Hello Europe, I’d like to introduce you to America. No, not the America you know. Not the sleek functionaries you have met stateside at conferences sponsored by the Council of Foreign Relations or the Brookings Institute. Not the likes of Victoria Nuland or Strobe Talbot, who swan around your capitals like security overlords visiting their dependents. Not any members of our foreign policy “Blob” who agree with you on everything, but most especially the need to maintain America’s extraordinarily expensive commitment to Europe’s security, if only because it guarantees them your polite attention and deference.
No, I’d like to introduce you to the rest of America, who may not possess the credentials or careers you respect, but who do foot the bill for your defence. Could you explain to the average American taxpayer why she must endure expensive health care and a paltry two-week vacation while also subsidizing your security, so that you may provide fat benefits to your citizens? Could you explain to the victims of natural disasters in Altadena, or Asheville or Lahaina why Ukraine deserves more support than they do? Can you explain why 330 million Americans spend more defending 500 million Europeans than you are willing to spend defending yourselves? Can you explain to them why seeking peace in Ukraine is apparently treasonous, or how you intend to bring an end to this awful war without talking to Vladimir Putin?
These are some of the awkward questions the people who re-elected Donald Trump hoped he might pose. And he has, along with a commitment to shrinking a federal government currently racking up a nearly two trillion dollar deficit. Your security has benefited greatly from America’s uncontrolled deficit spending, but only American taxpayers will have to make good on the accumulated debts. Those Trumpy voters out there in the heartland may also have noticed that while a decade of polite prodding led to no appreciable increase in European defence spending, a single explosive meeting in the Oval Office somehow unlocked hundreds of billions of euros of new funding. Where was this astonishing fiscal capacity hiding when the Russians seized Crimea and the Donbass, and launched a campaign of assassination and subversion across Europe? Can you really disparage Trump’s diplomatic skills when he just got you to do exactly what he wanted you to do?
Most Americans outside the rarefied corridors of power don’t feel particularly threatened by Russia’s regional aggressions, and don’t particularly care what territorial accommodations Ukraine might need to make to preserve its sovereignty. They have however noticed that China has ransacked the American industrial base, and that their past leaders connived in the destruction. If extreme measures like tariffs are needed to revive American manufacturing, then so be it. Their president represents American interests, and not necessarily yours. Unlike your EU, which assiduously guards its rule makers from democratic interference, Americans can overrule their elites at the ballot box and install new leaders with new plans. That you decry this recently demonstrated capacity as a threat to democracy reveals your true view of the institution: a tame beast safely caged and posing no real threat to the likes of Ursula von der Leyen.
EU foreign minister Kaja Kallas may believe she can dismiss Trump as the leader of the free world, but a reasonably well-informed American may ask whether her Europe is quite so free as to constitute a community of shared values with the United States. Upstart populist parties and their supporters are excluded from power and surveilled by state security. Elections and referendums resulting in a “wrong” result are overturned or rerun until a “correct” vote is achieved. Social media companies can be beggared with multi-billion euro fines for failing to censor free speech. An online jest at a politician’s expense may warrant a police visit. Decades ago, Milan Kundera told Europeans that freedom was the right to make a joke about your leaders. Green party leader Robert Habeck, who has filed hundreds of legal actions against his fellow Germans for ridiculing him online, prefers state coercion to personal embarrassment.
Listen to what Donald Trump is telling you: Ukraine is not America’s treaty ally, and is in the end Europe’s problem. A peace deal, even imperfectly realized, will exclude the prospect of a nuclear escalation and permit the EU to begin rebuilding Ukraine. Integrating the state into the European Union and making it a prosperous liberal democracy, much as the EU transformed Poland thirty years ago, will be the best long term argument against Putin’s designs. America can no longer afford to carry the bulk of the burden for Europe’s defence. We must deter an aggressive, wealthy China whose ambitions pose a much greater threat to the liberal world order than those of a poor, declining Russia.
In just a few weeks, President Trump has done more to shift the defence burden onto our allies than any prior US president. Incoming Chancellor Merz may believe he is striking a courageous pose by proclaiming the end of Europe’s security dependence, but this is exactly what Trump and many Americans want from our wealthy German ally. Our foreign policy blob may be distraught over the looming loss of the status America has bought them in Europe at great expense. But you should ignore them and follow the money back to its source: if you can’t convince average American taxpayers that they should still spend more on your defence than you are willing to, then they won’t.
For the EU elite, a lesson in how an American succeeds, no credentials needed