From America with Love

JD Vance delivered a very bitter Valentine’s Day surprise to Europe’s great and good yesterday in a blistering speech at the Munich Security Conference. Faces were pale, lips wobbled, and hearts were broken as European leaders discovered that their long transatlantic love affair was coming to an end. To a shocked and silent conference, Vance explained that Europe was not worthy of American support — a continent, he argued, where populist parties were suppressed, borders undefended, and European values denigrated, should worry less about external enemies than its own internal failures. 

Outrage and cries of betrayal were everywhere. But Vance’s message was utterly deserved. Why does it take an American Vice-President to remind us in Europe that we are a civilisation and a culture? Why are we hearing about the growing discontent of Europe’s native population not from their elected representatives, but from the leader of a foreign country? Our failures are all our own, and whether we like hearing about them from Americans or not, we cannot lay the blame at their door. 

We have lost America’s respect for a simple and obvious reason — who can respect a country or a continent that does not respect itself, devalues its own history, and refuses to defend itself? Still less can we expect or demand respect from America when 70 per cent of all NATO spending is American, not European. How can we shout and shake our fist when it is American might which shields us from Russian aggression, that keeps the sea lanes open for our trade, and fights terrorism and drug trafficking worldwide? From the perspective of those standing in Washington, European peace and prosperity is purchased with American blood and treasure. And now, Europe is destroying and unmaking itself, economically, militarily, demographically and spiritually, yet we have the blind arrogance to expect gentle treatment from our patrons.

Throwing open Europe’s doors to American capitalism is not much better than throwing open our borders to migrants

Perhaps some in Britain, the cringing toadies of the American imperial court, imagine that we are not included in the category of Europe, and could still, with the right leadership, become free trading, free-speaking junior Yankees. As I wrote in 2021, Britain will never have the kind of special relationship Atlanticists dream of, due to the simple logic of asymmetric power and resources. Forget the tired binaries of remain and leave — in Europe Britain has a pool of small and medium sized potential security and trade partners with which it can amplify its power and reach, one that shares culture, values and interests. Geography and history dictate our European interests, and if we are to be outside of the EU, such relationships only become more imperative. More basically, if the shadow of Russia, China, or Islamism falls across continental Europe, Britain will not stand outside of it for long.

What lesson should we Europeans (and it is we) take from Vance’s merited scolding? Too many on the right, as I noted above, think the lesson is to sink further into wretched dependance. As Angus Hanton has pointed out, Britain has become dangerously reliant on American expertise and capital for the functioning of every aspect of our economy and defence. Many on the Right, and not just the Right, confuse American beliefs and interests for our own. Trump and Vance are backing AI, as well they might, given US dominance in digital technology, yet there is no guarantee that deregulation will work in our favour. Throwing open Europe’s doors to American capitalism is not very much better than throwing open our borders to migrants, and indeed the two are far from unrelated capitulations. 

Those looking to the States as a haven from progressive extremism, economic dysfunction and open borders are deluding themselves. Whilst at least some European countries have got a serious grip on their borders, America saw 10 million, mostly illegal, migrants enter their country under Joe Biden alone. It is American academics, American universities, and American ideas that drive progressivism worldwide and at home, with Europeans stumbling slowly in their wake. Nor should people be fooled by America’s economic success — it is concentrated in the service economy, and the gains are not realised by the poorest, nor reflected in public services and infrastructure.

Perhaps Trump and Vance can turn things around — but it will mean either a major breach with their newfound friends in Silicon Valley, or some very serious Damascene conversions amongst these captains of the tech industry. No, the lesson we should take from the Vance speech is straightforward — Europe must stand up for its own interests, articulate its own understanding of European culture, and end the humiliating horrors of terrorism, rape gangs, and Islamism within its borders, without waiting for American help or permission. 

There is more to European, and English, identity, than democracy and liberty. As valuable as these things are, the point of our being free citizens is that we can collectively and freely pursue the good — both the good life for ourselves and our families, and the common good that we all strive for together. Far too few on the Anglo-American right stress this most basic ideal, derived from our Christian and classical past — fraternity. 

In many respects, the growing gulf between Europe and America is not only about left and right, populist and centrist, but about a rupture between freedom and fraternity, democracy and solidarity. Shorn of agency and liberty, fraternity in Europe has become a suffocating egalitarianism in which no offence can be given, and no individual can be allowed to exceed his fellows. The “harm” limit to speech and action can be defined so widely as to become an unlimited, even totalitarian form of “benign” technocratic tyranny.

Meanwhile in the US, liberty has been wrenched free of solidarity, and even on the Left, racial and sexual equality is more stressed than economic equality. This situation is extremely dangerous — Alexis de Tocqueville traced America’s unique liberty and democracy to the extraordinary “equality of conditions” between the original settlers. This sense of civic friendship is what unifies the American republic, and extreme divisions of wealth are now unquestionably ripping it asunder. No longer trusting or willing the good for other citizens, Americans are increasingly willing to weaponise the state against their opponents. In the same fashion, legislative bodies have ceased to function, and executive power is instead used to govern. 

This chasm between social justice and civic freedom has destroyed political life — as the shared pursuit of the good — in real terms, leaving only rival politics of resentment and group self-interest. Those divisions are tearing apart both continents, weakening us as we face an increasingly dangerous world. 

Vance’s warning that Europe faces an existential threat from within is surely right — but it applies no less to America than to us.