Without warning, the United States of America released a much-anticipated National Security Strategy (NSS), which aims to refocus American security around an updated set of core American interests–sovereignty and borders, security at home, and restoring “American Greatness.”
The strategy has significant implications for America’s role on the world stage, its priorities at home, and how to put ‘America First’ into practise. But it is the short, declaratory section of Europe that has attracted the loudest howls of outrage.
The document pulls no punches. In the opening sentences, it declares that Europe’s “economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.” In this, the document can be seen as an extension of Vice President Vance’s notorious comments in Munich that European countries had no idea what “they were supposed to be fighting for.”
Perhaps most controversially, the document offers particular criticisms of the EU. The document is worth quoting in full here: “issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.” In other words, the European Union’s flagship policies–migration, speech regulation, election interference, and culture war against traditional European ideals–are not just inconvenient for American interests, but threaten the integrity and very identity of Europe itself.
The reaction has been outraged and predictable. The reliably Europhile Ukrainian-Italian Chief Foreign-Affairs Correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, Yaroslav Trofimov, stated that the U.S. had issued a paper “calling for the strategic breakup” of the EU. A dutiful series of EU stooges in the European Parliament started publishing en-masse barely literate explanations of the supposedly “democratic” functioning of the EU. And most embarrassingly of all, a seemingly coordinated influence operation saw various EU-funded journalists and NGOs posting the EU flag, with the caption “It stands for unity, freedom, peace, democracy, equality, civilization, diversity, rule of law, science, beauty and strength.” That on every single count the EU is working to undermine these ideals only emphasised the Orwellian tenor of contemporary elite discourse.
The strategy was published, seemingly coincidentally, alongside the news that Elon Musk’s X has been fined €120 million under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The fine, as Michael Shellenberger has rightly pointed out, is very clearly aimed at pushing a pro-censorship agenda on X, which is well-known for bending the stick in favour of free expression. The EU claims the fine is about “non-compliance with transparency obligations.” But quite aside from the fact that the explicit purpose of the DSA is to regulate speech (detailed extensively in a series of reports from MCC Brussels), the “transparency obligations” are, pardon the pun, transparently nonsense. The European Commission was demanding access to X data for “researchers” (often paid by the EU) to implement the EU’s fact-checking and pre-bunking agendas, and complaining that Musk’s opening up of the Blue Checkmark from woke elites and to ordinary people was “deceptive.”
The concerns expressed in the National Security Strategy could hardly have been better illustrated. Not only was the EU treating American tech companies as a convenient cash-cow, not only was it taking every possible step to clamp down on free expression, but it was at the same time engaged in a mass exercise of Orwellian deception to justify it.
But in the howls of outrage about the USA daring to criticise the EU’s censorship regime, it is easy to lose sight of the deeper aims of the NSS. These are daring and, for many patriots in Europe, welcome. As Melanie Philipps has rightly noted, this is a wake-up call to address the prospect of “civilisational erasure.” The strategy dares to ask a simple question: what happens to “European” partners if, thanks to mass-migration and cultural cowardice, their countries are no longer European? This is more than just a demographic problem. European civilisation is grounded in certain ideals–historically shared with the USA–of open debate, democracy, and industriousness among others. The U.S. is not just concerned about the European clampdown on online speech because it affects big tech but because it puts fundamentally into question whether European nations are animated by the ideals of European civilisation. When Brussels, the capital of the EU, displays a nativity scene where the Holy Family’s faces are obscured in the name of ‘inclusivity’ one has to ask if Europe still recognizes itself. The U.S. is not just concerned about speech regulation; it is concerned that its partners have lost the will to assert who they are.
This is not to say that everything in the Strategy is entirely coherent and benign. One curious area is the proposed relationship between Europe and Russia. Having just painted Europe as militarily, economically and politically fragile, the NSS then asserts that Europe enjoys a “significant hard power advantage” over Russia, with the implication being that Europe should not much worry about Russian militarism. To put it mildly, this is a rather optimistic reading of European readiness, stockpiles and industrial capacity, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has aptly demonstrated. But American planners must, presumably, know this–which raises the question of what they are getting at. The answer is forthcoming: they want to dial down European perceptions of Russia “as an existential threat” to “reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass.” It is hard not to see this as an announcement that Europe will be left alone–bar some “significant U.S. diplomatic engagement”–to deal with Russia.
Despite the criticisms of previous American administrations, there is also a missed opportunity to truly reckon with the role of America power in fostering the problems addressed in the strategy. The Strategy rightly notes that “hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism” have hollowed out American industry, allowed a DEI bureaucracy to take root in American institutions, and subject American governments to often explicitly “anti-American” international institutions. But whatever Washington now says about ‘misguided globalism,’ the European super-state did not appear by mistake. It grew inside an American security umbrella, with consistent U.S. encouragement–in part to contain Germany and Russia, in part to keep Europe collectively manageable. A recognition of past administrations’ role in bringing about the situation we confront would start a new era of Transatlantic relations on a bedrock of honesty.
But these concerns aside, the Strategy represents, certainly, a welcome shot-in-the-arm for Europeans concerned about the fundamental, civilisational decline in Europe. It brings out into the open a series of concerns–not just about free speech and election interference, but also about the demographic reality of a continent approaching the point where it becomes unrecognisable–that European elites have censored, buried or ignored.
Whilst it provides a useful foil for EU elites, who can now adopt the role of protectors of European sovereignty against the big bad United States, in the longer term the new American policy of supporting pro-sovereignty forces clearly means that the authority of European elites is put into serious question.
But we should remember that it is not the United States who have forced these issues onto the table. In addition to MAGA’s intellectual debt to countries like Hungary, the NSS can only point to the huge discontent on the continent because European populists have been gaining ground and refusing to be silenced. The concerns outlined in the document–from attacks on free speech to democratic foul play, from economic stagnation to cultural erasure–are those concerns which have been animating the great populist awakening.
European populists should not place their faith in the American electoral cycle. But there is for now a welcome opportunity to capitalise on the new U.S. attitude towards Europe to forge not just a new series of bonds across the Atlantic, but a new model for Europe.
A Civilisational Crisis: Europe in the Eyes of the USA
Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
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Without warning, the United States of America released a much-anticipated National Security Strategy (NSS), which aims to refocus American security around an updated set of core American interests–sovereignty and borders, security at home, and restoring “American Greatness.”
The strategy has significant implications for America’s role on the world stage, its priorities at home, and how to put ‘America First’ into practise. But it is the short, declaratory section of Europe that has attracted the loudest howls of outrage.
The document pulls no punches. In the opening sentences, it declares that Europe’s “economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.” In this, the document can be seen as an extension of Vice President Vance’s notorious comments in Munich that European countries had no idea what “they were supposed to be fighting for.”
Perhaps most controversially, the document offers particular criticisms of the EU. The document is worth quoting in full here: “issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.” In other words, the European Union’s flagship policies–migration, speech regulation, election interference, and culture war against traditional European ideals–are not just inconvenient for American interests, but threaten the integrity and very identity of Europe itself.
The reaction has been outraged and predictable. The reliably Europhile Ukrainian-Italian Chief Foreign-Affairs Correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, Yaroslav Trofimov, stated that the U.S. had issued a paper “calling for the strategic breakup” of the EU. A dutiful series of EU stooges in the European Parliament started publishing en-masse barely literate explanations of the supposedly “democratic” functioning of the EU. And most embarrassingly of all, a seemingly coordinated influence operation saw various EU-funded journalists and NGOs posting the EU flag, with the caption “It stands for unity, freedom, peace, democracy, equality, civilization, diversity, rule of law, science, beauty and strength.” That on every single count the EU is working to undermine these ideals only emphasised the Orwellian tenor of contemporary elite discourse.
The strategy was published, seemingly coincidentally, alongside the news that Elon Musk’s X has been fined €120 million under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The fine, as Michael Shellenberger has rightly pointed out, is very clearly aimed at pushing a pro-censorship agenda on X, which is well-known for bending the stick in favour of free expression. The EU claims the fine is about “non-compliance with transparency obligations.” But quite aside from the fact that the explicit purpose of the DSA is to regulate speech (detailed extensively in a series of reports from MCC Brussels), the “transparency obligations” are, pardon the pun, transparently nonsense. The European Commission was demanding access to X data for “researchers” (often paid by the EU) to implement the EU’s fact-checking and pre-bunking agendas, and complaining that Musk’s opening up of the Blue Checkmark from woke elites and to ordinary people was “deceptive.”
The concerns expressed in the National Security Strategy could hardly have been better illustrated. Not only was the EU treating American tech companies as a convenient cash-cow, not only was it taking every possible step to clamp down on free expression, but it was at the same time engaged in a mass exercise of Orwellian deception to justify it.
But in the howls of outrage about the USA daring to criticise the EU’s censorship regime, it is easy to lose sight of the deeper aims of the NSS. These are daring and, for many patriots in Europe, welcome. As Melanie Philipps has rightly noted, this is a wake-up call to address the prospect of “civilisational erasure.” The strategy dares to ask a simple question: what happens to “European” partners if, thanks to mass-migration and cultural cowardice, their countries are no longer European? This is more than just a demographic problem. European civilisation is grounded in certain ideals–historically shared with the USA–of open debate, democracy, and industriousness among others. The U.S. is not just concerned about the European clampdown on online speech because it affects big tech but because it puts fundamentally into question whether European nations are animated by the ideals of European civilisation. When Brussels, the capital of the EU, displays a nativity scene where the Holy Family’s faces are obscured in the name of ‘inclusivity’ one has to ask if Europe still recognizes itself. The U.S. is not just concerned about speech regulation; it is concerned that its partners have lost the will to assert who they are.
This is not to say that everything in the Strategy is entirely coherent and benign. One curious area is the proposed relationship between Europe and Russia. Having just painted Europe as militarily, economically and politically fragile, the NSS then asserts that Europe enjoys a “significant hard power advantage” over Russia, with the implication being that Europe should not much worry about Russian militarism. To put it mildly, this is a rather optimistic reading of European readiness, stockpiles and industrial capacity, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has aptly demonstrated. But American planners must, presumably, know this–which raises the question of what they are getting at. The answer is forthcoming: they want to dial down European perceptions of Russia “as an existential threat” to “reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass.” It is hard not to see this as an announcement that Europe will be left alone–bar some “significant U.S. diplomatic engagement”–to deal with Russia.
Despite the criticisms of previous American administrations, there is also a missed opportunity to truly reckon with the role of America power in fostering the problems addressed in the strategy. The Strategy rightly notes that “hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism” have hollowed out American industry, allowed a DEI bureaucracy to take root in American institutions, and subject American governments to often explicitly “anti-American” international institutions. But whatever Washington now says about ‘misguided globalism,’ the European super-state did not appear by mistake. It grew inside an American security umbrella, with consistent U.S. encouragement–in part to contain Germany and Russia, in part to keep Europe collectively manageable. A recognition of past administrations’ role in bringing about the situation we confront would start a new era of Transatlantic relations on a bedrock of honesty.
But these concerns aside, the Strategy represents, certainly, a welcome shot-in-the-arm for Europeans concerned about the fundamental, civilisational decline in Europe. It brings out into the open a series of concerns–not just about free speech and election interference, but also about the demographic reality of a continent approaching the point where it becomes unrecognisable–that European elites have censored, buried or ignored.
Whilst it provides a useful foil for EU elites, who can now adopt the role of protectors of European sovereignty against the big bad United States, in the longer term the new American policy of supporting pro-sovereignty forces clearly means that the authority of European elites is put into serious question.
But we should remember that it is not the United States who have forced these issues onto the table. In addition to MAGA’s intellectual debt to countries like Hungary, the NSS can only point to the huge discontent on the continent because European populists have been gaining ground and refusing to be silenced. The concerns outlined in the document–from attacks on free speech to democratic foul play, from economic stagnation to cultural erasure–are those concerns which have been animating the great populist awakening.
European populists should not place their faith in the American electoral cycle. But there is for now a welcome opportunity to capitalise on the new U.S. attitude towards Europe to forge not just a new series of bonds across the Atlantic, but a new model for Europe.
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