Isis’s collapse has sparked a new rift between Trump and Europe

The days of black-clad militants rampaging through cities, parading captives as war trophies and doing wheelies in U.S.-made Humvees are over. The Islamic State – which once presided over eight million people in a reign of terror across territory as large as the United Kingdom – is now confined to an orchard in the dusty Syrian village of Baghouz. The so-called caliphate is now just 700 square metres. Within days— certainly weeks —all of Isis’ territory will be retaken, the stragglers either killed in a barrage of US airstrikes or sent to Syrian Kurdish-run prison camps to the north. The demise of the caliphate, however, has given way to a new question: what to do with Isis foreign fighters? Donald Trump’s answer is to make sure that Europe pulls its weight.

If Trump had his way, all of these European fighters would be rounded up and flown back to where they came from, prosecuted, convicted and locked up.