Politics has returned to Europe’s wealthy protectorates, which, after the phone-call on Jan. 20, 2025, between the then-President-elect and the Danish prime minister, suddenly find themselves faced with an open-ended era of shakedowns by its guardians and an unreliable big neighbor to the East. Neither its political class nor its aging, nostalgic population is prepared for this.
Qua democratic politician, it’s one thing to have skill at facilitating distributional bargaining among competing and shifting interest groups; it’s quite another to do so while simultaneously having to think through geopolitical alliances while relying on undermanned and underfunded militaries. Interestingly enough, with a shift toward new populist leaders Europe’s political class is also quite inexperienced in politics. It seems all but certain that during next month’s federal election, the most important European country and the only one that can provide political leadership, Germany, is itself facing a massive shift toward a political class inexperienced playing intra-European and global political chess at the same time.*
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Europeans have been behaving in defiance of Machiavellian classical social theory, which teaches that “The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws.” (The Prince, Ch. 12) More bluntly (and more unpopular): a regime oriented toward protecting human rights presuppose good arms, too. The Europeans assumed that in an age of soft-power, a giant internal market, and win-win international/trade rules, they didn’t need good arms and could perfect their laws—even extend those through intra-European/EU expansion.
As an aside, perhaps it would be more correct to say that the unfreezing of European politics has been in the air since the (failed) Russian assault on Antonov airport (the battle of Hostomel). But Europe has not used the time wisely since.
In fact, within Europe (and the European side of Nato) the Europeans have ceded political agency to Turkey which has been active trying to redraw the political map among its (Middle Eastern) neighbors not the least Syria. Turkey is only the seventh largest economy in Europe. After shutting the Turks out of any future EU expansion plans, it shouldn’t surprise that Turkey’s actions in the Levant and toward Russia & The Ukraine need not always fit European priorities.*
Be that as it may, at least the German election is timely. And while debates surrounding immigration are still quite salient, Germany’s election is also taking place at a time of a generational, structural economic crisis. Its mainstay, the car industry and its wider ecology of small businesses is imploding as it failed to participate in the transition to E-cars. In addition, Germany’s energy infrastructure is in awful shape (even its once famous trains are deplorable). And while Germany’s universities have clearly improved in my lifetime they are still lagging (even among European peers), while many of its most ambitious students still go abroad to better organized universities elsewhere.
Of course, the underlying problem is that many of Europe’s wealthiest protectorates still are unwilling to sort out whether they are being shaken off to be protected from Russia or — sotte voce — a resurgent Germany. And Germany’s population itself shares in this ambivalence about its role.
During the first Trump presidency the European mood was different. While few admired President Trump’s style, it was generally agreed that his bullying for more Nato spending, while clearly facilitating the US Arms’ industry, actually aided de facto the common good. And in many European capitals there was quiet relief they could assert (as they usually do with ‘dictates from Brussels’) that “Trump had forced their unwilling hands.”
The problem is that both the Cold-War Nato and the post-Cold-War Nato era are effectively finished. The mutual interests and, more important even, mutual trust that characterized both came to an end last week. Now European governments are faced with the possibility of a never-ending list of demands for territory, preferential access, and preferential business deals in favor of Trump’s family or the favored oligarch(s) of the month. It’s one thing to have to deal with foreign oligarchs participating in local politics, it’s quite another if they themselves have the backing of the US military or a highly targeted US tariff. (Latin Americans may take quiet satisfaction in this development, but shared misery does not make wise policy.) Either way, even if they can accommodate Trump, the process will only encourage local grifters, too.
That the NATO era is effectively finished can be made most transparent by the following thought: at the moment it seems most European polities and their politicians hope, if they allow themselves to think about it at all (which is not very often), to muddle through; muddling through is a viable policy only — and somewhat ironically this is the best they can hope for — when despite the current bluster, America will come to feel relatively weak in light of an ascendant China and so seek out a new structural partnership with Europe. Either way, there is no reason to expect Europe will be favored by fortune in this fashion, and it makes for foolish policy to do so.
The next Nato Summit is 24-25 June, 2025, at the Hague. The local debate is mostly about parking problems and regional mayors complaining that the security needs of the Summit are making it impossible to hold popular, annual summer festivals. At the moment nobody dares to suggest cancelling the Nato Summit altogether. When all the options are bad, muddling through has an enchanting charm. But ending the charade may generate the clarity required to begin to chart a new course. For history teaches that free, wealthy and undefended polities end up unfree.
- This is a modestly revised version of a post that first appeared (here) at Digressions&Impressions.
*Some of this reflects a wider confusion in American policy in Syria during the last decade. But that’s for another time.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
MFB 01.30.25 at 11:26 am
Much of this seems to make a certain amount of sense, but it leaves out everything important.
Politics did not return to Europe in 2025, nor did it return to Europe in 2022, nor in 2014. It has always been there. The decision to make Europe essentially an economic and then political colony of the United States was a political decision made quite long ago. The decision to enrich the wealthiest fraction of Europe and ship what wealth was left over across the Atlantic while downsizing spending on everything which had been important in the past was political. The various European involvements in American imperialist projects were political decisions.
In the end these decisions must be benefiting someone in Europe, presumably the “political class” and what passes for an European oligarchy, to the extent to which they are not just glove-puppets of the US. I don’t pretend to know who these people are or what their agenda is apart from the obvious fact that it has nothing to do with the interests of 99% of the European population, but they must exist.
Europe cannot fight the US. It cannot fight China. It probably can’t realistically fight Russia without the help of the US. It does not have the diplomatic skills to coordinate its own actions and in any case its actions cannot be effectual. Twenty years of being a “protectorate” (nice concept, I would more or less endorse it) while pretending to be independent and active and nice and good and just means twenty years of lies and delusion. It isn’t all over – such things don’t go away by themselves any more than a trillion barrels of nuclear waste would go away by themselves.
If some European countries want to move away from the preposterous policies which have been steadily failing for most of this century, fair enough. But what are they going to move towards? Most likely plutocratic oligarchy shading into fascism, which will be called liberalism by the practitioners thereof. But nobody who does not want to be deceived will believe in that..
en passant 01.30.25 at 11:52 am
“… the most important European country and the only one that can provide political leadership, Germany…”
The first part I can see how and why.
But could you expand on the second part, especially
– only
It sounds a little bit too definitive to me, but curious about zour reasoning
– can
Sure. I can potenially a lot of things myself too, unfortunately a whole many less do happen. But my question is first will it, and second should it? see next point too.
– political leadership
do you mean bringing the Schwaebische Hausfrau Leadership (TM), or the AFD Stammtischniveau Leadership, or the Energiewende Leadership as in following the coalition and polling winds re. the nuclear energy Walzer and watering Brussels green norms as soon as the BDI furrows an eyebrow ? I want to hear more details before I become a follower.
I left Germany a couple years ago, after many years there. I am sceptical if things changed. Opinions about politics were quite similar to those of the German car engineers about their craft, meaning satisfied with their success and convinced that they just know and do better, so thanks but no thanks dear foreigner for you remarks. Wir machen weiter. A personal typical example in my personal experience was when I doubted the wisdom of Schwarze Null in discussion about politics.
Maybe they will be challenged by the tectonic moves happening in Europe, like the car industry is experiencing now. I did not speak to car industry people recently, I should, out of curiosity.
It may be a tad slow moving. The electorate is not becoming younger, opener and bolder.
MisterMr 01.30.25 at 1:02 pm
“the only one that can provide political leadership, Germany”
Why?? If this is true the EU has much worse problems than Trump.
Imagine a USA where only Caliofornia can provide political leasership.
Laban 01.30.25 at 3:18 pm
Isn’t there another country besides Turkey looking to redraw the maps in that neck of the woods?
Oh, and what MFB said. European elites and what passes for the educated classes may hate Trump*, but those in government are well aware the US still has great military and financial power.
just look at the top comments here
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/27/trump-wants-to-reverse-americas-decline-good-luck
Nathan Lillie 01.30.25 at 3:22 pm
MFB, if you don’t know anything about Europe, you probably ought not to write extended posts about Europe. Brave of you to put yourself out there like that, so props for that.
Eric gives an excellent analysis of the problem facing Europe. Germany is clearly not ready to assume a leadership role. It would need to be collective, and the EU is not designed in a way that allows Europe to solve its collective action dilemma. European leaders did not come up in a political culture that allows them to shift their views as quickly as they need to. I only hope the leaders can make this shift before Trump annexes Greenland.
Europe needs to engage in hardball power politics vis a vis the US, Russia and China, backed by hard power, while engaging internally in cooperative politics, while not allowing itself to be divided. This would seems to be an impossible needle to thread, especially with the US and Russian both actively trying to undermine it, but smaller units – such as the Nordics, Baltics and Poland could probably manage.
The game changes considerably if everyone gets nuclear weapons, which is the logical outcome if cooperative solutions cannot be implemented. Now that the US nuclear umbrella has become unreliable (and presumably, will disappear), and given we can’t really rely on the UK and France,, the only way that Finland can defend itself from a nuclear armed Russia is nuclear weapons. The same applies to Denmark vs. the US. It becomes the great equalizer. This is where we are headed unless there is a reliable collective nuclear deterrent.
Eric Schliesser 01.30.25 at 4:06 pm
Nathan (if I may), I agree that nuclear proliferation is a possible outcome of the gloomy picture I sketch. (The more like outcome absent coperative solutions is subordination to foreign powers.) I fear, however, upon reflection that the attempt to get there will also lead to the possibility of more preventive wars.
Chris Bertram 01.30.25 at 4:07 pm
The passage from The Prince, if accurately translated, appears to be a non sequitur, since it asserts that to be well-armed is a necessary condition for good laws but then helps itself to the conclusion that they are a sufficient condition!
The obvious course of action for European states (including the UK) would seem to be to get friendly with China, despite the unwelcome things this also entails, and also probably with BRICS. After all, if you need an exit path from an abusive relationship, you need somewhere to exit to.
MisterMr 01.30.25 at 4:08 pm
So the problem of the EU (more specific than Europe) is this:
It should be a federal state like the USA, not just a group of countries with a common market. It should have a common government, a common army, a common foreign policy etc..
Part of this already exist (the Euroforce exists, the EU parliament exists etc.), but those are really weak if we compare them to their USA equivalents.
The reason they are weak is that there is not fiscal unity in the EU: an italian pays something like 98% of his/her taxes to Italy (or smaller administrative levels) and 2% to the EU, and therefore the Italian government has a much heavier influence in italian politics, it is the Italian government that set taxes, pays unemployment benefits, schools, the NHS, the army etc..
To acquire a political unity thus the EU needs a situation where citiziens pay something like 40-50% of taxes to the EU, so it is the EU that sets the fiscal policy, pays unemployment benefits, pays for the army etc..
This would also be better because it would reduce the “race to the bottom” dynamic in taxation between EU states (EU states have high taxes, but for example a very high VAT, that is flat or regressive, because this way business cannot just relocate in another EU state to dodge taxes).
However this is very difficult to do, at a minimum those countries that have higer than average income will be suspicious of becoming big net payers (with good reason). And every government is likely to be jealous of its prerogatives.
OTOH, this problem existed well before Trump and is the main problem behind, e.g., the Greek debt crisis (since the Greek government is the one that pays unemployment and retirement, but is not the one that could print money).
So while the apparent disruption of NATO makes the problem more evident, is also a push in the right direction (of increased EU cooperation and increased unification).
MisterMr 01.30.25 at 4:36 pm
@Chris Bertram 7
“The passage from The Prince, if accurately translated, appears to be a non sequitur”
The passage in italian reads “I principali fondamenti che abbino tutti gli Stati, così nuovi come vecchi o misti, sono le buone leggi e le buone armi; e perchè non possono essere buone leggi dove non sono buone armi, e, dove sono buone armi conviene che siano buone leggi; io lascerò indietro il ragionare delle leggi, e parlerò dell’armi.”
Googletranslated it gives:
“The main foundations that all States have, whether new or old or mixed, are good laws and good arms; and because there cannot be good laws where there are not good weapons, and where there are good weapons [conviene] good laws; I will leave behind the reasoning of the laws, and I will speak of weapons.”
However it is quite ambiguous, the word “conviene” in modern italian means “it’s convenient”, but it literally means “comes with”, and I don’t know what was the use in 1500.
So the passege could read “and where there are good weapons it’s convenient that there are good laws”, but it could also read “and where there are good weapons it comes with it that there are good laws”, which is where the english translation comes from.
I do not know italian from 1500 well enough to call what of the two translations is the correct one, but from the context I think the first (“where there are good weapons it is a good thing that there are good laws too”) makes more sense, and that the current english translation is wrong. But still I’m not sure.
Laban 01.30.25 at 4:55 pm
“The obvious course of action for European states (including the UK) would seem to be to get friendly with China”
Hmm. Would it take much in the way of US sanctions to pretty much destroy the UK economy, such as it is? And if friendly with China, what of China’s closest ally Russia?
I guess it’s a case of “If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here”.
What would have been ideal would have been for the US not to have made an enemy of Russia from 2007-8 onwards, not to continually advance NATO eastwards, not to have sundered her from Germany and Europe, and not to have driven her and her vast energy resources into the grateful arms of China. Alas the State Department seem to have thought it was 1995, and Russia the Russia of 1995.
LFC 01.30.25 at 5:08 pm
I’d question somewhat both the framing in the OP and in some of the comments.
It’s a little too early to conclude that Trump’s rhetoric about Greenland will advance to something more than rhetoric or jawboning. As far as I’m aware, Trump has not said he intends to pull the US out of NATO or to, for example, remove the tens of thousands of US soldiers and bases in various NATO countries; most of the US soldiers are in Germany, Italy, and the UK (approx. 35K, 12K, and 10K, respectively, according to statista.com). Decades of bureaucratic and organizational investment in transatlantic defense/mil. arrangements can’t be unraveled overnight or quickly, even if Trump decides he wants to do that.
That said, Europe should be charting a common (hopefully) defense and foreign policy less tied to the US. There is some precedent for this in the not-so-distant past. A fair number of European countries refused to go along with the US/UK-led 2003 Iraq war, and France and Germany both firmly opposed it. (NATO participated (as ISAF) in the war in Afghanistan but not the war in Iraq.)
Charles Kupchan’s 2002 book The End of the American Era argued that an integrating Europe was “an emerging pole” in world politics and that “Europe’s experiment in geopolitical engineering [i.e., political-economic integration] is working.” (p. 136, pb. edition) These judgments have so far not fully (or perhaps even partly) panned out, but maybe Trump’s second term in office will be the stimulus needed to get the EU to act in a more unified and forceful way.
engels 01.30.25 at 5:14 pm
Would it take much in the way of US sanctions to pretty much destroy the UK economy, such as it is?
Nope.
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2024/04/how-america-bought-up-britain-vassal-state-review
LFC 01.30.25 at 5:23 pm
P.s. In other words, I tend to agree with the concluding line of MisterMr’s comment @8.
bt 01.30.25 at 5:46 pm
Trump is obviously a clown and an idiot.
But the US has been asking Europe to carry more of it’s defense burden going back to President Eisenhower. European politics were/are built around shitting on Uncle Sam and triangulating between the USA and the USSR. And Germany was setting itself up to run the same program with China. (China was always going to hump Europe sooner or later, but that’s a story for another time)
Then you have the Russians actively subverting European politics for decades – Which many seemed to have enjoyed as part of the triangulation system. This was all based on the belief that the USA would always be there in the crunch.
Good Luck to you Europe, you’re going to need it.
boba 01.30.25 at 6:05 pm
“What would have been ideal would have been for the US not to have made an enemy of Russia from 2007-8 onwards, …”
There’s a thing in the blogosphere called Murc’s law that states: Only Democrats have any agency or causal influence over American politics. It appears that is being extended to the broader geopolitical landscape. I guess NATO should keep that in mind next time and allow Russian mischief and interference abroad to go unnoticed and unquestioned. I’m sure the outcome will be much better next time.
Brett 01.30.25 at 6:08 pm
I don’t believe the Germans have it in them to lead any sort of security alliance if the US becomes unreliable (or Trump pulls out of NATO or some nonsense like that). Maybe they should just disband their military and give the funding to the Polish folks, or the French government for their military.
bt 01.30.25 at 7:15 pm
@laban:
If only the “US not to have made an enemy of Russia from 2007-8 onwards, not to continually advance NATO eastwards, not to have sundered her from Germany and Europe”
This gets many things wrong at once.
1) NATO was enlarged due to the Strong Desire of the Ex-Warsaw Pact Nations to have some protection from the Russians. THEY wanted in. THEY have agency here.
2) Nato enlargement was not exactly enthusiastic in the USA. There were many many voices urging caution. But ultimately the Ex-Warsaw Pact Nations made their case.
3) Recent events have shown that the Ex-Warsaw Pact Nations were quite right about wanting protection from the Russians.
4) The Russians consider Europe their rightful prize as war spoils of WW2. Just read what they say about it. It has always pissed them that the USA held them out of France Germany and stopped them from taking all the rest after the war. Russia is a big problem for Europe and that has nothing to do with NATO, except to say that NATO kept them from grabbing Germany and France after WW2.
It’s easy to make these “Bad USA and NATO” arguments if you’re not living in Poland or the Baltics or Finland or Sweden*. Or Ukraine for that matter. Bad Uncle Sam is always the get out of jail free card for a certain sort of European politics.
Go ahead and tell us how we should have handled the broken USSR. Better yet, tell us how Europe should have done something different. It can’t always be the USA’s fault – That is the exact framework that has left Europe physically and politically defenseless.
*Let’s not even talk about the Hungarians. Perhaps they should have stayed in the Warsaw Pact on promise from the Russians that they will award them Transylvania after their next victorious quest for Lebensraum.
RobinM 01.30.25 at 7:26 pm
Whenever the topic of NATO comes up, I’m always grateful to be able to escape from “reality” and retreat into EP Thompson’s polemic, “Outside the whale.” I just wish there was something similar I could quickly retreat into for a reality check when being bombarded by demands to think of Edward Snowden as a traitor because he revealed just how much spying on people was going on.