Always look on the bright side of life — why 2025 might be better – POLITICO

OK, Europe will have to endure again presidential histrionics and needling all-caps tweets, along with threats to withdraw from NATO and impose tariffs, but doesn’t that present an opportunity? Might now European leaders screw up their courage and loosen the apron strings? For years they’ve waffled on about strategic autonomy and sharing the burden more of their own defense. Now they have the chance to determine their own destiny.

OK, it’s all going to be a bit traumatic — growing up always is, like infants experiencing the arrival of baby teeth. But Trump back in the White House may be the thing to shake Europe out of a malaise of its own making. Admittedly it is a huge challenge because, as commentator Mujtaba Rahman, the head of Eurasia Group’s Europe practice, has noted, they will have to overcome differences on security, defense, migration and fiscal policy, which are “the least susceptible to EU-wide collective action precisely because they’re intrinsic to nation states: borders, tax and national security.”

Pooling sovereignty on these issues indeed risks fueling populism and political fragmentation, but we should remain confident — surely, it will come soon — that there will be a complete meshing of minds between Ursula von der Leyen, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Slovakia’s Robert Fico, France’s Emmanuel Macron et al.

Adaptation, not mitigation

Let’s face it, net zero was never going to work. Next year, more nations will embrace the idea that it’s far better instead to spend your energy reducing vulnerability to extreme weather and climate change impacts. Build better, eat meat and double down on your fast fashion retail therapy, in other words.

COP 29, if nothing else, was a massive success in terms of introducing a long-needed healthy dose of realism. And we have Azerbaijan’s autocrat Ilham Aliyev to thank for the cratering of the conference. Climate mitigation goals are never met and why on earth should one buy an EV and run the risk of being a couple of hundred miles away from a charging station! Aliyev is right — fossil fuels are a gift from God. OK, some low-lying islands will be swamped — but no one can find them on the map even now anyway.

Trump, Musk and MAD

Still unconvinced next year will be better than 2024? The Mutually Assured Disruption that’s inevitable between top dog Trump and his current pal-in-chief Elon Musk should be a grand spectacle. Two cooks in a kitchen — especially larger-than-life ones like Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White — never works well. Two presidents in the Oval Office will be even more delicious.