The ideological war threatening NATO – the USA and Europe may be soon heading for a messy divorce

Pic.: dinarrecaps.com

The strain in US-European relations under the second Trump administration stems primarily from a deepening ideological divide, not just policy disputes over trade or Ukraine/Russia.

Focused on ideological jousting, many on both sides of the Atlantic seem to have forgotten that “Europe” as a unitary actor in international affairs exists largely in the minds of the Brussels elite or politicos in DC, for the European Union is a treaty-based organization built around shared markets and regulatory regimes and at present lacks the ability to play a meaningful role in defense, stresses military ‘19fortyfive’ site.  

It is an understatement to say that since the arrival of the second Trump administration, America’s relations with its European allies have become unsettled. Analysts in Europe and the United States have blamed this change on Washington’s combative tone, the administration’s Ukraine policy and reset with Russia, and, of late, Trump’s tariffs and the prospect of a trade war with the European Union.

These high-visibility US policy moves do not tell the full story. Much of the current strain in transatlantic relations is driven by ideological differences between Donald Trump’s political base and the prevailing mindset among mainstream European elites. As the United States navigates the turbulent waters of Trump’s populist revolution, Europe’s policy establishment has been holding fast to key left-liberal precepts that no longer resonate in Washington. In a nutshell, the two sides of the Atlantic are increasingly ideologically misaligned. 

Until recently, ideology had little to no impact on transatlantic relations. As long as Washington pursued its long-established neo-liberal course on economic policy, it remained wedded to globalization as a path to reach “complex interdependence.” The broad ideological alignment across the Atlantic notwithstanding, the electoral cycling between Democrats and Republicans when it came to who occupied the White House did not seriously upset the overall transatlantic equilibrium.

In the national security arena, business as usual was buttressed by the fact the United States was providing the bulk of NATO’s capabilities that proved to be the deal of the century for Europe’s largest economies, especially Germany, leading over time to de facto disarmament across the continent after the Cold War.

The first Trump administration initially shocked this ideological consensus across the Atlantic, but most of Europe’s political establishment saw it as a temporary aberration. Even as some countries in NATO yielded somewhat to Trump’s demands that they spend more on defense, they soon welcomed the election of Joe Biden as President as a return to the status quo ante, with only the countries along the Eastern flank of NATO truly ramping up their efforts to rebuild their militaries.

This inaction on defense spending by Europe’s largest economies continued despite the war raging in Ukraine being a persistent reminder of how fast their immediate neighborhood was changing. The left-liberal Brussels consensus remained dominant, and any insurgency by the citizenry was apt to be branded “populist” and dismissed out of hand. Predictably, this has only further fueled popular ire across Europe, mobilizing the right and, more importantly, rapidly foreclosing the space for a political compromise that was once widely believed to be the mother’s milk of democratic politics. 

Even before the new US administration entered office and launched its blunt approach to the transatlantic alliance, the second election of Trump was greeted in Europe with a gasp of disbelief and a doubling down on the Brussels consensus. In private conversations with European politicos, there were unmistakable signs that Americans who did not affirm the left-liberal consensus were now considered something akin to wayward peasants — to be condescending rather than understood, not to mention accepted as one’s equals and interlocutors. It was only a matter of time before the Trump administration’s manifest disdain for Europe not spending on defense would clash with the conviction — to quote one European official — that “Europe has agency” and hence can go its own way. 

Today, the ideological difference between the Trump administration and Europe’s key leaders has dangerously obscured the basic realities of European geopolitics, further stressing the already frayed transatlantic relationship.  In turn, the Trump administration’s moves to redefine the assumptions about the foundational nature of the transatlantic relationship have fueled the fire that threatens to consume NATO.

Focused on ideological jousting, many on both sides of the Atlantic seem to have forgotten that “Europe” as a unitary actor in international affairs exists largely in the minds of the Brussels elite or politicos in DC, for the European Union is a treaty-based organization built around shared markets and regulatory regimes and at present lacks the ability to play a meaningful role in defense. Moreover, this view of Europe as an autonomous player is, in effect, a manifestation of resentment towards the United States that, while brought to the fore and amplified by comments emanating from the Trump administration, has increasingly gathered over the three post-Cold War decades.

Unless cooler heads prevail and both sides begin to listen to each other, set aside their ideological preconceptions, revisit the fundamentals of geopolitics, and bring back a modicum of mutual respect to the conversation, the United States and Europe may be soon heading for a messy divorce.  How quickly it comes to that is anyone’s guess, as there are signs that populist parties in Europe, including in Germany and France, may take the field in the next electoral cycle.

Still, in politics, nothing is preordained, and regardless of what happens in Europe in a few years, today, Donald Trump’s America and Ursula von der Leyen’s Europe continue to drift apart. 

Most importantly, what has not received sufficient attention in US media is how European states see their own policy choices in light of the US realignment of its Russia policy and what is driving Europe to make them.  But it is also true that notwithstanding the declarations of newfound European solidarity as the continent inches towards its declared independence from the United States, what comes across is a degree of pique that doesn’t augur well for the future of the project.

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