Finnish President Alexander Stubb, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, offered some Nordic advice. “We Finns, in these situations, are very calm, cool and collected, so the first thing we do is take an ice bath, then go to the sauna and meditate.” Faced with what he described as the “chaos” of heated and shocked diplomacy, he suggested: “We need to talk less and do more.” Meanwhile, his Latvian counterpart, Edgars Rinkēvičs, admitted such discussions about Europe’s relationship with the United States amounted to psychological counseling. He said he was concerned that parts of European culture might not be appealing to modern America: “We try to reflect and find the perfect solution. We’re very process-oriented, not results-oriented.”

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Iceland’s new prime minister, Kristrún Frostadóttir, has urged Europe to try to calm the situation. “There’s a lot of hot air and uncertainty about what the United States is saying and what it’s expecting. Let’s make sure we don’t react to the wrong things,” she said. “We can’t do it without the Americans. They’re taking things a bit too far, but it’s our responsibility to capture them, take them down, not keep them in the air.” It’s easier said than done. When the US vice president, J.D. Vance, visited the Dachau concentration camp and then conveyed what was essentially a message of support for Alternative für Deutschland a few days before Germany went to the polls, it was difficult for most Germans to think that America was really in listening mode, as their officials privately assured them. The Breitbart-style portrait of Europe with its commissioners, detained dissidents, rigged elections and widespread censorship seemed deceptive to the security agencies in the audience. To be told that Europe’s real enemy lies within, and that it is you, is – as German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius exclaimed in his answer – well, unacceptable.

Indeed, the consensus emerging from Munich and the days before it was that Trump 2.0 was a far more disruptive and static force than the most feared of the time by British, European and Middle Eastern diplomats. Combats are defined and yet to be finalized in policy except after one sharp action after another. Sir Alex Younger, the former head of M16, argues that Trump has ushered in an amoral world order without laws, in which the only commodity that matters is raw power. But Munich shows there are two fundamental points of disagreement between Europe whether the rift with the US can be restored, and what Vladimir Putin ultimately wants, a subject that preoccupies Europe as much as discerning what Trump wants, beyond providing his own 24-hour news service. Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was not wrong when he said that Putin’s shadow was present in every conversation in Munich.