and several smaller installations. The agreement propped up Franco’s regime and helped rehabilitate his image internationally, which was by then tarnished by his association with the Axis powers. In his wide-ranging condemnation of American hypocrisy, “Letter from a Region in My Mind,” James Baldwin wrote, “We defend our curious role in Spain by referring to the Russian menace and the necessity of protecting the free world.”

Spain and the US have since renegotiated their defense agreement multiple times; in the 1990s two bases were transitioned to the Spanish military, while an American air force and naval base remain in the country. But Spain, unlike other EU countries, lacks economic interests in the Middle East and has not engaged in international conflicts, save for joining the US-led invasion of Iraq, which Sánchez has also criticized.

Sánchez is set to run for reelection next year, and it remains to be seen how his anti-imperial stance will pay off politically. Called “El Guapo” on both sides of the political aisle—as a term of endearment and derision—Sánchez has presided over strong economic growth over the past eight years, and Spain is now the EU’s fastest-growing major economy. And yet over the same period his party has been rocked by corruption scandals, leading to the resignation or firing of high-level government officials (as was also the case with the previous administration). His wife is under investigation over alleged corruption; the inquest began after a complaint by a group connected to the far right, and Sánchez calls the case politically motivated.

In speeches Sánchez insists that most Spanish citizens share his antiwar beliefs, and on the country’s political spectrum he is not considered extreme: parties such as Podemos take a stronger anti-imperial stance, calling for Spain to leave NATO and force the closure of the remaining US bases. But Spain, like other European countries, is deeply polarized, with a virulent far right that strongly supports NATO and would increase Spain’s defense spending. A poll in late 2025 showed that almost 40 percent of Spanish men and 20 percent of women under the age of thirty-five supported Vox, the far-right party. Young people have been particularly affected by a housing crisis, low wages, and rising living costs, all of which might prove more consequential than foreign policy in the upcoming national election. Most Spanish commentators say it’s too early to make predictions, but as of now Sánchez seems to stand a decent chance—his approval rating is currently around 32 percent, relatively high for a European politician. (Macron, by contrast, is at 19 percent.) In mid-March regional elections in the rural Castilla y León province, the Socialists outperformed expectations while Vox faltered.

Whatever effect Sánchez’s antiwar position may have on his domestic fortunes, it is unlikely to shift the EU’s stance; within the bloc Spain still lacks the power of wealthier countries like Germany and France. But with each week the war’s political and material costs only grow. European natural gas prices have almost doubled since the fighting began, and economic forecasts predict stagflation and recession if the war drags into the summer. Many European countries share bases in the Middle East with the US; one French soldier, in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, has already been killed by an Iranian drone. Any effort to patrol the Strait of Hormuz could further put troops in harm’s way. In this light, Sánchez’s moral position may increasingly also be the politically savvy one. If it appears radical, that might be because the rest of the EU has, over the past few years, treated international law and human rights as little more than relics of “a world that has gone and will not return.”