Several questions ran through my mind as I was reading Dead Wake, Erik Larson’s magnificent book. In it, Larson meticulously details the events leading up to the sinking of the British ocean liner, the Lusitania. The ship had sailed from New York on May 1, 1915 and was headed to Liverpool, England. It was torpedoed by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915, about 15 miles off the coast of Ireland. Of the 1,959 passengers on board, 1,198 died. Among the dead were 128 Americans.

The sinking occurred less than a year after World War I began. The Germans were actively using submarines to attack British ships during the war. Days before the Lusitania was set to sail from New York, the German embassy placed advertisements in American newspapers warning that British-flagged ships in the war zone would be targeted, and that passengers who chose to travel on them would be doing so at their own risk.

Several troubling questions arose during the official inquiry into the sinking of the Lusitania. The key one was this: Given the importance of the ship, its vital cargo, the large number of passengers on board, including many prominent people, why wasn’t a naval escort provided when it reached those dangerous waters? That had been the practice. Other ships smaller than the Lusitania had received that protection. Speculation was rife that there was nefarious intent behind the lack of security. Larson quoted a British naval historian who said that based on the available information, he was convinced that “there was indeed a plot, however imperfect, to endanger the Lusitania in order to involve the United States in the war.”

Despite the large number of American casualties in the Lusitania sinking, the U.S. maintained its neutrality in the war. It took a series of blunders by the Germans for America to change its position. The Germans expanded their U-boat activities to indiscriminately target ships, including American-flagged ones. Over the next two years, several American ships were sunk, including three on March 17, 1917. What seemed to have angered President Woodrow Wilson and his top administration officials the most was the discovery of a secretly hatched German plan to enlist Mexico to help Germany in its war with Britain. In return, the Germans promised to later aid Mexico to reclaim some of its territories in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona that it had lost to America.

The combination of Germany’s indiscriminate attacks on ships and its secret pact with Mexico finally forced President Wilson to act. On the morning of April 2, 1917, as the president was preparing to go to Congress to request authorization to declare war on Germany, news broke that the Germans had sunk another U.S. ship, the Aztec. Twenty-eight Americans died in that incident.

Winston Churchill, who served as First Lord of the Admiralty at the time, was heartened by America’s entry into the war. But he expressed deep disappointment that it had taken so long. According to Larson, in his memoir, Churchill wrote the following: “What [Wilson] did in April, 1917, could have been done in May, 1915.” Churchill went on to say that the long delay had cost too many lives and needlessly brought untold suffering to millions.

There are echoes of Churchill’s 1917 complaint in Europe today. Over the past three years, Europeans have implored America to play an even greater role in helping to defend Ukraine, and by extension the rest of the continent, against Russian aggression. That brings up two questions. First, why hasn’t Europe done more in the 110 years since the sinking of the Lusitania to be able to defend itself without help from America? Second, if the reality is that the continent is unable to achieve that self-sufficiency in the medium to long term, then how should the U.S. approach its relationship with Europe in the coming decades on the issue of defense?

Britain and its European allies similarly waited for a considerable length of time during World War II while America debated whether or not to join the war against Germany. Once again, America’s entry was forced by events—the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor a little over two years after the war began.

If American involvement in European conflicts is inevitable, as history suggests, should the U.S. step in sooner then when the need arises? Was President Wilson’s patience unwarranted? Churchill certainly thought so.

In some ways, President Trump now faces the kind of situation President Wilson was confronted with in 1915. Currently, the U.S. is largely insulated from the war in Ukraine. But could the effects of that war be felt more directly at some point on our shores as previous ones have? If that is a possibility, should President Trump rethink his approach? What unforeseen events could prompt a more forceful response from America?

Thankfully, it appears, at least for now, that whatever form of intervention President Trump chooses in today’s European conflict, there are unlikely to be American boots on the ground. But the longer he waits, the greater the risk of that occurring.

By their recent drone and fighter jet incursions into the airspaces of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Denmark and Norway, all of them NATO member countries, the Russians are repeating the strategic blunders the Germans committed between 1915 and 1917. Like President Wilson, President Trump has done his best to offer one off-ramp after another to the Russians, but they seem uninterested. America’s current president may appear to be ambivalent about Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, but there is no better way to draw his nation into today’s war in Europe than what the Russians are doing with those incursions.

Europe can’t seem to ever catch a break. In forming the EU, the Europeans hoped that the deepening of political and economic ties among their nations would forever banish the wars that had plagued the continent for many centuries. For about three decades, it appeared as if they had succeeded. Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the ongoing war have punctured that sense of tranquility. I often wonder whether the Russian bear will someday be tamed to allow European citizens to sleep soundly at night.