Europe and its imperfect union now know what it feels like to be Humpty Dumpty. For decades it sat benignly on a wall, safe in the assumption that America had its back. Now, in the space of little more than a year it has been pushed from its perch and feels both fractured and stunned. Stunned because the delinquent doing the dirty deed is the nation that was central to gluing it back together after World War II. French President Emmanuel Macron has gone so far as to refer to an “openly hostile U.S. administration” while encouraging Europe to reform itself into a nation-state, a Europe newly armored as an America, a Russia, a China — the new actors in an old, great Power-Passion play. With the United Nations all but dead and the American president interested only in divide-and-conquer ties with individual states, what other choice does it have? Even before the us invaded Iraq in 2003, there were tensions between France and the U.S. Many were the disagreements over the years, but they were always patched up diplomatically. Both America and Europe realized their Cold War–era bonds were too valuable to jeopardize. Were not Americans the ancestral sons and daughters of Europeans? But for the sitting president, who revels in neo-isolationism, it’s time to toss out the baby with the bathwater. His America First has no qualms about betrayal and counts support among the generation born after 1990, few of whom care much about Europe unless as a tourist destination. The damage done is now severe enough to think Humpty Dumpty cannot and will not ever again be mended. Maybe all this will eventually lead to a new and dynamically united Europe, as Macron has also suggested. But no messy divorce is easily forgotten and if the American troops who landed on Normandy Beach were still alive to witness this wrecking-crew administration, they would first wince, then weep.