An overdose of Atlanticism has put Europeans at risk
Europe's foreign policy establishment has reacted with instinctive dismissiveness to Macron’s European Sovereigntism. They fail to see how discredited their own ideology has become.
My fellow Europeans, we need to talk about America. There are some uncomfortable truths that many on this continent don’t want to hear. But wishing them away is not a strategy.
The United States is close to meltdown. At this point it’s difficult to see how it pulls back from the brink. Most likely, barring some extraordinary development, the best case scenario one can hope for in America is managed decline. It is now a very real possibility Donald Trump will again take control of the White House, through democratic means or not. Now unchecked and vengeful, he seems intent on dismantling not only America’s democratic institutions but also NATO and the Breton Woods systems the Western world has relied on. And at worse, and yes we need to say this out loud, America may very soon find itself in a state of civil war.
Europeans desperately wanted to convince themselves that Trump was an aberration. After 2020, despite everything we saw play out, I saw this continent shut its eyes and pretend the previous four years was just a bad dream. But the truth is that Trump is just a symptom of a broken country, the world’s oldest democracy creaking under the weight of institutions that were not built for this century. And few in the corridors of power in Europe want to acknowledge the dark truth of what is happening across the Atlantic.