One must, if one has the stomach for it, admire the sheer, unadulterated gall of the European Commission. It is a masterclass in performative impotence, a theatrical production of such staggering irrelevance that it almost borders on the sublime. As Donald Trump returns to the world stage with the subtlety of a wrecking ball in a crystal shop, threatening tariffs that would make a mercantilist weep, Brussels has responded with its most formidable weapon: the vocabulary of a mid-tier action movie. They are calling it a ‘trade bazooka.’ I suppose ‘wet napkin’ didn’t test well with the focus groups in Strasbourg.

The premise, as reported by those breathless enough to take it seriously, is that Europe will deter the orange-hued tempest of American protectionism by threatening to hold Greenland hostage—or perhaps more accurately, by threatening to prevent Trump from buying it. It is a peculiar sort of geopolitical standoff. On one side, we have a man who views the world’s largest island as a piece of prime real estate that simply needs a gold-plated hotel to reach its full potential. On the other, we have a collection of European bureaucrats who seem to believe that the sanctity of Danish sovereignty is the one line the American electorate won't allow their leader to cross. It is a delusion of such exquisite proportions that I find myself almost moved by it. Almost.

Let us deconstruct this ‘bazooka,’ shall we? In the lexicon of Brussels, a bazooka is usually a collection of retaliatory tariffs on items specifically chosen for their political optics rather than their economic impact. We are talking about bourbon, motorcycles, and perhaps a very specific type of American cheese that no self-respecting European would touch anyway. It is an attempt to use a slingshot against a predator drone. The threat is that if Trump imposes a 10 or 20 percent tax on European cars, the EU will respond by making it slightly more expensive for a man in Kentucky to buy a pair of Italian loafers. One can almost hear the foundations of the American empire trembling from here.

But the pièce de résistance of this strategic comedy is the suggestion of a World Cup boycott. This is the ultimate expression of the European soul: the belief that sport is a substitute for power. The logic, if one can call it that, is that by refusing to participate in the 2026 tournament hosted across North America, Europe will somehow shriek loudly enough to be heard over the sound of a collapsing global trade order. It is the diplomatic equivalent of a teenager locking themselves in their bedroom and refusing to come down for dinner until their parents agree to stop the inevitable march of time. Does anyone honestly believe that a man whose diet consists primarily of ego and processed meat will be swayed by the absence of French strikers or German midfielders? If anything, it simply clears the path for an American victory, which is precisely the kind of optics Trump would use to fuel a week’s worth of social media posts.

Naturally, the economists have been trotted out to provide a veneer of intellectual gravity to this circus. They speak in hushed, somber tones about ‘worst-case scenarios’ and the ‘mutual assured destruction’ of a trade war. These are the same individuals who have spent the last decade explaining why the prosperity that was promised to everyone is perpetually stuck in a shipping container off the coast of Shanghai. They warn that a trade war would be catastrophic, as if the current state of European economic stagnation is a golden age we should be desperate to preserve. Their fear is palpable, yet it is misplaced. They fear the end of the rules-based order, failing to realize that the rules were written for a world that ceased to exist sometime around 2008.

What we are witnessing is not a negotiation, but a funeral for the Atlantic alliance, conducted by two parties who cannot agree on the color of the casket. Trump views Europe as a museum that has forgotten to charge admission; Europe views Trump as a vulgar reminder that the museum’s security guards have all gone on strike. The threat to use Greenland as a bargaining chip is particularly telling. It reveals the lingering colonialist itch that Europe simply cannot stop scratching. To treat a massive, inhabited landmass as a chip in a trade game is so delightfully 19th-century that I half expect the next EU summit to be held in a dirigible.

In the end, the ‘trade bazooka’ will likely turn out to be a damp squib, and the World Cup will proceed with or without the participation of nations that are too busy sniffing their own corks to notice they’ve been evicted from the table of history. The tragedy is not that the world is collapsing into a trade war, but that the people tasked with managing the collapse are so fundamentally committed to the theater of it all. They would rather go down in a blaze of rhetorical glory, clutching their copies of the Lisbon Treaty, than admit that their bazooka is empty and the theater is already on fire.