The US From Europe

Okay... er... damn - there's just no decent way to start this post. How Trump, Vance and Brian (Mr. Marjorie Taylor Greene) behaved towards President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office was disgusting and vile and unprecedented. And it's exposed a fissure between the US and Europe that history may well record as a schism.

Now, I hasten to say - because this will be a spikier article than I usually write - that I have no business telling Americans anything about who they elect or how they manage their affairs or how they should feel about their leadership. And it should be noted that Europe is the author of its own weakness. We spent decades failing to invest in our military production, capabilities and intelligence, and now a European country is under attack and requires American intel to direct its donated American air defences. If a nation's first priority is the safety of its people, we have failed as a continent.

Worst of all, for a continent possessed of so many research institutions and the highest number of skilled workers anywhere in the world, we have failed technologically. No European nation except France has the technology to produce a modern military - everybody else relies on foreign, mostly American, imports. Even Britain, ostensibly Europe’s most capable military, requires such substantial American support that it can reasonably be termed half a nuclear power. The warheads are British but the missiles are American, and they need American personnel to maintain them. Failure.

But failure hasn't stopped a growing animosity towards the United States, particularly in Europe's wealthier nations. This has always been a bit of a puzzle to me, given that we've benefited from the American century more than the average American has. We have higher life expectancy, better work-life balances, universal healthcare, higher education standards, more equality (even though many of us are monarchies), and we've even got George Clooney. We ought to have been happy with the set-up, and we should have been respectful of the fact that our high quality of life was secured by American firepower. If push ever came to shove, it would have been the American President who led the defence and served - justifiably - as the leader of the Free World.

All the same, that term was grating. The "leader of the Free World" was a man in Washington who we never had a say in electing. That leader - when he was Bush Jr. - had helicopters flying low recon missions over London like it was a conquered city. That leader decided how global shipping would be protected, which rogue elements in other nations would be killed, which nations would be invaded, who was useful enough that their repressive regimes could be tolerated. These were the kind of tough decisions that history never remembers kindly, and they were always made with America first, as her elected leaders were democratically bound.

Last week, I wrote that the European economy had caught up with the US around twenty-five years ago (even overtaking it for a while), it is thus natural that Europeans started to tire of coming second and to desire their own power over world affairs. Since power dislikes being shared, a geopolitical argument between the US and Europe was inevitable.

Nobody, however, expected it to come now, with such acrimony, and to have the freedom of a European democracy at stake. What's most shocking, though, is that the US seems willing to throw that democracy's freedom under Russian boots and conduct resource colonisation against whatever remains of it, all while threatening military action against Greenland and Denmark, waging economic warfare against Canada - with the publicly stated aim of annexing her - and putting NATO in such ambiguity that it no longer exists as an effective deterrent. Trump hasn't just abdicated America's leadership of the Free World - he's revoked its membership and positioned it as a hostile state.

The mood among European politicians is palpable. Scratch beneath the obligatory bonhomie that Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are displaying towards Trump and you'll see glimpses of a deep blend of anger and fear. And I don't mean the (hopefully fanciful) questions being raised about whether Trump is a Russian intelligence asset. Perhaps the clearest example of the European mood is this quote from the likely next Chancellor of Germany Friedrich Merz “My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.”

Two things about that quote are striking. The first is that until recently, Merz was a passionate transatlanticist who believed in the US-led world order. The second is that he's not talking about holding on until the end of the Trump presidency - he's talking about a long-term process of Europe pulling away from the US, no matter who sits in the Oval Office. And that speaks to the real question nobody wants to ask - is there a way for the United States and Europe to heal this rift in the short to medium term?

On the historical face of it, there must be. The wider shared history between Europe and North America is one of quickly building and repairing relationships. Both Italy and West Germany, for example, became NATO allies shortly after the horrors of war.

But... But.

Italy and Germany were not democratic nations when they fought as the bad guys. Nor, in fact, were any Western nations when they transgressed against each other. The entire history of hurt - from the Irish famine to the atrocities of the Yugoslav Wars - was done in the absence of anyone in the offending nations getting a real democratic say. In such circumstances, when megalomaniacs and oligarchs have their own people subjugated, they have a tendency to wage war and commit atrocities on others. Democracy guards against this. Actually, democracy guards so well that no two sovereign nations with universal suffrage have ever fought on opposing sides.*

Here's the burning issue at the heart of Friedrich Merz's statement - America is a democracy. Trump isn't a king who inherited a throne and merely speaks with his own voice. Rather, he won the election by 48.9% of the popular vote, meaning that proportion of voting Americans align, at least broadly, with his views. Not as subject people being run roughshod, but as his willing enablers. They may choose someone like him next time, and the time after that, and so on. Europe doesn't know.

Segue - almost every word I've written is the pot calling the kettle black. My own nation freely chose to go crazy in 2016, leave the European Union in the most offensive way possible and elect a bombastic incompetent who once entertained the idea of a special forces operation against The Netherlands. And we currently have a political party led by a Trump sycophant polling at 25%.

The difference is that Britain is moderately sized and lacks the power and influence to upset the apple cart all that much. Some of our worst politicians spent recent years screaming and shouting at our European family, trying to wave the stick of a trade war and hinting at withdrawing military cooperation (by loudly talking about how much there was) and nothing really happened besides economic self-harm. Consequently, we all had enough space to take an eight-year breath, brew some tea, wait for things to calm down and elect a boring leader to start fixing things.

America is massive. Apples are tumbling. Time and space are in short supply.

*I’m being a little technical here with the terms “universal suffrage” and “sovereign”. The former is taken to mean all adult citizens (i.e. including women) and sovereign discounts fighting within nations - civil wars, independence wars, military coups, and so on. All of these things happen in democracies. Often, they’re the last thing to happen.

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