Are Europe and the US headed for a divorce? Or would that be folly?

If the United States and Europe were a married couple, you would probably say they are headed for a divorce. Like that couple, the two long-time partners could resolve their differences and renew their vows. 

Doing that would require an honest discussion, however, of why they got together in the first place and how they have drifted apart over the years. That will require a painful re-examination, one that is by no means assured of justifying continuing the relationship.

The US-Europe transatlantic partnership dates back to the end of the Second World War. That’s an eternity in geopolitical terms. Most alliances last a few years, perhaps a couple of decades at most.  

That long duration was not an accident. The partnership is touted today as one based on common, liberal democratic values. 

But it was launched at a time when many of the founding members either were not liberal democracies (Turkey, Portugal) or had only recently re-established democratic regimes following extended periods of authoritarian rule (West Germany, Italy, Greece). Most other active participants had been conquered by Nazi Germany and were also re-establishing democracies.

The relationship, then, was primarily one founded in a common interest as well as an aspiration to possess common values.

That interest was the opposition to the Soviet Union. That totalitarian, Communist state had extended its power into Eastern and Central Europe, overthrowing several elected democratic governments in its wake.

Both the US and the remaining European states did not want to see the Soviets rule the continent. Europeans vociferously rejected Communism, and the Americans did not want to see most of the remaining industrialised world fall into Soviet hands.

This union of interest and values cemented the relationship over the ensuing decades. Life under Anglo-American – and after the Suez Crisis, purely American – tutelage allowed Western Europe the space to rebuild economically and build solid democratic societies.

Europe had no other reasonable choice. They had blasted themselves into bits in World War II, eliminating their ability to resist Soviet expansion on their own. Colonial empires like France and the Netherlands found themselves unable to re-establish their prior global pre-eminence as well.

Europe had to choose which victorious power to engage with: the Communist Soviets or the Americans. They chose wisely, but it was nonetheless a marriage at least of convenience as much as love.

Europeans tend not appreciate how much America had to change to adopt this role. The United States was born as a conscious rejection of “the Old World”. For most of its history, the republican nation believed it was an island of enlightenment and freedom in world dominated by corrupt monarchies inherently driven to war.

America’s first president, George Washington, established the national creed at its outset by rejecting involvement in Europe’s conflicts. He argued that the US should avoid “entangling alliances” and concentrate on securing its independence, protected by the Atlantic Ocean.

His successors followed that advice until President Woodrow Wilson brought America into World War I on the side of the Allies. Even then, Wilson brought his distinctly American views into the Versailles peace conference.

Wilson insisted that every nation, defined primarily as identifiable ethnic groups speaking a common language, have its own political state. Thus was born the modern map of Eastern and Central Europe, as the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian empires were carved up to make room for these new polities.

The US retreated into its old habits, though, after the Versailles Treaty was signed. Again the Anglo-Saxon mostly Protestant republic saw the Atlantic as a giant moat that no European power could cross. It accordingly disarmed, pushed other nations to disarm, and refused even to participate in the League of Nations, much less join in any alliances to prevent the recurrence of war.

America changed its approach only when the Soviet behaviour after 1945, coupled with the military advances that meant the two oceans that had once protected it were no longer impregnable, meant the old isolationism no longer secured American independence.

This shared interest more than a mutual devotion to abstract values provided the relationship’s foundation for over four decades. The Soviet Union’s collapse in the early 1990s, though, meant the glue that bound the partners had dissolved. It was by no means a given that it would continue in its absence.

It did mainly because, again, it was in both parties’ interests that it do so. Americans had grown accustomed to exerting global leadership. The Soviet collapse was interpreted in America as an affirmation of the superiority of American leadership and the liberal, capitalistic, democratic society it championed.

With no rival to fight, Americans saw the post-Cold War period as an opportunity to do fulfil what had been its latent manifest destiny since its founding: the spreading of American ideals worldwide.

America had always understood itself as the concrete expression of universal human rights. As such, it always thought that all other nations could organise themselves on something akin to American lines. 

If “all men are created equal, endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights” then all nations could, in theory, be liberal democracies just like the United States.

For America, then, the post-Cold War justification for the renewed transatlantic alliance was procuring Europe’s consent and participation in this globalising mission.

This also meant a subtle difference in the relationship between the partners. During the Cold War Americans led the alliance, but Europeans were usually not expected to follow America when it came to matters outside of Europe proper. Many European countries openly disapproved of America’s war in Vietnam, for example, but that did not lead to fissures because what the US did in Asia was largely its own concern.

If the purpose for the alliance was expanded to have a global reach, however, Europeans increasingly were expected to fall in line. Failure to do so, and those divergences became increasingly more common, gave rise to US resentment.

The calculations were somewhat different for Europe. Western Europe saw itself as creating a superior society to the American one. Their social democracies, in their view, made life more comfortable and fairer for its citizens. Even the most Americanophile of the European states, Great Britain, saw its mixed economy as providing a more stable and secure life than the purportedly cut-throat, neo-Hobbesian world of America.

Staying in America’s orbit allowed these nations mostly to disarm. With no Soviet threat to concern them, they could divert the resources used for arms to peaceful purposes, making their states (in their view) even more just and comfortable.

Eastern Europeans, newly freed from the Soviet shackles, also willingly adopted this new deal. They needed Western protection to guarantee their safety should Russia ever regain its strength and resume its historic path towards seeking dominance in those lands. They also needed Western investment to enrich themselves, something membership in the European Union guaranteed them.

Americans were often viewed as potentially steadier allies than the Western nations. Britain and France’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia in 1938 at Munich had not been forgotten. It was also hard for nations historically used to being ruled by Germans, whether emanating from Berlin or Vienna, without their consent to see modern Germany as a secure friend.

The early post-Cold War order satisfied both partners. The Americans could launch their global project while the Europeans could work on creating their postmodern Garden of Eden. So long as there was no global power to threaten either partner, the effectively renegotiated marriage continued to thrive.

The 21st Century brought an end to this nirvana. The vicious terrorist attacks on 9/11 infuriated America. It now saw a new global enemy to combat: Islamic terrorism. America moved to mobilise the alliance to fight that foe much as it had done against the Soviets in the 20th Century.

Europeans, however, did not see the same global threat. Most NATO allies were happy to send troops to help America conquer Afghanistan. The Taliban rulers of that nation were clearly responsible for the despicable assault on their protector; the cost in terms of men and materiel was relatively small; and the threat was believed to be small and easily neutralised.

The idea of conducting a neo-crusade against global Islamic terror, though, did not appeal to most European countries. They did not help America in its invasion of Iraq, nor did they actively send troops to fight the smaller Islamic terrorist entities that surfaced throughout northern Africa and the Middle East. 

France would work to suppress Islamic cells in its former African colonies, but it was left to America to carry the heavy lifting in most other countries.

Europe and America also saw the rise of China and Russia’s resurgence through different eyes. Many European nations, Germany and France in particular, had used growing trade with China to prop up their welfare states. Even as China under President Xi Jinping started to rein in the limited freedoms that the Chinese people had received under previous leaders, European nations did not want to unduly threaten their prosperity by criticising China’s Communist tendencies.

America saw things differently. Its Asian allies were threatened by China’s increasing military strength, and its extended Pacific border meant that it could not risk Chinese dominance of that crucial sphere. 

The fact that Europe was literally on the other side of the world meant this concern simply did not seriously register.

China’s increasing repression also disturbed American sensibilities. China’s rise threatened the very premise of American post-Cold War expectation that the world would inevitably become liberal capitalist democracies. The “end of history” was not supposed to lead to everyone speaking Mandarin.

Russia’s resurgence under President Vladimir Putin, especially after its invasion of Ukraine in 2014, was also viewed differently by each partner.

Americans were less threatened by Russia than Eastern European nations, and thus reacted to the invasion without the fear that drove their increasing focus on China. Western Europeans were also not threatened by the invasion even as they found it distasteful.

Western European leader, epitomised by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, also saw the new situation as a chance to prove the superiority of Europe’s civilisation. They would approach Russia with carrots rather than sticks to enmesh Putin in a European embrace that would supposedly give Russia the comfort and security it desired.

Americans urged them, softly under President Barack Obama and loudly in President Donald Trump’s first term, to do the opposite. The US was in effect trying to push Europe to do what had worked against the Soviets: rearm and disengage economically with a hostile foe.

Europeans not so politely pooh-poohed that notion. They believed that they understood their fellow European Putin better than the unsophisticated, bellicose Americans.

The two partners had thus effectively drifted apart. The United States thought nothing should change from the strategy that won the Cold War and sought active European participation in the new global conflict against all autocracies. Europe thought the Cold War victory had changed everything.

Everything, that is, except European reliance on American military power to defend it. Europeans tended to believe that promissory note would never have to be redeemed because no power genuinely threatened it.

But they believed that if that changed, America would rescue them from their peril just as it had in World War II and in the post-War era.

In effect, Europe believed that the very qualities it tended to disdain – America’s overt moralistic view of foreign policy and its belief in military power to quell threats – would be their saviours.

We now see how badly each partner understood the other and have for many years.

The American Right had grown weary of European condescension. It sees Europe’s problems as of their own making, and consequently of potentially their own solution.

The American Right sees Europe as a continent of ungrateful deadbeats, the geopolitical equivalent of adult children who live rent-free in the parental home while openly flaunting parental values.

They think enough is enough. Vice President JD Vance’s Munich speech, coupled with America’s brusque shunting Europe aside in its pursuit of direct peace talks with Moscow over Ukraine, is akin to the parents kicking the deadbeat children out of the home.

The message is clear: if you want our help again, you must play by our rules.

Europe, to continue the analogy, sees this as an act of a cruel parent who no longer loves their children. It may intellectually recognise that their behaviour prompted the American rejection, but the rejection’s pain is much more acute than any regret.

Europe also rightly fears what might happen in the near future given its extreme military weakness. Britain simply cannot fulfil its NATO obligations to Estonia, nor can Germany fulfil its towards Lithuania, without the United States should Russia attack.

Europe also errs if it blames the American Right for its predicament. It should not forget that President Joe Biden withdrew American troops from Afghanistan even at the cost of an embarrassingly rapid collapse of its client Afghan regime.

Even Biden, who often spoke of rallying the world’s democracies in a global fight against autocracy, ruthlessly acted in naked US interests by ending the expensive, no-win commitment to a regime that seemed unable and unwilling to create the strong state needed to resist the Taliban.

Divorce seems the easiest option under these circumstances. 

America does not want to financially and militarily underwrite global resistance to autocracy without active European participation. The contours of that sentiment would change if Democrats were to return to power, but the overriding direction is nonetheless clear.

America is going to focus its efforts on the Pacific in the coming decades because that theatre is the only one that threatens its security. Again, the speed of that shift may change under a Democratic administration, but Europe should remember that it was President Obama who spoke about the “pivot to Asia,” not Donald Trump.

Europe does not want to engage in a global fight against all autocracies. It does not want to fight Iran, and Iran’s use of proxies to assault Israel and the Arab Gulf States has not changed that stance. 

Europe also does not want to disengage economically with China, nor does it want to endure the reprisals that fully following America’s lead in slowing China’s economy would attract.

The glue of mutual interest, then, seems to exist no longer. And without that glue, no amount of touting of shared values seems to be able to convince either side to make the sacrifices necessary to keep the marriage going.

The question is whether enough interests overlap, even if they are not fully mutual as they were in the Cold War, to justify a third reiteration of the transatlantic partnership.

A careful examination shows that there are substantial overlapping interests, if the leaders of the two blocs can recognise and act upon them in time.

America must recognise that it cannot allow Europe’s economic might to come under Russia’s or China’s sway. The EU and Britain’s economies may be weak compared to the US’s but they still produce roughly 20 per cent of global GDP.

Modern warfare rewards the nation or alliance that can outproduce its enemy, as Russia is brutally showing in its war of attrition against Ukraine. That fact was a major factor in the Soviet Union’s collapse, as the US and its allies produced close to 80 per cent of global GDP throughout the Cold War.

Today globalisation has reduced the West’s edge. China alone produces about 17 per cent of global GDP; the other founding BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa) produce an additional 8 per cent. Other wealthy nations that have not followed the West’s lead and sanctioned Russia for its invasion produce even more.

If Europe were to become a US adversary rather than an ally, the US-dominated global structure would no longer command the bulk of the globe’s economic power. That would produce a sea change in US power overall, perhaps even leading to a sharp decline in the use of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Europe also has an interest in keeping the US on its side. Europe would be even more economically isolated without US support. 

That’s why the threat of US tariffs is so alarming. Rapid loss of its trade surplus with the world’s largest consumer nation, combined with its own anaemic growth in domestic consumption, would unsettle domestic economies and politics and make Chinese influence even more consequential.

The two also do share values, even if they have significant differences. Europe’s more communal society means economic and personal liberties can appear constrained to an American eye. Yet both robustly protect personal and political rights, encourage diversity in lifestyles rather than enforce conformity, and use ballots rather than bullets to choose who rules.

If Germany’s or Britain’s definition of free speech seems restrictive to many Americans, they are the Wild West of freedom compared to China’s repressive regulation of public and even private speech. There is no equivalent in any European country to the “Great Firewall of China” that polices that nation’s internet.

That overlap of interest and value can give rise to a new alliance that looks more like the limited alliance of old Europe than the all-in, comprehensive Cold War-era version.

A Europe that could abandon its illusion that the age of hard power is over would find that it had the strength to negotiate with America over what it does and does not do. It would also find that it had power to punch its weight in global economic settings rather than find, as it often does, that it is left with unpalatable options when dealing with less scrupulous nations like China.

An American that can abandon the illusion that its own unipolar moment was the inevitable result of its founding principles would have to act much more like a traditional European nation in the struggle for global power. But it would also find that it paradoxically has less to do in some cases because it would no longer feel compelled to solve every global problem or conflict.

An America that could see Europe as an ally rather than an obstreperous province would likely find that it gets more concrete cooperation on global matters. A strong Europe could provide genuine muscle, much as the strong British Empire did in World War II.

America might have to face unhappy consequences when Europe chose to flex its power in open opposition to US aims, perhaps in the Middle East or Latin America. But that would be the necessary price to pay to get an ally that matters when the two agree to pursue a common aim.

It is very hard for partners in a relationship gone bad to both overlook the genuine pain both have caused the other and to do the hard work to rebuild a relationship on the new foundations that exist. America and Europe may find that is just too hard and choose to acrimoniously walk away.

If they do that, they could very well regret that choice in a few years. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. And real life is not like a Hollywood romantic comedy. Once partners get divorced, they likely stay that way and rue the consequences as their folly becomes manifest.