At the end of the 1970 movie Tora! Tora! Tora!, Imperial Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is quoted as saying that all the attack on Pearl Harbor had achieved was to “wake the sleeping tiger.” The quote is apocryphal but there is an Italian idiom that says Anche si non e vero, e ben trovato. This Renaissance phrase attributed philosopher Giordano Bruno translates to “even if it isn’t true, it’s well found.”

So why am I bringing this up? Because it fits perfectly, in my mind, with what The American Security Strategy 2025 has just done. But before going further let me clear about something. What the White House released is not a national security strategy. It is a world view (Weltanschauung). In particular, it is the president’s personal world view, and the language of the document was clearly crafted by his vice-president.

The sleeping tigers? They would be the collective of countries that we collectively call the European Union. After a day or two of stunned silence, various EU leaders began to opine on the American document. Arguably the most forceful of them was Emanuel Macron, who said that the Americans had miscalculated. Europe “has the cards” to use a troublesome phrase and it seems clear that the important players, like Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, the president of France and the German chancellor all spoke with one voice: Europe will gear up its defence industries while simultaneously avoiding buying American goods and services.

Naturally, these things take time and immense resources. But the tigers are now fully awake and they are restive. The EU will need to finance Ukraine, but they can manage it. France, Italy, Germany (and the UK) all produce world-class weapons systems and in some cases, better systems than the US. It has long been an unspoken agreement that Europe would build weapons mostly for export because they would use American weapons and American troops. All of that has changed.

Such change is not necessarily bad for Europe. Like Canada, Europe has been overly dependent on America for its security. The current administration has put all that in doubt, especially with language that openly supports Russia, China, and North Korea — a shocking turn of events.

Before I go further, allow me a sidebar. Many, many pundits say things like “whatever else the US president has done, he has pushed the Europeans to pay for their own defence.” This is phrased in terms that would have the reader believe that it is some kind of a plan, or a strategic gambit. It is nothing of the sort because the man in the Gold House has no concept of plans or strategies any more than your pet dog has plans beyond the feeding time. As I said to friends yesterday, believing such nonsense is like believing that my Labrador Retriever was purposely forcing me to steam clean the carpets by urinating on them. Like my old Lab, the US president stumbled into the situation, but at least my old Lab had the good grace to look ashamed for what he had done.

As I have written in this space before there are inevitably unintended consequences to decisions made when not fully thought through. What will they be in Europe? Who can say. The future is unknowable, but if I were to make a wager, I would wager that the Europeans will grow the industries that need growing and that their militaries will re-equip themselves as they prepare to deter any foolishness from Russia, or the US for that matter. (Note that Denmark has now officially designated America as a security risk.)

Just to make the point: The combined economies of the Europeans (plus Canada) is more than 500 times that of Russia. Those who fear a Russian invasion need to calm themselves. An invasion of NATO territory (with or without the US coming to the game) would most certainly mean the extinction of Russia as a country and probably also as a cultural entity.

Allow me to close with two more German words: Schadenfreude and Götterdämmerung. Look them up and you’ll quickly see why they are appropriate.