The Unshared Futures of the United States and Europe
America and Europe have been bound together for more than 250 years. Whose ideology will define their future?
The United States and Europe have been profoundly bound together since the first transatlantic voyage brought Europeans to settle in the United States well over 250 years ago.
After leaving behind British colonialism, the United States bolstered ties with Europe through transatlantic trade and working together to establish NATO. The relationship only continued to strengthen decade on decade. So much so, that the United States funded the Marshall Plan less than 200 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed to help Western Europe rebuild after World War II. This laid the foundation for economic prosperity and democratic governance on the continent while expanding the US market and preventing Europe from succumbing to communism—a core American priority.
Of course, there have been moments of tension, too. The Suez Crisis in 1956 and French and German opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 caused temporary rifts. A 2015 WikiLeaks report that revealed the US National Security Agency had tapped the phones of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her advisors caused deep mistrust between the German chancellery and its American counterpart.
Yet today’s transatlantic rupture is of a different nature. US President Donald Trump, propelled by his MAGA base, is driving a fundamental shift in the United States’ relationship with Europe that will last beyond Trump’s time in office—one that disrupts the global order, devalues alliances, and exports nativism as an ideology. The key question, to which the answer remains unclear, is how long it will take for the pendulum to swing back and what events will need to take place for this to happen. After all, it was Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, killing more than 2,400 Americans, that jolted the United States out of two decades of isolationism post-World War II.
In the grand scheme of things, and especially over a period of 250 years, two decades may seem brief. But this is not the view from Europe. Squeezed from the East by a revisionist Russia and an aggressive China, Europe’s security is under pressure. Meanwhile, its long-standing ally in the West, the United States, is inflicting further harm. The Trump administration’s rhetorical policies and inconsistent approach to the war in Ukraine have changed the strategic calculus for Russian leadership, who now believe the United States will do their bidding for them. As a result, Russia has ramped up missile attacks on Ukraine and Kyiv in particular, killing civilians on a near daily basis. Russia has also increased sub-threshold operations against Europe in the form of electoral interference, sabotage attacks, and drone incursions.
"Whether by choice or by force, American and European futures will continue to be bound together."
The United States recently fired a second warning shot at European states—supposedly American allies—and the patchwork of institutions that ensure safety and prosperity across the continent when it stated in its National Security Strategy that Europe is at risk of “civilizational erasure.” Vice President JD Vance had fired the first warning shot in February at the Munich Security Conference, where he referred to legislation to protect from (online) harms as “the threat from within.” Yet the real threats within Europe are the far-right parties and politicians this US administration openly supports, enabled by American Big Tech companies through their social media platforms. A third shot could usher in a true and potentially semi-permanent rupture in the transatlantic relationship, at least over the medium-term.
For Europe, this means coming to grips with a new reality. For much of the past century, the United States fought wars to spread an ideology. First, it tried to export capitalism through wars in South America and Southeast Asia. Then, it fought wars to advance liberal democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. Today, the ideology it seeks to propagate is nativism. In pursuit of this ideology, it declared war on its own residents by setting in motion Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids on the streets of American cities. Europe, and especially Western Europe, had not previously been the subject of such ideologically driven wars. That the spotlight has now turned on them in a way other countries around the world have long experienced is perhaps the real shock for many Europeans.
The looming clash as the United States tries to force nativism on the European Union and the continent as a whole will be highly destabilizing both economically and security-wise. The United States will try to mask its objectives by claiming it is promoting democracy, protecting free speech, and saving European citizens from “stifling” EU regulations. The reality could not be further from the truth. As the United States seeks to actively interfere in the domestic affairs of European sovereign states and chip away at democracy, it is undermining the NATO alliance, the bedrock of security policy for many European countries.
Whether by choice or by force, American and European futures will continue to be bound together. The question is whether their shared future will be based on democracy, human rights, and rule of law—as promoted by European states—or on the nativism pushed for by the United States.