I defer to no one in my appreciation of much of Western Europe, including the UK. I love the history, the art. the languages, the culture, and the food (not in the UK). I speak three European languages, four if you include English, my family hails from the continent, and I spend a great deal of time there. But the Europe of the elite imagination does not exist.
And so we come to the much-discussed Trump National Security Strategy. The first, and most important point to make about the new NSS is, like the old NSSs, it will neither dictate strategy, nor likely be read by anyone with enough power to make grand decisions for the United States. (Niall Ferguson covers this neatly in The Free Press.) That anyone who knows anything about how Washington works is pretending the NSS is an “important” document is a testament not to its new weight, but to their own boring Trump derangement syndrome.
Let’s begin with the text itself:
American officials have become used to thinking about European problems in terms of insufficient military spending and economic stagnation. There is truth to this, but Europe’s real problems are even deeper.
Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP—down from 25 percent in 1990 to 14 percent today—partly owing to national and transnational regulations that undermine creativity and industriousness.
But this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.
No honest analyst can disagree with either the data or the analysis in this statement. Yes, as the section continues, there are specious claims about the reasons behind European fecklessness on Ukraine — “A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes” — but there are dead-on sections that criticize countries like Germany who publicly seek to isolate Russia while still doing business with the Kremlin.
And there’s more. Do those of us who are fierce partisans for Ukraine, not because we love Ukraine per se, but because we recognize Putin’s threat, and the dangers in the collapse of the Westphalian system, actually disagree that the war must end? That Ukraine must be stabilized? That it must be rebuilt? Here’s that section:
It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.
It would be nice for Ukraine to regain all of its territory, Crimea included. But I do not know a single American analyst who believes that is currently possible. This is not surrender, but ugly reality. (It might have been possible in 2022, but Joe Biden put paid to any idea of Ukrainian victory with his “minor incursion” BS.)
So let’s return to Europe. Here’s a small selection of headline reactions to the NSS:
Der Spiegel (Germany) US security strategy: [leading politician] no longer sees the US on the side of Europe
The Guardian (UK) Trump’s new doctrine confirms it. Ready or not, Europe is on its own
Il Foglio (Italy) With Trump’s National Security Strategy, America is officially an opponent
Um, what in the actual hell? Did American politicians of either party ever announce that our European NATO allies, who have serially welshed and under-invested in their own defense and the transatlantic alliance ever suggest Europe was our “opponent”? Or that it wasn’t “on our side”? How about telling Europe it was “on its own”? The answer is no, we didn’t. Because we have our own interests in the transatlantic alliance, and we recognized that it was important even over the decades — decades! — that Europe did not.
Then there’s the question of European cultural collapse. Here we come to my love of the continent, and its culture. I can assure you that I know more about Italian history than the average Italian high schooler. More about the Magna Carta and the birth of Anglicanism and Shakespeare than the average Mancunian teen. More about French colonial history, De Gaulle’s role in World War II, and France’s part in the Holocaust than the average resident of Paris’s banlieues. And it isn’t because I am a savant or uniquely educated. It is because they are no longer educated.
Like Americans who don’t know who their congressman is, where their state capital is, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, or why we fought for freedom from British tyranny, the youth of our nation is, like the youth of Europe, uneducated. Civics? Bah. Culture? Meh. History? Blah. Is it any surprise that in America — not in Germany where there are one million Syrians — Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” went viral?
But Europe is still worse. For all that our melting pot is disappearing, Europe’s efforts to assimilate its own immigrants is gone. Totally. There are schools in Milan that teach Arabic and preach hijab. One million Syrians arrived in Germany a decade ago, and now too many live in ghettoes, failing to learn German, with more and more women veiled. France long ago abandoned any notion of integrating its own North African Muslim communities. All of this is visible on the streets of every major European city.
Europe’s self-abnegation is a perverted reaction to the nationalist excesses of World War II, a justified effort to reject the sentiments behind Deutschland Über Alles that went wildly in the opposite direction. From a continent dominated by the Third Reich, eugenics, and rabid antisemitism, Europe has become a continent bereft of national pride, national culture, and patriotism. But nature abhors a vacuum, and for those who have not signed up to the Thunbergian religion of Climatism, too many have followed blindly the unquestioning Wokeism that America is now rejecting. Yet others in the growing Islamic communities of Europe have recreated the intolerance of their homelands, worshipping Islamist extremism.
All are united by their Jew hatred. The irony.
Trump’s NSS is completely correct that Keir Starmer’s Britain has gone insanely Orwellian, censoring speech, stifling free commentary, and policing the internet like overheated members of the Chinese Communist Party. On the continent itself, the blatant crazy is rarer, but the lethal combination of louche leftism and ignorance is levying its own costs.
Finally, there are the reactions of America’s elite glitterati. In addition to the usual “Trump is a fascist” recitations, there has been endless, breast-beating caterwauling about the betrayal of Europe, and, of course, Trump’s own ignorance. All this ignores the fact — yes, fact — that the United States has continued to arm, support, provide intel to, and otherwise support Ukraine and our European allies against our common enemies. But these are inconvenient truths.
You see, fancy people in our nation see Europe as the touchstone of our civilization, and fealty to our partnership as a religious rite almost as important as subscribing to The Atlantic. What they never ask is whether Europe has betrayed itself. What they never admit is that they are angry with Donald Trump for noticing.
Is a new focus on our own hemisphere brilliant strategy? Is downplaying the threat from China the best course for our own national security? Is burden sharing more important than preserving our own global leadership? Not necessarily on all counts. But these are not insane ideas, or at least no more so than believing Iran will give up its nuclear weapons, the Palestinians will make peace, China will choose butter over guns, or that Vladimir Putin has a soul.
But Donald Trump and his team see Europe for what it has become. Perhaps this new National Security Strategy can be the slap in the face our friends need to remember that once, they were the font of modern civilization. They may never again be so great, but they can at least teach the ideas, and celebrate the achievements, and seek to sustain the values that we all once shared. And in the meantime, with our help, defend their continent from the predations of the likes of Putin.
Bravo. Nary a peep was heard from Europe when Barack Obama made his famous "pivot" to Asia, but that was probably because they so enjoyed his speeches on their soil apologizing for America. Europe has been grifting and double-dealing with Russia for decades, and it's about time someone held them to account and slapped them out of their stupor. Bravo, President Trump.
I am much struck nowadays by the similarities between the United States and late nineteenth century France. The Dreyfus case had a remarkable impact on French politics and culture. Jew hatred brought together two forces that for a hundred years had been at daggers drawn--the Republican right and the Legitimists. Israel hatred is now bringing the far left and the far right together, and I don't mean just fringe elements but major cultural figures on both sides. As far as European reaction to Trump's security statement is evocative of a child's complaint when a parent tries to discipline him, "You don't LOVE me."