Ivan Krastev is a permanent fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences and a board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Mark Leonard is co-founder and Director of ECFR.
When U.S. President Donald Trump was elected for a second term, he launched a political revolution that is fundamentally transforming the political identity of entire countries.
In just six months, the U.S. shifted from championing liberal democracy and free trade to promoting illiberalism and protectionism. Now, that revolution has arrived in Europe, and it’s forcing the bloc to alter its view of the world — along with its place in it.
After talking to 16,000 individuals in 12 European countries, our organization, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), found that Trump’s victory has changed the nature of Europe’s domestic politics as well as its geopolitical standing.
Almost overnight, the bloc’s far right has gone from passionate defenders of national sovereignty against the threat of a federalist EU to the vanguard of a transnational movement that advocates a sort of civilizational nationalism. Conversely, many mainstream parties — or, rather, the ex-globalists — have recast themselves as the new sovereigntists, defending national dignity against what they perceive to be ideological interference from Washington.
Supporters of Europe’s populist parties are no longer protest voters either. According to our data, a majority of those supporting every one of the 10 far-right parties we polled on, think Trump’s reelection will be good for the U.S., and view his actions with sympathy and excitement. Much like the bloc’s far-right leaders, who are copying his policies on everything from immigration to blowing up national bureaucracies.
The result of all this seems to be the emergence of an ideological transatlantic relationship, no longer dividing the continent into pro- and anti-U.S. countries but rather pro- and anti-Trump political parties. Unlike the split triggered by the war in Iraq in 2003, for instance, Eastern Europe isn’t more U.S. friendly than Western Europe because of a strong pro-American societal consensus but because its far-right parties are stronger.
However, it remains unclear whether Europe’s far right will be the major beneficiary or the victim of Trump’s revolution.
On the one hand — as was the case with Brexit — his reelection shows it’s still possible for them to come to power. But if people turn against Trump and his politics, these parties will be the biggest losers. Their support depends on the U.S. leader in the same way support for Western European Communist parties depended on how people viewed the Soviet Union and its policies during the Cold War.
On the other end of the spectrum, we’re now seeing several of Europe’s most traditionally Atlanticist parties, such as Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, reinventing themselves as defenders of national sovereignty against Trump’s America. It’s a shift that aligns with our polling, which clearly shows the countries that appear to be most skeptical of America today seem to be the ones that were the most Atlanticist yesterday, like the U.K., Germany and Denmark.
Denmark in particular — with 86 percent of those polled saying they believe the U.S. political system to be broken — best illustrates that people radically turn against the U.S. not when Trump is attacking Europe but when he threatens their nation’s sovereignty.
Meanwhile, the ongoing transformation of Europe’s geopolitical identity is just as dramatic, with Trump’s reelection forcing Europe to finally take its security seriously. More specifically, while the fear of Russian aggression remains mostly confined to countries directly bordering it, according to our polling, there is now a clear pan-European fear of nuclear conflict and a new world war.
Looking at the results, we can see that majorities now favor increased defense spending, continued support for Ukraine if the U.S. withdraws support and, in many countries, even the introduction of mandatory military service. In many countries — except for Italy and Hungary — majorities upward of 60 percent even favor the development of a European nuclear deterrent, while some also ask for national nuclear deterrence.
As the bloc shifts, Europeans still have doubts about whether they can rearm fast enough to defend itself in Washington’s absence — particularly in the short term. The major paradox we found in our polling is that while Europeans are aware of the risks posed by the new U.S. administration’s policies, they still express confidence that Trump won’t withdraw U.S. troops from Europe and that transatlantic relations will easily repair once he’s out of office.
Question is, are they being naïve when it comes to the nature of the Trump revolution, or are they simply realistic about what the bloc can achieve in the short term?
As Europe’s NATO leaders gather in The Hague to to agree on a historic defense spending target of 5 percent, the answer may come as a surprise. French revolutionary firebrand Louis Antoine de Saint-Just allegedly claimed that “the present order is the disorder of the future.” Today, Europe is in the crux of that maxim.
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