Trump, Europe, and the Myopia of the West
The Objective, February 23, 2025
Some of Donald Trump’s recent decisions are not only immoral but also wrong, harming both his country and his own personal interests. By siding with Putin on his criminal invasion of Ukraine, Trump has not only indulged his personal vendetta against those who, like Zelensky and much of the European establishment, supported Biden and Harris, but he has also demonstrated questionable judgment. Even if assessed by a narrow utilitarian standard focused on U.S. interests, his decisions are unlikely to prove wise.
The charitable interpretation is that, as in 1945, the United States is choosing to de-escalate the conflict in Europe to concentrate on Asia or the Americas. In this view, Trump would find himself in a position similar to that of the Count-Duke of Olivares in 1640, fighting a war of attrition with free-riding allies who refuse to contribute to the common effort, forcing him to choose between two fronts. But it is doubtful that flattering Putin will break his alliance with China, which is America’s primary concern, or that it will contain his imperial ambitions toward his European neighbors, which should be our greatest worry. Nor is it likely that Trump will successfully apply the Monroe Doctrine and free Latin America from its communist shackles.
After this week’s statements, barring the unlikely course correction still hoped for by those who dismiss them as mere trolling, and as long as they do not translate into irreversible actions, the two key questions are whether Trump will apply the same logic to Taiwan that he has just suggested for Ukraine and whether, when the time comes, the United States will honor its mutual defense commitments within NATO.
For now, it seems exaggerated to conclude, as Fukuyama recently did, that Trump has switched sides and is willing to hand Taiwan over to China or abandon NATO obligations. We will only know once concrete actions are taken. But beyond intentions, two facts define the constraints under which not only Trump but any future U.S. leader will have to make decisions in the coming years.
First, in 2024, the United States paid $1.124 trillion in interest on its debt—a figure that, for the first time since 1934, exceeded its defense spending, which amounted to $1.107 trillion. Historians like the Fergusons often cite this kind of imbalance as a marker of national decline, from the Spanish Habsburgs to Britain in the last century. (Incidentally, Spain spends almost twice as much on interest payments as on defense, which speaks volumes about our servile mindset.)
Second, the most likely evolution of this U.S. fiscal imbalance is even worse. Trump’s combative Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, has proposed cutting military spending by 34% through successive 8% reductions over the next five years.
Trump came to power promising, like Ronald Reagan, to “achieve peace through strength,” but it is unlikely he can fulfill that promise. Whatever the reasons behind his statements on Ukraine and however they materialize, his decisions are driven by a worrying fiscal backdrop, and it is this backdrop that should prompt us to act. Moreover, America’s fiscal troubles are not so different from Europe’s; and, contrary to appearances, neither are our responses.
Just three weeks ago, I wrote in this column that Europe does not understand the historical moment it is living through—nor does it know when or from whom it will receive the wake-up call. We should be grateful to Trump for waking us up abruptly. Even if we ignore his crude and arguably immoral bluntness, it is precisely this bluntness that lends credibility to the threats looming over Europe—threats that Americans have been warning us about for decades, to no avail. Since Eisenhower in 1959, every U.S. president has criticized European complacency and free-riding in defense matters.
Even after Trump’s slap in the face, there has been no European response beyond some of our leaders persisting in the ridiculous charade of acting high and mighty when they cannot afford to be consistent. What we need are painful short-term commitments—such as freezing Russian gas imports, deploying European troops to secure Ukraine’s borders, or strengthening our weak mutual defense commitments (i.e., elevating the obligations of Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union to the level of NATO’s Article 5). Yet, the best we have managed is to promise an increase in defense spending—something we had already committed to multiple times. Moreover, despite the structural nature of defense spending, instead of raising taxes or cutting other expenditures, many propose financing it by increasing public debt—on a European scale, no less. Apart from the fact that such debt mutualization is unacceptable to fiscally disciplined countries, which would essentially act as the sole guarantors, the risks would be severe for both the EU’s political balance and the monetary stability of the already struggling euro.
Europe’s solution cannot be painless. It does not lie in mortgaging our future by further indebting ourselves but in addressing the dysfunctions of our welfare state and social market economy. The obstacles are immense, starting with the fact that for decades we have imposed ideological cordons sanitaires that, being mostly asymmetric, have not just paralyzed but actively reversed cultural and social development, accelerating the erosion of individual initiative and responsibility.
Consider, for instance, how in Germany, centrist parties have ostracized AfD while freely collaborating with communists and radical Greens. Or how in Spain, while Vox is demonized, we have communist ministers and governments propped up by parties that glorify terrorism and promote separatism.
On the issue of responsibility, we need look no further than how we evade our own share of the blame in this crisis—starting with the hypocrisy of criticizing America’s shift when almost all of Europe continues consuming vast amounts of Russian gas. The European emperor is not only naked militarily and economically but also morally. And this has been the case since 1945 when we betrayed all of Eastern Europe and condemned them to half a century of occupation and communist dictatorship. The “peace dividend” enjoyed by Western Europeans was paid for by the gulags where Eastern Europeans suffered.
This is why Trump’s outbursts should not seem so alien to us. Morally and economically, the differences between the U.S. and Europe are not as great as they seem—though Trump benefits from an economy that is less social and more market-oriented. He seeks to widen this advantage with his initiatives to shrink the federal government, especially those pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). These are dramatic measures, but their execution, risks, and—most importantly—their fiscal impact remain to be seen. As is often the case in budget crises, spending cuts tend to follow the path of least resistance rather than maximizing efficiency.
A prime example of this is the U.S. plan to cut military spending. A "zero-based" review is undoubtedly needed to stop wasting money on technologies that the war in Ukraine has proven obsolete. However, given the multiple threats looming over the West, reducing military spending seems unwise. Its level is set to drop below 3% of GDP—half of what the U.S. spent at the height of the Cold War.
Meanwhile, much of federal spending is non-discretionary, tied to entitlements such as Social Security and healthcare. As a result, these expenditures remain beyond DOGE’s reach and account for at least half of the budget. To restore public finances, it is not enough to cut spending that benefits political rivals; it is also necessary to affect allies.
At its core, the U.S. and Europe are less different than the anecdotes, personalities, and mannerisms suggest. All of the West suffers from a shift in values, whose most common manifestation is a myopic focus on the present. Even the most diverse and polarized political proposals promise only short-term results. No wonder the future looks so bleak.