[gorgolo]

Not trying to be a cynic, but I think you’ve got a bit of a rosy view of what happened and what is happening.

Concerning past wars: yes there were enormous protests. Just like today, many people disagreed with what was happening. But the same was true in the US; many Americans also disagreed with the Iraq war. There was an entire Bush vs Kerry election on that theme. In the end though, there’s a difference between what normal citizens are saying, and what the country actually does. This applies to both the US and Europe. With Iraq, despite all these protests, the majority of European states actually joined the war, with a few standout exceptions like the neutral states and France/Germany. And then they joined the US in several more regime change operations over the following two decades (and with these somehow the IS didn’t even seem like the main cheerleader).

With Iran now, there’s what normal people say and what politicians say and do. I haven’t seen any of the major leaders actually condemn the war apart from Spain. Most tweets are along the lines if “we are watching with concern but we agree something had to be done”. Macron only piped up against it like a month in, and that seemed as much related to Trump insulting his wife as it was to the war itself.

EU is the third largest economy and has 450m people. If they genuinely wanted to do something about this, about their oil being cut off and all the rest of it, they would have.

On Gaza too. Despite the large protests, and there are a few small nations plus Spain being vocal about it, but what concrete actions has the EU and European nations taken on Gaza? And have you actually seen the UK and German government responses to the protests?

[benterix]

It's not exactly rosy as you say, but the leaders are increasingly open with Trump as to what they actually think (see Merz's latest comments) and he uses this as an excuse to realize what they planned a few years ago. There is zero chance that any Europen state starts bombing Iran.

OTOH, while refusing to do wrong is already something, there are limits to what they can actively start doing - and concrete consequences if they start doing something Trump doesn't like. He's highly unstable and can decide to take a decision that can be perceived as crazy, and harmful to the USA, but at the same time harmful to the ex-ally who decided to stand up to him. So the EU leaders basically do what they can to just wait the crazy guy out.