PARIS

EUROPEAN LEADERS MAY meet Donald Trump’s aggression with a slavish campaign of fawning and flattery such as the world has not seen, according to NATO insiders.

“Instead of going head to head with the Donald, European leaders may offer him what he really craves,” said a German officer. “Eight Nobel Prizes for the wars he claims to have stopped, for a start, then medals for bravery and service and anything else you like, so he looks like a Ruritanian monarch and has a chronic bad back from carrying all that metal. Lay on long gushing speeches, royal honors, honorary titles, doctorates from the best universities, memberships of exclusive clubs, and so many prizes that it will take the remainder of his presidency to accept them all, and Greenland will fade into the mist. Then there’s diversion. Sports events, hotel projects, walk-on parts in movies, his own European Reality TV program, and some kind of small war against the most insignificant, the weakest, the most vulnerable country in the neighborhood. No, no, not the United Kingdom, something even weaker, more pathetic. Perhaps Lichtenstein or Andorra, or one of those uninhabited islands off Ireland. Where he can fall back to his golf course in Country Clare after each day’s fighting. The ego may have landed but it has a fragile foothold.”