What Europeans don't understand

Europeans feel so morally superior to all other countries that they have committed two deadly sins: first, believing that West was the same as the Atlantic alliance (not the NATO, but that universe of ties of all kinds generated from the Second World War); the second, to equate the European Union with Europe (not so much as a continent but as a political and philosophical concept by which the world should be governed).

Precisely because of that vision in which they, the Europeans, were both the center of attention of the whole world and its guiding light, they are disoriented - and horrified - by the ideas and proposals of President Donald Trump. The latest jolt, the new National Security Strategy made public by the White House in recent days.

European pundits and analysts (or, more precisely, from what Donald Rumsfeld appropriately called "Old Europe") keep talking about the demise of the West and blame it on American MAGA rhetoric, in their eyes socially backward, culturally ignorant, economically unsupportive, militarily unconcerned and internationally suspicious.

Curiously, Donald Trump's team, starting with the now-famous speech by Vice President Vance at the traditional congregation of the Verkunde -officially Munich Security Conference - last February and culminating in the newly approved National Security Strategy 2025, sees things diametrically opposite. For Washington, it is actually Europe that would be endangering the principles, values and procedures consubstantial to what the West has been; namely: the primacy of the individual, freedom of expression and worship, entrepreneurship and the free market, moral and political responsibility, respect for tradition, the rule of law and equality before the law.

"Fortunately, the Trumpian turn and his determination to restore America's inspirational values have saved the West from falling off the cliff toward which it was resolutely marching."

Trump's vision goes so far as to assert that Europe, wrongly led by the European Union and its anti-sovereignty political principles, its stifling economic regulations and its open door policies to totally out-of-control immigration, is putting Europeans' Western identity in existential jeopardy.

And it must be said that Trump and his team are right. The West was on the path to collapse under Obama and Biden because they embarked on a social engineering to transform the soul of America into a woke experiment, hyper-racialized, micro-identitarian and exclusionary domestically, while globalist and blurring internationally. An America that was no longer what it was, and a Europe that regretted its own signs of identity, only augured the inevitable collapse of that which has been Western civilization: of Jerusalem to the Lighthouse on the Hill, passing through Greece and Rome.

Fortunately, the Trumpian turn and his determination to restore the inspiring values of the United States have saved the West from falling off the precipice toward which it was determinedly marching. But yes, it has saved it by making America turn around. What is missing now is for Europe to change its suicidal course.

Europe faces four strategic problems right now: the first stems from the war in Ukraine and concerns its future relationship with Russia; the second, the increasing dependence on China and the increasing economic and technological penetration of that country in the continent; the third, the increasing erosion of democracy at the hands of autocratic leaders, whose main objective is to reinforce the power of the European Union as a great superstate, which implies the elimination of dissent and the abandonment of the freedoms inherent to the democratic system; and fourth, the accelerated social transformation that inexorably entails the irruption of unbridled immigration from areas of the world with values and beliefs radically different, if not opposed, to Western culture and civilization, essentially tolerant, liberal and egalitarian.

Of these four major challenges, current European leaders, particularly those responsible for the European Union are focused, if not obsessed, with the first: the Russian invasion of Ukraine which is, precisely, the one on which they have the least capacity to act and, possibly, the one that will have the least strategic impact whatever the outcome of that war; the Chinese issue could be resolved if they did not see that authoritarian giant as the answers to the problems of change posed to them by President Trump, because China has nothing that they cannot find in America.

"The American president and his team have been condemned for their interference in European politics, promoting 'civilizing' party options in the face of the EU establishment and institutions."

In contrast, the two challenges that are indeed existential for the future of Europe as a living part of the West, true democracy and migration control, are where the EU authorities do not want to act. Partly because it would mean radically reforming the European integration project as Brussels has been defining it since the time of Jacques Delors. What is more, for the leaders of the EU and of a good part of the capitals of the Member States, the fact that immigration does not integrate or respect Western values does not represent a big problem, because they do not see that many of the new immigrants - or the descendants of previous generations - show an active behavior of assault on Western society, which they hope to subdue. The short-termism of European policymakers prevents them from confronting a truly existential problem.

On the contrary, Donald Trump, free from the shackles to which the Europeans have voluntarily chained themselves with their complexes and extreme goodwill, is indeed in a position to fight against all that and to be able to tell the whole world about it. America is once again the Western world; Europe wants to anchor itself in its post-Western world.

The American president and his team have been condemned for their interference in European politics, promoting "civilizing" party choices against the establishment and the EU institutions. But what this accusation is trying to hide is that throughout Europe alternatives to the suicidal policies of our leaders are growing. The rampant criminality, the explosion of sexual attacks against women and girls, the unbearable expense of maintaining ethnic groups that contribute little or nothing to the economy, are realities that for the average citizen can no longer be hidden.

So far, the representatives of the social democratic consensus, which has infected all conservative parties and on which Europe has been built, have managed to prevent alternative forces from coming to power, resorting to all the weapons at their disposal, whether democratic or not. And it does not seem that they are going to change their attitude. That is why some people are already talking about an inevitable civil war among Europeans. The alternative to doing nothing is that date that the White House has set for Europe to cease to be Europe: 2040. It is in the hands of the good Europeans that we never get there. Otherwise, the West will not have ceased to exist, as many say, but will have shifted to the United States and Israel. Mind you, Europe will have ceased to be Western, whether it likes to admit it or not.