America's New Enemy: Europe

Where once Washington scolded its foes, now it despises its erstwhile friends

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Twenty years ago Condoleezza Rice, then serving at the United States’ Secretary of State, delivered a notable speech at the American University in Cairo. For too long, for 60 years in fact, Rice said, her country had “pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East -- and we achieved neither.” The accumulated weight of those failures could no longer be supported or tolerated. A new era was dawning; a new direction was essential. “Now, we are taking a different course” she declared. “We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.”

These were heady times. “The day is coming when the promise of a fully free and democratic world, once thought impossible, will also seem inevitable” Rice said. Why, all across the middle east and the arab world, there were grounds for hope. The little green shoots of liberty were sprouting everywhere and the old world, which had failed, was destined to give way to a new one in which the winds of liberty would blow freely and thrillingly.

Well, it was a lovely theory wasn’t it? One, I confess, which I found attractive too. I was living in Washington then and it was easy to believe in such things there and at that time. It is hard to shrug off such things even if one does not wish to dwell upon them too often or too deeply.

Yet, fast forward twenty years, and another senior American politician ventures overseas to deliver a speech of some significance. JD Vance’s lecture - for it was not so much a speech as a theatrical piece of scolding - to the Munich Security Conference really was quite something.

Where once the United States put its foes and half-friends on notice, now it trains its fire on nations that have been its military and diplomatic partners for more than half a century. Europe, the American vice-president intimated, was barely a democratic continent any longer. Europe, he insisted, would have to change. For that to happen it would first have to wake-up.

Here’s Vance:

[W]hat no democracy, American, German or European will survive, is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief, are invalid or unworthy of even being considered.

Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t. Europeans, the people have a voice. European leaders have a choice. And my strong belief is that we do not need to be afraid of the future.

Embrace what your people tell you, even when it’s surprising, even when you don’t agree. And if you do so, you can face the future with certainty and with confidence, knowing that the nation stands behind each of you.

It is quite apparent that the new regime - a word to be used carefully but also, alas knowingly - in Washington views the likes of the Alternative for Deutschland, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, and Nigel Farage’s Reform party as the authentic voices of the German, French, and British people. This is both rot and projection, of course. These minority voices - for such they remain - are considered authentic precisely because they also position themselves as transgressive and bold truth-tellers.

Now it is true that Europe - and the European Union - can be smug and annoying. True, too, that Europe does not have the United States’ history of speech preservation. There has never been a strong movement for American-style First Amendment rights on this side of the continent and some of us have long deplored that absence.

Yet we might also now observe that the new administration in Washington is not interested in the First Amendment to its own constitution, save to the extent that those who flatter the new President will be raised-up at the expense of those who do not. Sceptics and critics are to be silenced and no questions will be admitted. When folk tell you who they are, ‘tis sensible to listen:

Already you can see the frighteners being put on the press. Accommodations with this new reality are already being felt. Little of this is subtle. Amazon, for instance, has paid $40m for a documentary made by, or on behalf of, Melania Trump. If Jeff Bezos thinks this can buy space or clemency for The Washington Post he is liable to receive a rude awakening. The first family will bank the cash and then forget the Danegeld was ever paid. For the time being anyway, the new reality works in Trump’s favour. But at some point and, I suspect, sooner rather than later, someone will be jailed for the crime of journalism. Cancel culture still exists and it will be nastier than ever.

In that context, European concerns about the fragility of the liberal order are not entirely misplaced. Speech can be dangerous too and not everyone can afford to lean into peril. Germany, for instance, has understandable reasons to be wary of Holocaust Denial and a revealing snapshot of the current moment is the sight of the American vice-president cosying up to a party, the AfD, which at the very least itself sidles close to that denial. Freedom of speech, yes, but at some cost, no?

Again, though, hark at how Vance has nothing - nothing at all - to say about Russia. Washington is evidently more comfortable with Moscow than it is, at senior levels anyway, with Berlin or Paris - to say nothing of Warsaw or Kyiv. Might is Right after all and if Putin invaded Ukraine, he must have had a good reason for doing so. It would be a mistake to ever forget the calibre of the people we are dealing with here.

So, here we are again. Europe’s hour has arrived, which means Europe will be late because that is what Europe always does. Britain is no exception to this. The prime minister might promise troops for Ukraine - to be deployed to monitor and help enforce some kind of more-or-less acceptable peace offering of a sort that is not yet, in point of fact, on any table - but this is more a gesture than anything else. How many soldiers can the United Kingdom sustain in the field? Perhaps - at the very most - a division for a few months but only a brigade for any commitment longer than that?

And even though there appears to be considerable political agreement that defence spending must rise rapidly there still seems to be a sluggish disinclination to consider what this might mean in practice and a denial, not just in the Treasury, of the choices this will force upon the government.

Well, here’s one they can have for free: this emergency is also the opportunity to do what everyone knows needs to be done and kill off the pension triple lock. It is precisely because everyone knows this must be done eventually that no-one wishes to risk being the first to propose it. Nevertheless, the quid pro quo is straightforward: the wealthiest pensioners in British history have the opportunity to do the patriotic thing for their descendants. Surely they - raised on the stories of their parents’ war-time sacrifices - will not refuse that offer? Right?

That won’t be enough but it would be a start. There will have to be movement on taxes as well as a harder series of judgements on welfare. You cannot be a serious politician and argue that “This is a new era” while also insisting that “Nothing significant will have to change”. Yet this is precisely where much of our political class is. Not just in Britain but across Europe. I will believe this has changed when it plainly has and not before or until then.

Defence is an insurance policy and for years we, like almost every other country in Europe, have relied on third-party cover because a comprehensive policy is too expensive and, well, when would be really need it anyway? The warning lights have been blinking for years but everyone pretended not to see them.

Europe’s imperfections do indeed include a certain kind of democratic deficit but it is of a type familiar to the framers of the American constitution itself. Public opinion is a mighty force that may be channelled for ill as well as good. Tempering it on occasion and to some degree is not a blow against the liberal order but a means by which that order may be preserved. Here, as ever, one may have too much of a good thing in either direction for maintaining that balance is a never-ending challenge.

What is happening in Washington now is a reminder of all that, for the great republic’s slide into sycophantic squalor continues apace. Thus:

Once more, and this time with feeling, we have come full circle have we not? For now, in 2025, the United States is bored of its friends and, as so often, boredom is the precursor to contempt. This is the new reality, right enough, one where the world’s greatest power threatens its erstwhile friends while offering encouragement to so many of its previous enemies. And if you think this is bad, wait until you see what comes next.

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