Donald Trump is our guilty conscience. For months, the American president has been targeting the errors of our continent. Instead of being indignant about it, we should be worried about it. Because, to be harsh, the diagnosis made is no less fair and… shared by more than 30% of Europeans who make the same observation of a civilizational debasement of the West. Before the current tenant of the White House, Jefferson, Wilson and others were able to give their opinion on Europe. But the Trumpian tone of the national security strategy is resolutely alarmist.
That Europe is designated as a rival is a historical invariant between powers, but that its vital prognosis is engaged should make us open our eyes. Yet we prefer to take refuge in Trump’s lazy accusation of interference and aggressiveness. He, who has been so criticized for only thinking about the interests of his country, is today accused of not remaining indifferent to ours. We can question the part of electoral calculation and approximate tinkering in the presidential statement, but not its sincerity. Looking at Europe as it takes shape today, he sees what America has become, damaged by multiculturalism and wokism.
The West has every interest in listening to the message from the “far West” to avoid taking the same path. The New World always looks at its native land with a look of gratitude, mixing recognition and desire for emancipation. If the American Revolution was indebted to La Fayette, the Founding Fathers immediately proclaimed the“exceptionalism” of the new United States to break away from the “binding alliances” established with old Europe. In his farewell speech, Washington specified that his foreign policy focused on the extension of the thirteen colonies towards the Pacific. In 1823, President Monroe urged Europe not to thwart the independence of its South American colonies, a way of telling them to move away from “their” hemisphere.
The decline of Europe
The United States then turned its back on Europe to look towards the West. America can claim to be isolationist, but when Europe’s existence is threatened, it intervenes immediately. In 1917, Wilson refused to witness the collective suicide of Europe caught up in the Great War. Not only is the American army participating, but the American president’s fourteen points open up a new world order in which Europe is downgraded. If Wilson was not followed by his Congress, Yalta (1945) confirmed the decline of the European powers and established his posthumous triumph. America, however, still needs a strong Europe to “contain” communist expansion in the East. During the Cold War, Washington deployed the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) so that Western Europe would not sink economically or militarily.
Americans now expect Europeans to ensure their own security
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, maintaining the Atlantic Alliance as it is has been discussed. The Americans now expect the Europeans to ensure their own security. By announcing his new strategy, Donald Trump has only pointed out the acceleration of the de-Europeanization of the world. With each international crisis, the European Union demonstrates its geopolitical anomie, due to a lack of political cohesion and military weight. The few recent chinks struggle to mask the fragility of the institution in the face of the “carnivores” of the world.
The American executive also deplores the economic decline of Europe, whose share of global GDP has fallen to 14%, and blames the Brussels bureaucracy. America fears that this downgrading will first benefit its Chinese rival. But the disagreement is less commercial than cultural. The American president especially fears the civilizational disappearance of Europe, which he considers as a historical base, not as a simple institutional area. However, Europe is in the process of leaving the West.
Bring Europe out of its torpor
To support this observation, Trump puts forward a demographic decline leading to a collapse in the birth rate and “invasions” migrations which would mechanically lead to a “change of people”which would ultimately make Europe unrecognizable. By wanting Europe “remains European and recovers the faith it had in its civilization”the American president seeks to wake her from her torpor so that she becomes aware of the dangerousness of the world and takes control of her destiny. Last year, the American vice-president, J. D. Vance, said nothing else when he called on Europe to free itself from the spirit of “vassalage” towards his country. But we prefer to stay asleep. The American president is shaking us, vigorously, for our good.
Diplomacy never requires perfect relationships, only discernment of priorities and compromise to get there. Europe does not need to be afraid of Washington, only of itself. In an uncertain world, the United States needs to cooperate with it, if only to guarantee the stability of its respective markets. The president’s attitude is thus more defensive than imperialist. The community of destiny which links the two sides of the Western hemisphere obliges each to worry about the other when they are not doing well. Today, it is America that is calling on Europe to take a civilizational leap, because “Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States” and Trump knows it; to remain at the center of gravity of History, a great America cannot be created without a great Europe.
