Lew Neill

The fundamental problem for the European right is not America; it’s that Europe is a bastion of left-liberalism, and to a far greater degree than the US. Between two thirds and three quarters of the electorate in every Western European country is liberal in the American sense of the term. Meanwhile in America that sensibility attracts more or less half of voters. We have had the opportunity, thanks to Biden’s gross incompetence, to install the most right-wing leader this country has had at least since Nixon, if not since before WW1. However as much as we love Europe, American foreign policy under Trump has had to come to terms with the reality of our differences very quickly. America has interests around the world, and Trump has major goals for shaping the conditions undergirding those interests. We also have a limited timeframe, and American foreign policy simply cannot afford to relax with an Aperol spritz and tend the garden in Europe for four years while we wait for AfD to climb from one fifth of the electorate to one fourth. We are going to do for ourselves what we have to do. Europe should do the same, and if that means tactically distancing yourselves from Trump’s persona, so be it. But do not forget that there is, or at least is supposed to be, an alignement of objectives. You, too, want (we should think) restoration of your sovereignty, re-industrialization of your economies, rebuilding of your military and thus your ability to project power abroad, and above all control of your borders. But if in your tactical distancing from Trump’s persona, you make yourselves blind to your own interests and start to claim like third worldist agitators running influence operations against American voters that America is “a declining power” and Trump is “erratic” and “not fulfilling his promises” and is a “slave to Israel”, you have moved yourself into the camp of strategic adversaries. For these sorts of views are not only antagonistic to American interests, they also represent an acceptance of European decline. It is alignment with the whole BRICS, multi-polarity, every nation a small bit player mentality that is the opposite of western aspiration and greatness. And in that case, you should expect to find that right-wing American governments now and in the future will view Europe somewhat coldly, and will find it mostly irrelevant whether Europe’s left-liberal establishment persists, as we have no desirable partner in Europe in any case.

This is a remarkable shift. People in *every single one* of the top US-allied countries now believe it’s better to depend on China than on the US. The global balance of power is clearly tilting away from the US and toward China.