The shock has been tough in recent weeks, and the European relays of these days will not change anything: America has noted very clearly that it intended to unload as completely as possible from the safety of Europe, leaves to pass Ukraine by losses and profits or, worse, to economically vassalize it without having to protect it physically.
We will comment for a long time this American turnaround, started before the election of Donald Trump, and the confidence that the president seems to grant to his enemies rather than his allies. But for Europe as it exists today, more than a cold shower, it is a moment of existential questioning. Indeed, it is not only the Atlantic Alliance which is currently threatened, but Europe as we know it, a Europe in many respects “made in USA”.
For more than a hundred years in fact, the United States has shaped the European continent more than any other power. On the other hand of an old colony which has become more powerful than its metropolis, the American influence on Europe has not been limited to the defense industry or to the American bases in Italy, Germany and Greece, or even to culture – to the point that the Kevin, Brandon and Dylan are now included in the hundreds of thousands on the whole continent.
We do not realize it, but this Europe “made in USA” also exists in our own political identity, as the American influence on all of our internal processes has been strong. We can of course cite the example of the European Union, a project which initially brings together all the continental losers of the Second World War around a project of union strongly inspired by American success – and which continues to ‘Being in Brussels, a city that is sometimes seen as a new Washington. Or our trend, everywhere in Europe, to copy the latest news in the American political communication system, whether they are methods of selecting candidates (such as open primaries, very fashionable in the 2010s) or themes , even campaign slogans, such as “Make Europe Great Again” today taken up in European policies which do not all carry America in their hearts.
Three key dates
No, the impact of the United States on our political system is much deeper than that, and it comes down to three key dates: 1917, 1945 and 1991.
1917 is the entry of the United States into the Great War, alongside France and Great Britain. President Wilson had conditioned the first American intervention on the continent at 14 points, including Georges Clémenceau, Cynique, had said that God himself had only had 10 commandments. Nevertheless, it was the United States who came out alone winners of this war, thus starting the slow transformation of the continent as we know it today: exit the empires, Europe tastes for the first time American potion, based on free trade, freedom of navigation and especially the self-determination of European peoples.
A failed project, because if it is decisive to create a new European order, America immediately withdrew from any mechanism to safeguard an order which ultimately only holds by its will: European states, all ruined, can do nothing alone , and the rise of fascism and communism in the 1930s seals the end of the first project in Europe inspired by America.
In 1945, the project resumed, but in a much smaller area, Soviet occupation of half of the continent requires. Undisputed winner of the second world conflict, the world’s leading economic power alone with half the whole world’s GDP, America fascinates Europe, which welcomes its GIS, its ships and its planes all over Europe ‘West. It was at this time when liberal democracy settled permanently on the western half of the European continent, despite (or perhaps because of) the threat posed by Soviet communism. At that time, we owe most of our democratic institutions and processes, inspired by the Americans even when the latter did not participate in their implementation.
Last important date, 1991, which is that of the fall of the Soviet Empire, and jointly, of the beginning of the Wars of Yugoslavia. With this double disappearance, the American model which has done miracles in Western Europe extends east, while the “federations” (which were sometimes had ersatz of Empires) disappear. Meanwhile, the nation states of central and eastern Europe which have just recovered their freedom have almost all only one idea in mind: to ensure their security, even their existence, under the umbrella of NATO.
Back to the wall
This Europe “Made in USA”, Donald Trump’s America no longer wants to maintain it, and whatever it is said today, this abandonment will have consequences-perhaps as much other than the abandonment of the Roman Empire of the West by Constantinople in the 5th century. Of course, this does not mean that the Americans will leave the continent (there are too many economic interests at stake), but they will no longer support this free and democratic Europe, from the Atlantic to the gift, as they Forged it since 1917. It is therefore up to Europeans to decide alone of their future, a future which can be decided in a certain continuity compared to the past, but which can also, in the absence of union, be considered under the sign of The division and a double servitude, vis-à-vis Washington and vis-à-vis Moscow.
Make an entire and free Europe without American support, or resign yourself to a more or less voluntary serving from abroad. This time, our leaders are back to the wall, and the decisions they will make in the coming weeks will shape our continent for years, perhaps decades to come.
*Thibault Muzergues is International Political Advisor Republican Institute and the author of Postpopulism (Ed. Of the observatory).
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