Overslept

The roots of the US-Europe breakdown, as told by someone who saw it coming

“I hate bailing out Europe again.”

“I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”

With these words, respectively typed by American Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during the now notorious Signal Messenger App Leak, the world was given a window into the minds of the men first and sixth in line to the presidency. And for our traditionally close allies in Europe, a place often derided as the Old Continent, the message is not a pleasant one. Indeed, Europe is already outraged at being left out of the Trump Administration’s Ukraine peace talks with Russia. What is less discussed in the mainstream media is why many in the United States see no reason to consider Europe’s input. My readers ought to know why Vance and Hegseth are so frustrated at the continent once heralded as the center of human civilization with global empires and groundbreaking artistic and scientific achievements. The answer is simple.

Europe is a civilization in decline.

There was once an era when European navies maintained a robust grip on global trade, ensuring that the resources extracted from their overseas colonies returned safely to the imperial core. Now, the Red Sea, a waterway critical to European trade for centuries, is under the control of Yemen’s Houthis, a rogue Shia Islamist militia hailing from a war-torn nation with no real economy. After the Biden Administration’s failed attempt to end the crippling Houthi attacks against commercial shipping, unleashed as a protest against Israel’s war in Gaza, the Trump Administration has rightfully sent a strong message that such piracy will no longer be tolerated by the United States. With the recent US strikes against these terrorists, we can now hope that the Houthi assault on global shipping may come to an end soon.

Even though the Red Sea is far less important for the American economy than European economies, European navies, in the words of embattled National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, “do not have the capability to defend against types of sophisticated anti-ship cruise missiles and drones the Houthis are now using.” Hegseth agreed, implying that the burden must fall on the United States, a nation with minimal direct interest in the Red Sea, to do Europe a favor— albeit one where US officials suggested some unspecified financial reimbursement in the future may be warranted. If you live in Europe (and I know some of my readers do), this situation may cause you some embarrassment. That your continent has declined so precipitously from boasting of world-renowned navies to struggling with skeleton versions incapable of protecting your own trade ought to, at a minimum, force you to answer some uncomfortable questions.

The recent tirades directed by not only Donald Trump, JD Vance, other Trump Administration officials, and American conservatives generally, against the European Union are no shock to me. Instead, they are the logical culmination of two entirely different worldviews between faux allies. When the American Vice President, at a gathering of political elites known as the Munich Security Conference, reprimanded European governments not only for being unserious about their own regional security but also engaging in censorship against conservative thought and speech and allowing European cities to deteriorate under wave after wave of non-European migration, Vance was merely offering a critique of Europe long held by many on the American right. As a child in 2006, I remember discussions about American-Norwegian expatriate Bruce Bawer’s book While Europe Slept: a grim warning to an American audience that mass migration from mostly Islamic countries would ultimately condemn Europe to decline, instability, and ultimately civil war.

20 years later, many of Bawer’s predictions have come to pass.

One factor Bawer cited in Europe’s decline is its anti-Americanism. Remember, While Europe Slept was published during the height of the Iraq war, a time when American conservatives labeled French Fries (which are actually a traditional Belgian dish) as Freedom Fries while American liberals began to envy how much more caring and intelligent those superior Europeans were. This misconception of American liberals only fueled European delusions. This dynamic made Bawer a keen observer how European elites sought during that era to go to absurd lengths in order to distance themselves from the United States and its active, interventionist foreign policy. The result of their reflexive dogma of anti-racism and tolerance at all costs is the current existence of ghettoized, non-assimilated communities in their own cities and communities. In turn, it took a harsh speech from the American Vice President for the old continent to finally abandon their long-held myths.

In reality, Europe has much catching up to do.

While spending years, if not decades, complaining (don’t even get me started about the anti-nuclear movement) about the American foreign policy that kept them safe since 1945, European countries opted to systematically demilitarize. As we have seen recently in the Red Sea and for 20 years in Afghanistan, European militaries are only capable of conducting major military operations as subordinates of the United States. One especially brutal example comes from NATO’s 2011 intervention in Libya that overthrew longtime Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi. According to the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, “Only eight of the 28 allies sent combat forces and most ran out of ammunition, having to buy, at cost, ammunition stockpiled by the United States.” Even France, the nation most gung ho about the operation and also one of Europe’s most capable militaries, had to ask for Uncle Sam’s assistance.

It's clear now that even with the Russian bear on the rampage in Ukraine and threatening to continue the rampage elsewhere, The United States, specifically the Trump Administration, has run out of patience. While it is concerning to leave a Europe addicted to welfare spending and void of military readiness alone in the face of a vengeful and paranoid Russia, I do empathize with those Americans who believe it’s time to cast Europe adrift. Interestingly, I observed a complete 180-degree turn away from past dogmas from the elites I encountered at the Warsaw Security Forum. Instead of hysterical pacifism, the officials and experts I encountered seemed geared more towards hysterical militarism. If the forum’s panelists were to be believed, Russian soldiers are set to invade and conquer Europe at any moment. At least if my friend Carl-Oskar Bolin (please read my essay Swimming with Sharks) is to be believed.

Despite the blatant hypocrisy and plethora of mistakes from Europe’s leaders, this right-leaning American writer still holds a soft spot for the old continent. So, why do I care about a place obviously in permanent decline? After all, with the US government electing to negotiate the war in Ukraine directly with nuclear superpower Russia in Saudi Arabia (a rising power) over the heads of European governments, the continent of Europe is fast approaching the geopolitical relevance of its more accurate geographic status: a peninsula. My logic is not only because I have several friends there. For me, the answer boils down to history. Because there is no corner of the planet where a European power did not once control in some form or fashion, it is impossible to understand our own history in the United States, and ultimately the rest of the world, without understanding Europe.

So, what should the United States do about Europe? Yes, Europe’s economic and cultural decadence are unmistakably apparent to the whole world. All JD Vance has done is use the visibility of his office to confirm what many Americans, including this writer, have believed since While Europe Slept in 2006. However, the continent’s history in determining the course of humanity, from the greatest scientific and cultural triumphs to the darkest depths of genocide mean to me that the place must be kept alive in some way or another, even if only as a de facto museum for American tourists. We may not like how their elite has ruined the once proud continent turned peninsula, but if Europe disappears, whether from unassimilated migrants or even Russian tanks, our history disappears too. And as my all-time favorite saying, written by the philosopher and novelist George Santayana, goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We can only hope Europe has learned those lessons.