High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Old Europe is a term that was first used by then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in January 2003 to refer to European countries that did not support the 2003 invasion of Iraq, specifically France and Germany. Since then, the term has been used by pundits and media personalities to describe various combinations of the first-world countries of Europe; comedian Jon Stewart, for example, has applied the term humorously to all Western European Old Powers, most notably Germany, France and the United Kingdom.