America is pursuing regime change in Europe

The far-right candidate won yesterday's presidential election in Poland, thanks at least in part to help from the Trump regime. Centrist EU governments need to realise America wants them out.

US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem (DHS photo by Tia Dufour)

Last week, US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem travelled to Poland and gave far-right presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki the full-throated endorsement of the US government. It wasn’t because Nawrocki in particular has attracted her admiration, in fact Noem didn’t seem to know much about him specifically. The endorsement wasn’t about who he is, but rather who he isn’t. He is not part of the centrist, rule-of-law-abiding governing majority in the EU. And it is that governing majority that the Trump regime wants to remove from power.

Before now it’s been unheard of for a sitting cabinet member in the US government to campaign for an opposition figure in a supposedly allied government, but that is exactly what happened last week. Noem said there is no time for "nice words," saying, "We do not have time to dance around the dangers that threaten our societies." She called the current “weak” leaders in Europe a “train wreck” who have “destroyed our countries because they have led by fear. They have used fear to control people, and they've used fear to promote an agenda that is not what liberty is about, that is not what freedom is about.”

Nawrocki “needs to be the next president of Poland,” she said. "Do you understand me?" Poland, which was previously in a far-right alliance with Viktor Orban until Nawrocki’s Law and Justice (PiS) party was voted out in 2023 and replaced by Donald Tusk, is just the beginning, she said. "You can be that shining city on a hill that the rest of Europe and the world will watch and know how strong you are, how free you are because you've elected the right leader that will protect it and defend it and ensure that every individual is treated the same and has equal rights as afforded to them," she said, adding that only if the Polish elect the right person will the country have the backing of Trump. "If you have elected a leader that will work with President Donald J. Trump, the Polish people will have an ally strong that will ensure that you will be able to fight off enemies that do not share your values…You will continue to have a US presence here, a military presence, for Trump, that we can work together for the security of both of our nations."

As Piotr Buras from the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Warsaw office pointed out today, “Nawrocki and PiS will play the Trump-American card in domestic politics criticising Tusk’s alleged abandoning of the transatlantic partnership by siding with Poland’s European allies.” Nawrocki will do what MAGA tells him to, and that’s why Noem endorsed him.

The Trump regime’s strategy of supporting like-minded far-right leaders like Viktor Orban, Giorgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Nigel Farage while working to undermine centre-right and centre-left leaders like Friedrich Merz, Donald Tusk, Emmanuel Macron and Keir Stramer, was unabashedly spelled out in a Substack post by the US State Department last week. Entitled “The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe”, the post said sitting centrist European governments are waging an “aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself”. Europe must return to its Christian heritage, the US State Department says, and citizens should support those politicians who will do so. The far right is being persecuted when they should be supported, says the American government. “Christian nations like Hungary are unjustly labeled as authoritarians and human rights abusers.”

But though they are being so blatantly attacked by a foreign government, Europe’s centrist leaders seem oblivious to the fact. As I’ll outline below, that needs to change. Voters need to understand that the far right wants to make their countries MAGA vassals. An alternative needs to be offered that would make Europe independent of America instead. But no European leader is clearly offering voters that alternative.

The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is still insisting that the US is a reliable ally. He won’t dare offer a word of criticism against Trump even when asked to defend the interests of his supposed allies Denmark and Canada who have been on the receiving end of Trump’s annexation threats. French President Emmanuel Macron pretends to be buddies with the foreign leader deriding his government. And European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen still can’t bring herself to say a direct negative word against Trump or his regime even as she follows German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s lead in suddenly embracing European independence.

There is some echo of Western leaders’ characterisations of Vladimir Putin and Russia before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but what’s happening now is far more delusional. Even as Russia was supporting Europe’s far right with money, media and disinformation over the past 15 years, Western leaders still insisted they had good relations with Russia and kept entering into contracts making them partially dependent on Russian energy. However, even these leaders weren’t insisting Russia was an ally. Europe at that time was split into zealous anti-Russian Hawks (the Baltics and Poland), Russian defenders (Italy, Hungary, Greece and arguably Germany) and those with realpolitik stances toward the bear to the East (France, UK, Netherlands). But in Europe’s attitudes toward the US, the split today is between the obsequious fawning of Orban, Meloni and Nawrocki; the timid cowardice of Starmer, von der Leyen, Dick Schoof and Micheál Martin; and the light criticism of Merz, Tusk, Macron and Sanchez.

There is no European hawk when it comes to the United States. Because, unlike Russia, the US controls Europe through its military protectorate system. It didn’t take very much political courage to be a European leader criticising Russia before 2022, and it sure as hell doesn’t take any in 2025. But to criticise the superpower that has bases and soldiers occupying soil across this continent , the hegemon which controls the bedrock of the global financial system, takes a lot more courage. And so far no sitting European leader has been willing to meet the moment.

But these leaders are running out of time. Because while they cower in the corner, the Trump regime is actively plotting their ouster. The US government already tried unsuccessfully to intervene in the Romanian election, endorsing far-right candidate George Simion before he went on to lose by a million votes. That did not stop Simion, in true MAGA style, from refusing to accept the result. Incredibly for a man who himself received so much assistance from Washington, Simion is actually claiming that France interfered with the Romanian election and that’s why he lost. But he has let it be known that he feels vindicated by the win of Nawrocki, who he supported and characterised the fight as a struggle between Polish values and the ‘LGBT agenda’. These elections are turning into proxy battles between America and Russia on one side and European centrists on the other - reminiscent of the Cold War. But only the American/Russian side is openly interfering at this point.

The list goes on and on. Trump and officials in his administration have actively supported the far-right Reform party in the UK, with Elon Musk giving both promotional and material support. US Vice President JD Vance endorsed the far-right AfD in Germany. In each case, the reason is not that these candidates or parties have specific policies that the US government particularly likes. The only important factor is whether the party is far right, and whether they will pledge fealty to MAGA. The far right is supported because they are planning what they themselves characterise as a political revolution in Europe. And the European leaders who will end up on the (figurative, hopefully) guillotine are still bending over backwards to say nice things about the regime supporting their political enemies. The US government could put billboards all over Britain praising Farage and vilifying Starmer but the British prime minister would still be calling the US a great ally and desperately trying to get in Trump’s good graces.

US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem (DHS photo by Tia Dufour)

What European voters need to understand, and what centrist leaders need to point out to them, is that all of this is faux nationalism. The reason the US regime likes these far-right figures is because they kiss the ring. Orban, Nawrocki, Simion, Wilders, Le Pen and Meloni are all willing to sell their countries out to MAGA. Their vision is to be vassal states to a MAGA American government, putting European countries into even further vassalage than they already are.

The only defence that Europe’s centrist governments have to this faux nationalism is to offer a European sovereigntism. They need to lay out an alternative vision in which Europe rapidly sheds its dependence on America and changes its stance to view Washington as a threat and an adversary. They need to show citizens that they will be the ones to protect them from the American empire, and that the far right populists only want to bring them further into servitude. To do this, Europe’s leaders need to acknowledge that they fucked up. Three generations of centrist Atlanticist leadership on this continent have put Europeans at grave risk. And people like von der Leyen, Merz and Starmer are the ones who drove us into this ditch. Right now, it looks like we may have no choice but to trust them to drive us out again. But if they can’t, it is logical that people should look toward figures on the far left who will actually stand up for Europe against the United States. I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that, because extremist answers on the other side are probably not what we need right now.

We need less ‘please sir may I have another’ on this continent and more ‘Yankee go home’. Because if the choice for voters is between a far-right who wants to ensure they’re in the good graces of the superpower that protects this continent and a timid center that is meekly calling for baby steps toward independence, it is clear who people will choose. Von der Leyen’s speech in Aachen last week had the right words. As Matinale Europeenne pointed out this morning, this was the first time this EU president has truly spelled out a European vision. But it is still too little too late. And as long as these centrist leaders avoid any mention of the superpower Europe must liberate itself from, it is unlikely citizens are going to be inspired by their message - or even hear it.