This assault on democracy has left Europe reeling – and alone
For years, many of us assumed that with the decline of the US-led liberal international order, the split between democracies and autocracies would be what shaped the contemporary world.
Liberal democracies in America, Europe and Asia would stick together, while China, Russia, Iran and North Korea would increasingly cooperate. The pessimists worried about the decline of multilateralism giving way to a “multi-order world” in which like-minded autocracies would start to cluster, making the search for global peace and prosperity ever harder.
The reality looks much worse. Donald Trump’s US is now subverting the very idea of liberal democracy in order to undermine it, both in the US and, as has become painfully obvious, in Europe too.
At the Munich security conference, the US vice-president, JD Vance, accused Europe of abandoning the values of democracy by erecting firewalls to exclude the far right from government; of fearing its peoples, and of restricting free speech. This was to a mainly European audience eagerly expecting Vance to address the big security questions of our time, from Ukraine and Russia to China and the Middle East. His assault on European democracy left the room dumbfounded and seething. His chilling suggestion that the waging war against disinformation amounts to war on democracy felt like a genuinely shocking moment.
Vance’s extraordinary assault, and his electoral interference on behalf of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland in Germany just days out from a general election (he had earlier met the AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel) have little to do with democracy. Rather he was outlining the Mega (Make Europe Great Again) project in support of the far right across Europe. The strategic goal is clear: a Europe in which the nationalist far right is empowered is a divided Europe, far easier to subjugate by imperial powers, be that the US, Russia or China.
If Trump’s goal is the neo-Nazification of Germany, then that ties in with the Russification of Ukraine, the first under the banner of “free speech” and the second as an invocation of “common sense”. Trump and Putin share an imperial vision of the world, which includes an imperial “peace” for Ukraine. It is imperial because it will be decided – just as at Yalta in 1945 – by empires; the US and Russia, perhaps with China’s help, but without Ukraine. It is also imperial because it concedes to Russia’s imperial ambitions for a sphere of influence, which Trump shares, as made clear by his approach to Canada, Mexico, Panama, Greenland, and, in fact, Europe as a whole.
What we are also learning is that rather than a reformed multilateral order, or even a more chaotic multi-order world, we are moving into a phase in which there is no order at all. It is a world in which international courts are sanctioned, international institutions thrown under the bus, international law systematically violated and international aid eviscerated. China will try to step into the void by talking up multilateralism, cooperation, predictability and free trade, as the Chinese minister of foreign affairs, Wang Yi, did in Munich. But China is most likely to be motivated to capture the spoils from a disaffected Europe betrayed by the US.
During a panel discussion at Munich with the Indian foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, I referred to the dangers of a world devoid of any rules of the road. He rebutted this by saying that India quite liked the transactionalism baked into this survival-of-the-fittest scenario. He had travelled to Munich after having accompanied the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, in what was, for them, a successful visit to Washington, in which Modi and Trump agreed on gas, weapons and more.
There is a certain (perhaps understandable) glee among many in the global south, who see Vance’s election interference in Germany as Europe getting a dose of the medicine that it has shoved down the throats of many countries in the global south, having lectured them for decades on democracy and rights. And yet no nation, large or small, whether in the global north or south, will thrive in a world without international institutions and internationally agreed norms, even if those rules have been violated for years. A fractured Europe will only be poorer, more insecure and less free in a world devoid of meaningful laws and institutions.
In response to Trump’s gratuitous gifts to Putin, Emmanuel Macron convened Monday’s emergency summit of Europe’s defence powers. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, warned that the choice for European leaders was between Brussels and Moscow: the time had come for a European army.
This is all welcome, but every decision from now on should be premised on the awareness that what is at stake is not “just” a repeat of Munich 1938, in which Ukraine is sold out to Russia, just as France and Britain did to Czechoslovakia to appease Nazi Germany. The ominous spectre, after Vance, is that of Poland in 1939, squeezed and then attacked by Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany, both intent on imperial expansion. Europe as a whole this time (starting with Ukraine) is under attack militarily by Putin’s Russia and politically by Trump’s America. China is waiting in the wings to partake in the feast.
The sense of urgency and the call to action should not be about merely pleading pathetically for a seat at the negotiating table on the war in Ukraine. Only Ukraine and Russia should be at that table. Neither should European governments bend over backwards to reassure Washington they are ready to pick up the bill on whatever the US and Russia agree. Nor should Europe’s focus be on how to retain US interest by increasing spending on US weapons or gas.
What Europeans (Ukraine included) must agree fast among themselves is what they want, what their red lines are, and what actions they are ready to take collectively for Ukraine regardless of what the US and Russia stitch up. Sanctions, military support for Ukraine, the use of Russian frozen assets, accelerated EU membership and a European deterrence force in the event of a truce are all options. More broadly, Europe will need to make itself more capable and less dependent on the US for defence. Temporarily exempting defence investments from EU fiscal rules, establishing new EU borrowing for defence, increasing European investment bank lending for defence or setting up a defence bank among the willing and able European governments will have to be considered.
Europe should neither pick fights with the Americans nor focus on pleasing them. But European governments must now act on the assumption that they are alone in a world dominated by malign imperial powers. A Europe in which the far right takes power, as Trump and Putin would like to see, is one in which European integration would cease to exist. After years of discussing how the transatlantic partnership against threats from Russia could be strengthened, we find ourselves in a world in which we are not just abandoned by the US to defend ourselves, but attacked by it.
Guardian Europe columnist
Are our leaders brave enough to out-Trump Trump?
JD Vance, the US vice-president, has told Europeans that their values are no longer America’s values. Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, added that Europeans “can’t make an assumption that America’s presence will last for ever”. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, has confirmed that Europe will not have a seat at the table when the end of the Ukraine war is negotiated.
Shellshocked, European leaders are stuck at the first stage of grief – denial. They will remain adrift as long as they stay there, and fail to grasp that Donald Trump has a rational economic-cum-geostrategic plan (albeit one that is detrimental to Europe’s interests).
Starting with his economic weaponry, Europeans need to realise that Trump does not naively believe that his tariffs will, magically, eliminate the US trade deficit. He knows that in the short run the dollar will rise. His tariffs are a negotiating tool to get foreigners to revalue their currencies, to swap their holdings of short-term for long-term US debt, and to magnetise European chemical and mechanical engineering conglomerates (eg BASF and Volkswagen) from a stagnating Europe to a boisterous United States.
Moving on to Ukraine, Trump’s team has made two things clear. First, they see Russia as a diminishing power that could never threaten Nato countries but which was given a temporary kiss of life by the transition to a war economy, triggered in turn by Nato’s planned expansion right up to the Russian border (through Russian-speaking areas in Georgia and eastern Ukraine). Second, they reviled how enthusiastically Europe helped push Russia into China’s embrace.
In this light, it is easier to understand why the Trump administration is cutting Europe out. And why it adds the ideological veneer of taking Europe to task for betraying its own values, for example the right to free speech and the cancellation of Romania’s elections on, admittedly, shaky grounds.
And now? One option Europe has is to carry on alone, attempting to arm and fund Ukraine’s attempt to push Putin back. It would bankrupt an already insolvent Europe, it would not help Ukraine and it would inevitably force a humiliated Europe back under the US’s thumb.
A second option is to out-Trump Trump: to undermine Washington by rejecting any deal that gifts Ukraine’s resources to the US, meanwhile signalling to Moscow Europe’s openness to a new security architecture that involves a sovereign Ukraine in a role similar to Austria’s during the cold war. That would be tantamount to turning a dismal crisis into an opportunity for Europe to liberate and to re-energise itself. Alas, I cannot see our present crop of leaders seizing it.
Economist, politician and author
This was a declaration of alliance with the European far right
JD Vance’s speech in Munich took Europe by surprise, but nothing in its content is new. His words were loaded with references that resonate with rightwing populist movements across Europe.
Concerns about so-called censorship and threats from within mirror the rhetoric of the main nationalist European figures: from Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, accusing an enemy of “hiding” itself, to Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, suggesting that media outlets intentionally misrepresent her political choices – or Marine Le Pen, the head of the French far right, warning against internal threats to French identity, particularly from immigration.
These words being said on European soil by a US official also represent the institutionalisation of what was a central part of Trump’s first term. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is a longtime advocate of forging a transatlantic rightwing nationalist alliance, forcing together US rightwing populism with European nationalist movements to create a common front against globalism, liberal elites, and multiculturalism. One of Bannon’s key strategies was to use “free speech” as a rallying cry against what he calls the “liberal totalitarianism” of the EU and US Democrats.
Invited by several key European figures, he was a guest speaker in France at the 2018 congress of Le Pen’s National Front (now National Rally). Facing the crowd he presented anti-racist critiques of the far right as an attack on freedom of speech, telling them: “Let them call you racists, let them call you xenophobes, let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honour.”
Vance’s explicit support for Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) not only marks a significant shift in traditional US diplomatic stances, but also validates a party whose prominent members took part in a clandestine meeting with neo-Nazis and other extremists where they discussed a plan for implementing remigration. That plan entailed the forced deportation of millions, targeting not only asylum seekers and foreign residents but also German non-white citizens.
Vance’s “threat from within” are those whose identities defy his image of Europe and those who are determined to push hate speech outside of the public sphere. That should frighten anyone who cares about human rights.
French journalist, writer, film-maker and activist
Progressives must call out this inversion of reality
JD Vance’s warm embrace of Europe’s far right should finally put paid to EU policymakers’ tedious talk of shared transatlantic values, and shatter complacency about the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which the EU has been drifting ever more to the right on immigration, free speech and political exclusion.
Vance is right in pointing out that European democracies face internal risks, but he is wrong in his analysis. The dangers we face come from Vance’s xenophobic far-right friends and allies and their toxic messages of hate and division, not from progressives. In fact, European progressives should speak out more loudly, clearly and forcefully about building inclusive societies and against the hate-mongers. Perhaps being insulted by Vance will spur them to do so.
Europe’s reality is the opposite of the one outlined by Vance. Far from the far right being ostracised and silenced, mainstream parties’ “firewall” against partnering with it is crumbling. Meanwhile, whether they are in power in EU states such as Hungary, the Netherlands and Italy or providing backing to ruling centrists in countries like Sweden, hard-right parties are setting the EU agenda. In too many cases, European governments have been moving further away from their internal and external commitments to human rights – although they still talk about “European values” to countries in the global south. This has not surprisingly prompted charges of double standards and led to a loss of EU credibility.
Vance portrayed European migration policies as weak. The charge is laughable. The reality is that the EU has been shifting steadily toward tougher migration controls, including through the European pact on migration and asylum, passed in 2024, which strengthens border security and speeds up deportations. Once-taboo policies such as the establishment of “return hubs” for refugees and asylum seekers, unlawful pushbacks by Frontex and the weaponising of Islamist-linked terrorist attacks for political gain are now mainstream in the EU. Building an ever-strong “Fortress Europe” has not, however, stopped the rise of far-right parties, which continue to spout anti-Muslim hatred and gain traction by calling for even stricter measures.
True, there are valiant but ultimately ineffective EU attempts to curb hate speech on social platforms and in European media. Sadly, here too, while free speech is often defended in principle, there are also governmental crackdowns on pro-Palestine demonstrations, journalists have lost their jobs over their criticism of Israel’s destruction of Gaza after the October 7 Hamas attack and Germany has shut down cultural events and even deported activists for expressing pro-Palestinian views.
The EU should respond forcefully to Vance’s criticism by going back to its original commitments to equality, inclusion, human rights and the rule of law. Too much ground has already been ceded to Vance and Donald Trump’s friends and this is no time to retreat.
Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs
The peril Germany is facing may concentrate minds
During his first term in the White House, Donald Trump reserved a special place in hell for Angela Merkel’s Germany. He loathed everything she, and it, stood for: its energy dependency on Russia, trade dependency on China and military dependency on the US. Most of all, he resented the then-chancellor’s deliberative politics and the popularity they enjoyed at the time. She disdained his visceral vulgarity. Germans were discomfited by him, but believed that once he was gone, they could retreat into their comfortable shell.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was the first shock to the system. The Munich security conference of this past weekend will go down as an even bigger moment. Germans are now forced to realise that the US will no longer defend it; some are beginning to wonder whether the superpower on which they relied might even have become an adversary.
The elections next Sunday will go a long way to determining whether Germans have woken up. Will they finally appreciate the need to use hard power to defend the post-1945 settlement that gave their country a moral purpose?
All the mainstream candidates expressed fury at the actions of the Trump team in Munich, both the hostile speeches by the vice-president and others, and the endorsement of the AfD – with Vance meeting the far-right party’s leader, but not the chancellor, Olaf Scholz. Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democrats and chancellor-in-waiting, accused the Trump team of “interfering quite openly” in the election: “We will decide for ourselves what happens to our democracy.” It was a sobering moment, suggesting he may now understand the folly of his recent parliamentary gambit when he accepted AfD support to try to force through a tough migration bill.
The peril Germany is facing – with Trump on one side, Putin on the other – may concentrate minds. Merz’s new government will have three competing priorities: to bring order to the asylum system, radically modernise the economy and beef up defence spending. The scale of these challenges may strengthen his hand in negotiations to form a new coalition with either the Social Democrats or the Greens, or possibly both. All the parties will have to show a new resolve and sense of common leadership, characteristics that were sorely lacking in the outgoing government.
They know that now they have nowhere to hide. If they fail to make progress over the next four or five years, the AfD, aided and abetted by Trump and Elon Musk, will be in pole position for the next elections.
Author of In Search of Berlin, Blair’s Wars and Why the Germans Do It Better
The continent is torn between denial and hysterical overreaction
For years, European countries have behaved as geopolitical ostriches, hiding their heads in the sands of military and diplomatic impotence. Today they tremble as if war had already reached Berlin and Paris. The result is paralysis – a continent torn between denial and hysterical overreaction.
What would a balanced response to JD Vance and Donald Trump’s explosive declarations about Europe look like? It would be one fit for objectives and fit for the future. Europe’s objectives are deterrence of foreign aggression – on its soil and on that of partner countries such as Moldova or the western Balkans. These objectives, however, do not include global military projection to drive regime change in other countries. They also do not include preparation for conflict with China, whatever course the US may take: as the US security umbrella shuts over Europe, so does American leverage in determining European policy towards Beijing.
Europe’s longer-term interest is to avoid having to scramble for an ad hoc and embarrassingly insufficient response each time a security crisis breaks out – whether this is about meddling, piracy, cyber-attacks or aggression against it, or about supporting the UN in peacekeeping missions internationally.
Combining its immediate objectives and its future interests leads to one clear solution: Europe needs a common military force that is effective but of limited size. An effective force is one that is well supplied and trained, that has joint procurement and an industrial production capacity to match. A limited force is one that is sufficient to deter aggression, but insufficient for military adventurism, and that does not imply swapping the welfare state for the military state. A common force, finally, is one that is ready to be deployed without incessant haggling between participating states, as one army and not as a hastily assembled coalition of national jealousies.
Who should establish such a force? The pragmatic answer is whoever is willing, without requiring the paralysing unanimity demanded by EU treaties. It should be open to, or at least be in a close relation to, non-EU countries such as the UK and Ukraine. Many of Europe’s most celebrated achievements began as parallel treaties between an avant garde group of nations.
It becomes clearer every day that if peace is to emerge in Ukraine then European troops will need to be part of the solution. They should not be deployed merely to guarantee European states a minor seat at the table of the negotiations or because Trump and Vance order so. They should be deployed to form the basis of a common, effective, but limited European army that is fit for objectives and for the future.
Ultimately, this is not merely about establishing a European military force, but establishing a European security regime crafted and owned by Europeans, less vulnerable to the whims and tides of US policy.
Philosopher, activist, author and director of the Berggruen Institute Europe
