Sometime during the 2000s--I think it was around 2005, but it could have been a little later--I was invited to give a talk at a conference in Berlin. (I have forgotten the details.) The Bush Administration was already turning away from the legacy of the New Deal, and I already doubted that Democrats would be able to reverse that trend. I gave a talk reflecting some of themes of my article on the great Atlantic crises of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, which I am linking here. It focuses on the interplay of political developments in the United States on the one hand, and Britain, France, and Germany on the other. In the crisis of the late eighteenth century, the United States invented modern democracy, while Britain emerged with an even stronger aristocracy and France and other continental states mixed monarchy with bureaucracy. In the crisis of 1854-71 (approximate), the victory of the North in the Civil War not only preserved democracy in the United States--the goal Lincoln defined throughout the Civil War--but gave democrats in Europe a tremendous boost, creating governments incorporating universal male suffrage (or something fairly close to it) in Britain, France, and Germany. The 1929-45 crisis of the twentieth century continued that process an created an alliance of democratic nations based on the rights of labor and welfare states. By the time I gave my talk in Berlin, the United States was clearly moving in a very different direction at home, and I urged my European audience to make sure that their nations preserved the democratic welfare states that had grown up in the last half century or so, no matter what happened across the Atlantic.
Late last week the Trump Administration issued its first National Security Strategy. These documents can be very important. In 2002 the Bush Administration issued one announcing that the US government would wage preventive war against any hostile state threatening to acquire nuclear weapons. That strategy was implemented in Iraq--where it turned out that the nuclear threat no longer existed--and the Bush Administration had hoped to implement it against Iran and North Korea as well. This year the Trump Administration, working with Israel, did execute it against Iran. There are many interesting aspects to the new Trump Administration strategy. A key section on the Balance of Power is equivocal and somewhat self-contradictory, pledging on the one hand to "prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others," while adding, "The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations." The section on the Western Hemisphere defines a "'Trump Corollary' to the Monroe Doctrine"--"We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere"--which adds nothing new to traditional policy, and it says nothing, mercifully, about the President's stated desire to make Canada the 51st state, and doesn't refer to the "Gulf of America" or to possible regime change in Venezuela. It reaffirms a US military commitment to Taiwan. The most striking portion of the strategy document discusses the subject of my Berlin talk: the political relationship of the United States and Europe.
In astonishing words, the strategy document flatly rejects key policies and beliefs of all the major contemporary European governments and calls explicitly for their replacement by Europe's new rightwing parties. This begins with a discussion of Europe, the US, and the Russia-Ukraine War. While declaring a goal of enabling Ukraine's "survival as a viable state," it also rejects allowing Ukraine in NATO and blames the Europeans for the continuation of the war within a most original analysis of where Europe is and where it is going. (Since I last posted two weeks ago the Trump Administration has backed away from its pro-Russian demands upon Ukraine, but we cannot predict what will come next.)
"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.
"Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.
"This lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons. As a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat. Managing European relations with Russia will require significant U.S. diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states."
The document rejects "writing off" Europe in favor of changing the direction of European politics so as to prevent "certain NATO members" from becoming "majority non-European" within decades. It specifically recommends "cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations." This can mean only one thing: promoting the advent to power of the new right in Europe, including Nigel Farage's Reform Party in Britain, Marine Le Pen's National Rally Party in France, and the Alternative for Germany led by Alice Weidel. In previous eras the US government resisted the advent to power of Communist parties in states like Italy and Germany, but never before has it endorsed the victory of opposition parties. And the question, it must be said, is whether the Trump Administration might be on the side of history in setting this goal. The latest opinion poll in Britain shows the Reform Party with 31 percent support, compared to 20 percent for the Conservatives, 14 percent for the governing Labour Party, 18 percent for the Green Party and 11 percent for the Liberal Democrats. In France Jordan Bardella (who has replaced the convicted Le Pen) and the National Rally Party show 36 percent support, more than the next two more traditional candidates combined (Emile Macron cannot run again.) In Germany the latest poll shows the Alternative for Germany with 26 percent support compared to 25 percent for the Christian Democratic Union and 36 percent total for three left wing parties, the Socialists, Greens, and Left Party. (All polls listed in Wikipedia.) The traditional German parties in particular have been pulling together to try to keep the AfD (its German acronym) out of power, drawing public criticism from Vice President Vance early this year. The National Security Strategy effectively endorses those parties as candidates for national leadership in our oldest allies. The prospects of Farage and the Alternative for Germany still look pretty bleak to me, but the National Rally is solidly established as the second leading party in France and the Macron government has become very unpopular.
This could turn out to be parallel to the last two great Atlantic crises, when Europe did follow the US lead. The Trump Administration is leading a revolt against our bureaucratic state, based upon impartial principles, to create a non-regulatory government dedicated to helping enterprises of all kinds thrive in return for their financial support. Bureaucracy is indeed stronger in continental Europe, at least, than it has been in the United States, and it is drawing the same kind of resentment. That was what led to Brexit just a few months before the first election of Donald Trump.
I learned many decades ago to distinguish a nation's government from its people, as the diplomatic documents of the early and mid-20th century invariably did. The Trump Administration--the government of the United States today--has already lost popularity among the American people and they may well repudiate it in 2024 and 2026, but not before it has made drastic changes in our government's relationship to our society and to its foreign policy abroad. It has officially embarked upon a completely new course in Europe. I hope that European governments will rise to the occasion as most of them failed to do 90 years ago.
