Europe’s Sleepwalkers and America’s New Tune

With Friedrich Merz, Germany remains in the camp of Europe's sleepwalkers. Meanwhile, a thunderstorm is rolling in from Washington. Sheet lightning is flashing across the Atlantic, bathing the dilapidated facades of the Potemkin villages in harsh light.

The course of the new US administration is throwing the world into disarray. According to political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Donald J. Trump wants to rebuild the USA in an authoritarian way. In Foreign Affairs, they outline his ‘path to American authoritarianism’ and how he will use state institutions to paralyse and wear down the opposition. The script reads familiar. Yet, it more closely resembles the Biden administration’s strategy of using the judiciary and media to discredit and criminalise Trump, preventing the ‘populist’ from being re-elected. In this respect, it is involuntarily revealing.

There are fundamentally different ideas of ‘democracy’. I understand it to mean that every responsible citizen has a voice and that the will of the majority determines the course. The task of politics is to implement the will of the majority—the classic Anglo-Saxon principle. The ‘European’ model, by contrast, places far greater emphasis on consensus and the protection of minorities. It sees the people as a volatile mass that must be kept on course by ‘enlightened elites’, lest they succumb to baser instincts and vote the wrong way. This approach, dominant among German politicians and EU officials, strongly mirrors Lenin’s ‘democratic centralism.’

The crux of the majority principle is that it easily submerges minorities. It therefore needs a strong constitutional framework to ensure their protection. But the dog should wag the tail, not the other way around. When elite projects repeatedly ignore the will of the majority in the name of minorities, they inevitably degenerate into dictatorships. On immigration, the ban on combustion engines, or the so-called Equal Treatment Act, Brussels’ policies seriously harm the majority’s interests. They can only be enforced through increasing pressure, and Brussels is developing an alarming ambition in this regard.

In his essay Donald Trump, Mathias Döpfner and the End of the World as We Know It, Alexander Heiden notes that Brussels has long ceased to be the centre of a federal union of democratically constituted states. Instead, it is dominated by a paternalistic bureaucracy that considers itself omniscient. In its unelected state, the EU reminds him more of Russia than the US. US federal states wield more power than EU member states. This dysfunctional centralisation is the real reason why Europe no longer plays a role in global power politics and cannot compete with China, India or Russia.

Nevertheless, EU elites continue to believe in their moral superiority and until last autumn, their self-image had harmonised with that of US elites. But the Trump administration no longer propagates DEI measures, transgender activism, ‘post-colonialism’ or ‘critical race theory.’

Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ is the antithesis of the ‘woke’ agenda of politically correct self-denial. Historian Victor Davis Hanson calls it a ‘counter-revolution’—a return to normality: two sexes, equality before the law, ethnic colour-blindness and meritocracy. As cocky as Trump may be, he does not seek moral brownie points like Barack Obama. He wants results for his country.

Trump does not think globally but strategically. He pursues realpolitik. As a shrewd businessman and dealmaker, he talks to adversaries. Just as Nixon negotiated with Mao in 1972 about Vietnam, Trump speaks to Putin about ending the war in Ukraine. From his perspective, the US has no interest in its continuation.

For three years, eastern Ukraine has seen a grinding war of attrition, with neither side making decisive territorial gains. The estimated death toll is now over one and a half million. Countless families have been shattered. It no longer matters who the aggressor is; what matters is ending the killing.

The U.S. supplies most of Ukraine’s weapons; without them, the war would end swiftly. Geostrategically, Ukraine is now insignificant. Europe may disagree, but it remains a negligible factor—something that Victoria Nuland’s infamous 2014 remark had made clear. The EU has long exited the stage.

Prolonging the war only pushes Moscow closer to Beijing and strengthens its alliance with Iran. Given BRICS’ growing strength and India’s role, the US has an interest in quickly reaching an agreement with Russia before it drifts entirely into China's camp.

Ukraine fought bravely but cannot regain its lost territory, at least not without triggering a world war. At best, it can hope for a stale compromise. If the Europeans insist on prolonging the war, they must do so without US support. Instead of strengthening their defence capabilities, the Europeans weakened their position under Angela Merkel and now look on with bewilderment. Feeling ‘betrayed’ by the Americans, they cry foul, hyperventilate and issue pathetic messages of solidarity to Kiev.

They, who have relentlessly depleted their people’s wealth to accommodate millions of Muslim migrants, ‘save the climate’ and atone for ancestral sins, now feel cruelly abandoned. But that is how power politics works. The Europeans should know this well.

A glance at history would help: Trump is no more callous than Metternich, no more ruthless than Bismarck, no blunter than Churchill. On the contrary, he is saving young men from the meat grinder.

Yet, at the same time, he is doing what Ursula von der Leyen considers so rude in others—pursuing his own interests. Worse still, he states the obvious: he who pays the piper calls the tune. And the Europeans, like petulant children or senile old men, refuse to understand this.

(The author is a German historian and novelist. Views personal)