For European decision-makers searching for answers, I would offer three unglamorous recommendations. First, calm the emotions. Strong feelings may be cathartic, but they have never been a reliable guide to prudent statecraft. Strategy begins where outrage ends. Governments that allow themselves to be carried by the emotional weather of the moment usually discover - too late - that they have confused performance with policy. Second, ask a simple but uncomfortable question: what is the long-term objective? The future does not end with Donald Trump’s presidency. There is an era after Trump, and decisions taken today should preserve room for manoeuvre for both sides in that post-Trump world, rather than foreclose it. The temptation to score immediate political points is understandable; the cost is often strategic rigidity later on. Third, Europe must respond. Trump will not reverse course if he can continue moving forward without paying a price. If the community of the free world is to mean anything - and someone, at least, should still care about that - it must be costly to undermine it. Deterrence, even in politics, rests less on declarations than on consequences. Here, too, restraint matters. Costs are best imposed quietly, without enthusiasm, and without public displays of moral bodybuilding. History suggests that the most effective responses are rarely the loudest ones. They are the ones that endure, long after the noise has faded.