Der Spiegel writer advises the EU to forget the USA and go its own way.

Explosive narcissism and vulgar capitalism: It is impossible to engage in politics with this U.S. president. Europe should resist the temptation to fixate on Donald Trump and instead pursue its own goals. That’s the lesson of a deeply disorienting week. https://t.co/0F85dtSbwq

— SPIEGEL ONLINE English (@SPIEGEL_English) July 22, 2018

Politicians are used to engaging in politics — either with or in opposition to other politicians. Traditionally, the foreign policy of one nation-state or alliance is confronted by the foreign policy of another nation-state or alliance. That’s the way it has been for hundreds of years. But that’s not the way it is at the moment. When Donald Trump is involved, politics is not confronting politics. Rather, politics is confronting the bizarre.

There is no precedent for such a situation in the history of the West. That fact is also contributing to the difficulties of practicing politics in this day and age. Politicians, after all, frequently look to the history books for examples to follow and traditions to pursue. But in the history of democracies, the chapter on the bizarre is rather thin. Someone like Trump is a totally new beast and requires a completely novel approach to politics.

That fact can no longer be in doubt following the U.S. president’s trip to Europe, including his stopovers in Brussels, London and Helsinki. It makes little sense to hope that Trump might improve. He is the way he is and politicians from other countries have to get used to it. They have to develop a specific strategy for the period during which this president is in office.

For the European Union, the appropriate strategy can be expressed in a single word: hibernation. But that isn’t quite as easy as it might sound. We’re not talking here about the long, restorative slumber of a bear in her cave. Hibernation in the Trump era requires a complex political concept that Brussels should pursue in lockstep with all member states to the degree possible. Should that happen, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and perhaps even before.