It might sound contradictory, but we are living in an era of both great confusion and great clarity.
As a European, one wakes up every morning and reaches for one’s phone, dreading finding out what US President Donald Trump might have said overnight. Threats to use force to take Greenland one day, accusing Kyiv of starting the war against Russia the next. While Ukraine is being battered by Russian artillery, US Vice President JD Vance says that it is not Russia that is the biggest threat to Europe, but the alleged censorship of “free speech” and the resistance of mainstream parties to working with the far right.
Since 1939, the “Western” alliance of democracies and capitalist economies dominated geopolitics and business. Fighting Nazi Germany, the communist Soviet Union, Islamist terrorism, and most recently Russian President Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperialism, the “West” has for more than 80 years been engaged in a struggle against authoritarianisms of all kinds.
Sure, Washington has always believed much more in a US-based rather than a rules-based international order. As a hegemonial power, US administrations engaged in regime change against democratically elected governments, such as in Iran in 1953 and in Chile in 1973. The US government also blatantly violated international law with the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
But at least among “Western” nations, the US superpower let itself be somewhat tied by rules and norms. Washington didn’t threaten the use of force or question the territorial integrity of its partners. Until Trump, no US president openly interfered in the domestic politics of its allies. Washington tried to settle economic disputes with Europe through courts and international institutions, such as the World Trade Organization.
All of that is history. The law of the jungle now also applies to Europe. “The West” as a community of values based on liberal democracy and the rule of law is no more. It’s only logical, therefore, that Trump has invited Russia to rejoin the G7—once “the West’s” elite club.
No MAGAism in One Country
If norms don’t bind the US and Europe together anymore, what about interests?
The 19th-century writer Honoré de Balzac described in his classic Lost Illusions how the new capitalist French bourgeoisie self-defined itself through values and conventions, but that this was just the décor, an illusion. In reality, then as now, the only thing that holds the bourgeoisie together as France’s elite is one thing: Money.
So, what about the transatlantic alliance—can it, like the French bourgeoisie, be held together by King Cash? Can’t Europeans buy off Trump, the famously transactional real estate developer, by offering US arms purchases, cooperation on China, and why not—a Trump tower in Brussels?
But there are two problems with this approach.
One, vis-à-vis Europe Trump may no longer be the transactional dealmaker he was in his first term. Or to be more precise: He has changed the currency. Trump no longer desires only money but also demands as a price for US protection that Europe joins the fight against liberal democracy and the rule of law that he is pursuing at home. As Vance asked in Munich: If we don’t share the same values anymore, why should we be fighting together after all?
Unlike in 2016, Trump and his accolades now have a true internationalist agenda. The strategy toward Europe is one of regime change. “MAGAism in one country” doesn’t suffice for Vance and Co. in the same way the communists only reluctantly espoused “Socialism in one country.” The real win for any ideology is if it pushes back against the alternatives. Thus, President Trump and his allies are supporting Europe’s far-right parties and demand the suppression of EU tech regulation that safeguards democratic debate.
Spheres of Influence
The second problem: Trump will go down in history as the person who created the Cold War II narrative and forced the entire US political establishment to turn hawkish on China. But offering cooperation on China won’t cut it for Europe. That is because, paradoxically, Trump may very well be on track to deliver détente when it comes to Sino-American relations.
Trump invited President Xi to his inauguration. He hit China with tariffs of 10 percent, while he threatened much larger duties on goods from Canada, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, and Europe. Trump has said that Beijing “could help” on Ukraine. Asked about whether he would defend Taiwan, he said: “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away, it’s 68 miles away from China." Chances are that Trump doesn’t want conflict, but a “big, beautiful trade deal” with Beijing. John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Adviser, wrote in his memoirs that in his first term, Trump’s strategy was always to escalate relations with China only to seek a deal later. But then the COVID-19 pandemic got in the way of Trump delivering on the second part of his plan.
So, if Trump seeks peace negotiations with Russia over the head of the Ukrainians and Europeans, it is not necessarily to do a reverse Nixon 1972 and peel Moscow away from Beijing and get tough on China. It is simply because the president thinks that Russia’s security interests—as a global power—trump the importance of Ukraine being able to form a sovereign and democratic state. After all, Trump has said that the reason Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine was that former President Joe Biden said that Ukraine could join NATO (Biden never said that).
Trump seems to want a reordering of the global order according to spheres of influences like those that existed pre-World War I. China would be in charge of its backyard, Russia can have big parts of Ukraine, and the US controls the Western Hemisphere—thus Trump’s claims on Panama and Greenland. National sovereignty, territorial integrity and democratic aspirations count for little in that world.
A Sovereign Europe
What almost all French presidents since Charles de Gaulle and countless think tankers have been warning about for decades is now a reality. Just as it was naïve to outsource Europe’s energy needs to Russia, banking the continent’s security on a country that can walk away from the battlefield without fearing for its own existence was also unsustainable.
The illusions are gone, the new world is becoming clearer by the day. Europe’s days as the happy junior partner of the US empire are gone. For Trump the continent is no longer even primarily a source of money, but the turf of his own ideological war and a negotiating chip toward Russia.
If Europe doesn’t want to choose between subjecting itself to Trump’s reactionary revolution and living under the enduring menace of Putin, the only way out is finally to build that sovereign Europe. The time has come.
Joseph de Weck is IPQ’s Paris columnist and author of Emmanuel Macron. The revolutionary president.
