After watching the shocking Oval Office contretemps between Ukraine’s Volodomyr Zelensky and the U.S. President and Vice President, I left to join a group of friends for a party in a Budapest pub. Everyone there had seen the clash. It was all anybody could talk about.
“Maybe that had to happen,” I said to an expatriate friend who is from an EU country, “but I wish it had not happened in front of the cameras.”
“No, it had to happen that way,” he responded. “That’s the only way European leaders will learn. Trump has been trying to bring them to reality, but they won’t listen.”
Later, a shell-shocked group of top European leaders tweeted a joint statement pledging support for Zelensky and Ukraine. “You are never alone, dear President @Zelenskyyua,” they said.
Well, yes he is—and this is the reality with which Donald Trump and JD Vance brutally smacked Europe. That is, European countries may stand with Ukraine in words, but absent American money, arms, and hard power, what do they have to offer?
European armies are small and relatively weak. Since his first term, Trump has been urging European governments to spend more on their own defense. They have been reluctantly doing so, because it’s hard to find the money to spend on weapons when your economies are not doing well, and you have a welfare state to uphold. European social spending has for decades rested on the willingness of the United States to pay for Europe’s defense.
Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, and nearly forty years after the end of the Cold War, the American president has decided that enough is enough. It is time for Europe to grow up.
But Europe faces a much worse problem. The Flemish nationalist activist Dries Van Langehove captured it in this tweet:
Van Langehove’s brutal point recalled a conversation I was part of last summer, at a private conference in Sweden about the future of NATO. An older British defense expert spoke at length about NATO’s future, as if nothing had changed on the ground since around the year 2000. A Spanish academic intervened, telling the Brit that the UK and other NATO countries are hopelessly weak in terms of personnel. Fewer and fewer native-born Europeans are willing to fight, he said, and the large and increasing population of migrants—especially Muslim ones—not only won’t fight for their new countries, but many of them are actually eager to fight against them.
The Spaniard did not point out, though he might have done, that more UK Muslim men signed up to fight for jihadist groups in the Middle East than serve in the British military. It would be surprising to learn that the situation is any different in continental Europe.
Indeed, a source well-informed on the security situation in the UK and Europe told me recently that police and other government agencies responsible for domestic order are all terrified now of Islamic uprisings and “race riots,” by which they mean clashes between Muslims and non-Muslims. “They are all reduced to hoping that nothing will happen,” said the source.
Hope is not a plan. In Britain, police arrest peaceable people, including elderly women, for praying silently near abortion clinics—in Scotland, you even face arrest for praying against abortion inside your own home—but repeatedly allow British Muslims to say the most appalling things without facing charges. Indeed, we now know that UK authorities turned a blind eye as Pakistani Muslim rape gangs sexually assaulted thousands of working-class English girls. Whether it is out of a mindless devotion to multiculturalism, or fear of provoking Muslim violence, the fact that the British state runs a two-tier justice system is undeniable.
I brought up the shocking recent interview that podcaster Louise Perry conducted with David Betz, a professor at London’s King’s College. Prof. Betz studies modern warfare, and explained how modern Britain is accelerating towards civil war. The academic explained that an outraged peasantry, with no prospects of getting out of what they regard as a failed state, and fed up with a government and an establishment crushing them culturally and economically, are likely to revolt violently.
My interlocutor agreed, and gave examples. This person—like all those with whom I spoke informally, a member of the educated middle class—quoted a line from the notorious 1970s French novel The Camp Of The Saints, which presented a dystopian future in which mass migration conquers Europe while European establishments do nothing: “Your universe has no meaning to them. They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door.”
That old novel is routinely cited as an example of far-right hate literature, and indeed it has unseemly racist elements. But the truths it told fifty years ago about the civilizational threat from mass migration are now being realized today. People who say such things openly now—like Dries Van Langenhove—are denounced as “far right,” and even, like the Flemish activist, face prosecution for things they say.
Bigots they might well be (and if so, shame on them), but the fact that only figures the establishment demonizes as “far right extremists” are willing to tell the blunt truth about the mounting crisis is less an indictment of them and more an indictment of the cowardly ruling classes who refuse to face hard facts. Indeed, the migrants are making fires with Europe’s beautiful oak doors, and the ruling class is taking the doors off the hinges.
When and if civil wars come to Britain and Europe, the fault will lie squarely at the feet of the ruling class. David Betz, who studies the roots of civil wars, told Louise Perry that the current Labour government, through its policies, is inexplicably doing all that it can to fuel one.
This, then, is the way to understand the rude confrontation that Trump and Vance had with Zelensky. One doesn’t have to side with Russia in that war to recognize that Ukraine, which has fought valiantly, has no prospect of victory. Since the war began in 2022, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been saying that Ukraine cannot hope to win, and explaining why. Of course Washington, Brussels, and the media smeared Orbán as a Putin apologist, but Orbán didn’t say those things out of a love for Russia, which enslaved his country for nearly half a century. He was simply being realistic.
Dreams die hard. The dream of a secular, progressive, multicultural paradise so beloved of European leaders has come to an end. One year ago, European leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference cold-shouldered Sen. JD Vance, angry at him over his skeptical views of NATO’s Ukraine policy. But this year, Vance returned as the U.S. vice president, and told the audience that the greatest threat to Europe’s security was its own decadent policies, including its criminalization of free speech that offends the ruling class’s sensibilities.
Vance’s speech was correct and necessary, but it left European leaders appalled. The chairman of the Munich Security Conference even wept publicly over Vance’s words. Well, there is much more wailing among European elites today, after Vance and Trump’s dressing-down of the sainted Zelensky. But as my friend in the Budapest pub said, there is no other way to wake Europeans up from their ideological slumber, and force them to deal with the world as it is, not as they would like it to be.
The same is true with Americans. On Saturday, U.S. newspapers filled with columns of outrage from establishment voices denouncing Trump and Vance as barbarians. These are the same elites who have hated Trump from the beginning, and have never tried to understand why so many ordinary Americans voted for a rough man like him.
As in Europe, the U.S. has long been led by a ruling elite—politicians of the left and right alike, and both in government and private institutions—that has been narcotized by its own illusions. They have behaved with the same logic of Pope Francis, who tirelessly calls for the doors of Europe and America to open wide to mass migration, while living in safety and comfort behind Vatican walls.
Reality is biting back. It is rude, it is ugly, but it has the virtue of being, well, real. The reality Trump and Vance shoved in poor Zelensky’s face is that after throwing 350 billion dollars behind his country’s resistance to Russia, America’s patience has run out.
The reality Trump and Vance simultaneously shoved in Europe’s face, both in that Oval Office confrontation with Zelensky and at the Munich Security Conference, is that your long, American-provided holiday from governing responsibly has come to an end; it’s time to return to the office and work.
The reality the American leaders are battering US elites with—not only on Ukraine, but across the board—is that their model of how the world works, with its forever wars, its open borders, its woke insanities, is no longer fit for purpose. The new government is not going to live by those shopworn lies anymore.
We will now see if Europe’s leadership class can rise to the responsibilities Trump has thrust upon it. Do they want to help Ukraine keep fighting its unwinnable war against Russia? Then they have to pay for it themselves. Do they want to raise armies to defend “European values?” Then they had better reform, and create political and cultural orders that actual Europeans are willing to sacrifice for.
It will no doubt take more shocks like the one Trump and Vance delivered from the Oval Office to wake Europe’s sleeping leaders up from their dream, which has become a nightmare for so many ordinary Europeans.
And let’s be honest: those European leaders did not elect themselves. They have been returned to office repeatedly by European publics who also enjoyed living the dream, subsidized by America’s willingness to pay for Europe’s defense. Surveys show that most Europeans side with Ukraine. Fine—then make the hard choices necessary to defend your principles.
That which cannot last forever, won’t. Europe is at the end of something. What comes next is up to Europeans. As it always should have been.
Trump, Vance Shake Europe Awake From Liberal Dream
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to U.S. Vice President JD Vance as they meet with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on February 28, 2025
Saul Loeb / AFP
After watching the shocking Oval Office contretemps between Ukraine’s Volodomyr Zelensky and the U.S. President and Vice President, I left to join a group of friends for a party in a Budapest pub. Everyone there had seen the clash. It was all anybody could talk about.
“Maybe that had to happen,” I said to an expatriate friend who is from an EU country, “but I wish it had not happened in front of the cameras.”
“No, it had to happen that way,” he responded. “That’s the only way European leaders will learn. Trump has been trying to bring them to reality, but they won’t listen.”
Later, a shell-shocked group of top European leaders tweeted a joint statement pledging support for Zelensky and Ukraine. “You are never alone, dear President @Zelenskyyua,” they said.
Well, yes he is—and this is the reality with which Donald Trump and JD Vance brutally smacked Europe. That is, European countries may stand with Ukraine in words, but absent American money, arms, and hard power, what do they have to offer?
European armies are small and relatively weak. Since his first term, Trump has been urging European governments to spend more on their own defense. They have been reluctantly doing so, because it’s hard to find the money to spend on weapons when your economies are not doing well, and you have a welfare state to uphold. European social spending has for decades rested on the willingness of the United States to pay for Europe’s defense.
Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, and nearly forty years after the end of the Cold War, the American president has decided that enough is enough. It is time for Europe to grow up.
But Europe faces a much worse problem. The Flemish nationalist activist Dries Van Langehove captured it in this tweet:
Van Langehove’s brutal point recalled a conversation I was part of last summer, at a private conference in Sweden about the future of NATO. An older British defense expert spoke at length about NATO’s future, as if nothing had changed on the ground since around the year 2000. A Spanish academic intervened, telling the Brit that the UK and other NATO countries are hopelessly weak in terms of personnel. Fewer and fewer native-born Europeans are willing to fight, he said, and the large and increasing population of migrants—especially Muslim ones—not only won’t fight for their new countries, but many of them are actually eager to fight against them.
The Spaniard did not point out, though he might have done, that more UK Muslim men signed up to fight for jihadist groups in the Middle East than serve in the British military. It would be surprising to learn that the situation is any different in continental Europe.
Indeed, a source well-informed on the security situation in the UK and Europe told me recently that police and other government agencies responsible for domestic order are all terrified now of Islamic uprisings and “race riots,” by which they mean clashes between Muslims and non-Muslims. “They are all reduced to hoping that nothing will happen,” said the source.
Hope is not a plan. In Britain, police arrest peaceable people, including elderly women, for praying silently near abortion clinics—in Scotland, you even face arrest for praying against abortion inside your own home—but repeatedly allow British Muslims to say the most appalling things without facing charges. Indeed, we now know that UK authorities turned a blind eye as Pakistani Muslim rape gangs sexually assaulted thousands of working-class English girls. Whether it is out of a mindless devotion to multiculturalism, or fear of provoking Muslim violence, the fact that the British state runs a two-tier justice system is undeniable.
I brought up the shocking recent interview that podcaster Louise Perry conducted with David Betz, a professor at London’s King’s College. Prof. Betz studies modern warfare, and explained how modern Britain is accelerating towards civil war. The academic explained that an outraged peasantry, with no prospects of getting out of what they regard as a failed state, and fed up with a government and an establishment crushing them culturally and economically, are likely to revolt violently.
My interlocutor agreed, and gave examples. This person—like all those with whom I spoke informally, a member of the educated middle class—quoted a line from the notorious 1970s French novel The Camp Of The Saints, which presented a dystopian future in which mass migration conquers Europe while European establishments do nothing: “Your universe has no meaning to them. They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door.”
That old novel is routinely cited as an example of far-right hate literature, and indeed it has unseemly racist elements. But the truths it told fifty years ago about the civilizational threat from mass migration are now being realized today. People who say such things openly now—like Dries Van Langenhove—are denounced as “far right,” and even, like the Flemish activist, face prosecution for things they say.
Bigots they might well be (and if so, shame on them), but the fact that only figures the establishment demonizes as “far right extremists” are willing to tell the blunt truth about the mounting crisis is less an indictment of them and more an indictment of the cowardly ruling classes who refuse to face hard facts. Indeed, the migrants are making fires with Europe’s beautiful oak doors, and the ruling class is taking the doors off the hinges.
When and if civil wars come to Britain and Europe, the fault will lie squarely at the feet of the ruling class. David Betz, who studies the roots of civil wars, told Louise Perry that the current Labour government, through its policies, is inexplicably doing all that it can to fuel one.
This, then, is the way to understand the rude confrontation that Trump and Vance had with Zelensky. One doesn’t have to side with Russia in that war to recognize that Ukraine, which has fought valiantly, has no prospect of victory. Since the war began in 2022, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been saying that Ukraine cannot hope to win, and explaining why. Of course Washington, Brussels, and the media smeared Orbán as a Putin apologist, but Orbán didn’t say those things out of a love for Russia, which enslaved his country for nearly half a century. He was simply being realistic.
Dreams die hard. The dream of a secular, progressive, multicultural paradise so beloved of European leaders has come to an end. One year ago, European leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference cold-shouldered Sen. JD Vance, angry at him over his skeptical views of NATO’s Ukraine policy. But this year, Vance returned as the U.S. vice president, and told the audience that the greatest threat to Europe’s security was its own decadent policies, including its criminalization of free speech that offends the ruling class’s sensibilities.
Vance’s speech was correct and necessary, but it left European leaders appalled. The chairman of the Munich Security Conference even wept publicly over Vance’s words. Well, there is much more wailing among European elites today, after Vance and Trump’s dressing-down of the sainted Zelensky. But as my friend in the Budapest pub said, there is no other way to wake Europeans up from their ideological slumber, and force them to deal with the world as it is, not as they would like it to be.
The same is true with Americans. On Saturday, U.S. newspapers filled with columns of outrage from establishment voices denouncing Trump and Vance as barbarians. These are the same elites who have hated Trump from the beginning, and have never tried to understand why so many ordinary Americans voted for a rough man like him.
As in Europe, the U.S. has long been led by a ruling elite—politicians of the left and right alike, and both in government and private institutions—that has been narcotized by its own illusions. They have behaved with the same logic of Pope Francis, who tirelessly calls for the doors of Europe and America to open wide to mass migration, while living in safety and comfort behind Vatican walls.
Reality is biting back. It is rude, it is ugly, but it has the virtue of being, well, real. The reality Trump and Vance shoved in poor Zelensky’s face is that after throwing 350 billion dollars behind his country’s resistance to Russia, America’s patience has run out.
The reality Trump and Vance simultaneously shoved in Europe’s face, both in that Oval Office confrontation with Zelensky and at the Munich Security Conference, is that your long, American-provided holiday from governing responsibly has come to an end; it’s time to return to the office and work.
The reality the American leaders are battering US elites with—not only on Ukraine, but across the board—is that their model of how the world works, with its forever wars, its open borders, its woke insanities, is no longer fit for purpose. The new government is not going to live by those shopworn lies anymore.
We will now see if Europe’s leadership class can rise to the responsibilities Trump has thrust upon it. Do they want to help Ukraine keep fighting its unwinnable war against Russia? Then they have to pay for it themselves. Do they want to raise armies to defend “European values?” Then they had better reform, and create political and cultural orders that actual Europeans are willing to sacrifice for.
It will no doubt take more shocks like the one Trump and Vance delivered from the Oval Office to wake Europe’s sleeping leaders up from their dream, which has become a nightmare for so many ordinary Europeans.
And let’s be honest: those European leaders did not elect themselves. They have been returned to office repeatedly by European publics who also enjoyed living the dream, subsidized by America’s willingness to pay for Europe’s defense. Surveys show that most Europeans side with Ukraine. Fine—then make the hard choices necessary to defend your principles.
That which cannot last forever, won’t. Europe is at the end of something. What comes next is up to Europeans. As it always should have been.
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