Trumpworld thinks Europe has betrayed the West

A FEW MONTHS ago Western governments were sunk in gloom because America no longer sounded or acted like a reliable friend. Today American flakiness is the least of their worries. A growing fear among allies, notably in European countries run by old-school centrists, is that President Donald Trump is choosing sides—and treating liberal Westerners as adversaries.

“We are in a battle for the West,” says a policy adviser in a European capital, a normally hard-to-alarm veteran who has weathered many squalls in transatlantic relations. He describes a “revolutionary fervour” among ideologues who serve in the second Trump presidency. The most zealous of these have moved far beyond old arguments about burden-sharing in NATO. Instead, he reports, hardliners in the Trump administration seek a fundamental reordering of Europe’s politics. Trumpworld’s dream is for power to shift wholesale to parties of the nationalist right, whether that means Reform UK in Britain, the National Rally in France or Germany’s AfD, whose grievance-stoking, immigrant-scorning agendas overlap with MAGA’s.

As Trump loyalists weigh in on Western culture wars, they sound ever less willing to help allies deter an actual war with Russia. A second official from Europe relates Washington meetings in which MAGA types lay out their reasoning. European governments of the centre-left and centre-right are accused of destroying Western civilisation by allowing mass migration, betraying traditional social values and censoring conservative speech. Those governments are further charged with surrendering their sovereignty to the EU, an organisation that Mr Trump says was created “to screw” America, as MAGA loyalists point out. Meeting after meeting ends with the same conclusion: Europe is an enemy that does not deserve to be defended by America.

Europe is being singled out. In today’s Washington, it is often spoken of with greater loathing than either China or Russia. A big theme of the second Trump presidency is that it is done with policing the world, or even trying to make it a kindlier place. In a speech in Saudi Arabia in May Mr Trump deplored the harm caused by “Western interventionists” who lectured Middle Easterners on how to govern themselves. Reinforcing that no-meddling message, in July the State Department instructed American embassies worldwide to stop commenting on the fairness or legitimacy of elections in their host countries, and to focus on strategic interests rather than abstract democratic values.

Against that hands-off approach, prominent members of Trumpworld have strong views about how Europe should be governed. The vice-president, J.D. Vance, used a speech to the Munich Security Conference in February to raise some valid questions about heavy-handed European controls on speech and the “firewalls” erected by mainstream parties against populist rivals in some countries. But Mr Vance crossed the line into partisan point-scoring when he called such policies a “threat from within” that he claimed was more dangerous than Russia.

That line of attack returned on November 24th when the State Department announced that American embassies in Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand had been told to collect data on “crimes and human rights abuses” committed by immigrants, with a special mention for attacks by radical Islamists against Christians and Jews. Unveiling the new policy, a State Department official called mass migration an existential threat to Western civilisation and the safety of both the West and the world. Then came a veiled threat. “In order for us to have a strong alliance” with governments in Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, the official explained, their citizens must be heeded when they complain of immigrants taking houses and jobs, triggering spikes in crime or attacking children. Accordingly, American diplomats have been ordered to lobby host governments to tighten migration policies.

In reality, when it comes to influencing immigration policies, American lectures can hardly compete with the pressure that national politicians face from their own voters. The most likely consequence of this new policy will be some horribly awkward meetings for American diplomats. Armed with MAGA talking-points, hapless political counsellors will head to European government ministries past newsstands papered with headlines about border controls and asylum-seekers: for such stories are front-page staples across the West and are prompting tighter migration rules. Then, with a straight face, American diplomats will explain to their hosts that voters are really worried about immigration.

Europeans have a right to speculate about the Trump administration’s true motives when it accuses them of undermining the civilisation of the West. The term has a narrow, sectarian edge to it, especially given Mr Trump’s recent pledges to expel American residents “non-compatible with Western Civilisation”. In recent years America’s allies in the West have felt themselves united by fundamental values, including liberal democracy, capitalism, the rule of law and the separation of powers. Given Mr Trump’s loathing of constraints on his presidential power, it is not reassuring when his officials talk of civilisation rather than values.

Allies may wonder, too, whether America wants an excuse to simply wash its hands of European security. For decades shared values and security needs were seen as mutually reinforcing. One neat line was that the West evolved “from Plato to NATO”. Today NATO offers America a lever for coercion. If Trump-defined civilisation is to be the test, then he, not values, becomes the arbiter of membership of the West. If conservative nationalism is what counts, why not include Russia? A battle for the Western soul looms. Unity is already a casualty. ■