Unreasonable priorities: US wants Europe to help turn back the clock

The transatlantic alliance between European democracies and the United States (US) served as the bedrock of the post-World War II international order. It allowed Europe to shelter under the US’ military umbrella while it in turn ceded the mantle of global leadership and all the associated benefits to America. This was predicated, however, on one basic assumption: That the two espoused the same fundamental political and social values. That may no longer be true, as was evident at this year’s Munich Security Conference. This conference, traditionally a celebration of the transatlantic partnership, has been, since President Donald Trump began his second term in office, more like a documentary of its demise. Last year, US Vice-President J D Vance used the opportunity to upbraid Europe for being, in his opinion, unfairly tolerant of far-right views. This year, the chief representative of the US administration was Secretary of State Marco Rubio. His speech had a less confrontational tone, and it made an effort to stress the things he believed that Europe and the US continued to have in common. He sought to reassure European leaders through this, and thus was granted a standing ovation by the assembled leaders of the continent.

 

Yet Mr Rubio’s speech should instead have been viewed as being as dangerous as anything Mr Vance said last year. When he promised Europe that the US did “not seek to separate, but to revitalise an old friendship and renew the greatest civilisation in human history”, what the Europeans heard was the first part; but Mr Rubio, like Mr Vance, intended to stress the second. From the perspective of their administration, it is not modern liberal political values that Europe and America share, but ethnicity and past glories. That Europe has sought to move beyond this, that it consented in decolonisation and now does not seek to reprise past ages of domination, is in their opinion the greatest crime that it has committed. This is an odd argument to make, even leaving its morality aside. The US’ own founding myth revolves around throwing off colonial oppression. Meanwhile, the European countries that had colonial empires in other continents — France, the United Kingdom, and Spain — are those that are the least receptive to the Trump administration. It is the smaller nations of central and eastern Europe — the former Czechoslovakia, which was subjugated within an imperial system for centuries, or Hungary, which colonised its European neighbours — where “America first”-style politics is more potent. These are not parts of the continent that played any great role in the age of Western dominance that Mr Rubio eulogised.

 

Two things seem relevant when this speech is considered in context. First, that it is not the past that the Trump administration idolises so much as the notion of ethnic supremacy. It is not the world that it necessarily wants to remake as much as its own societies. That Europe is not working as hard to be cruel to its ethnic minorities is seen as a reproof by Washington, and that is the basis of its concern that values between the two are no longer shared. The second point is the broad silence of the post-colonial world to the spectacle of a high representative of the world’s pre-eminent military power calling for a return to an age where national glory was measured by imperial possessions. India, once the most articulate spokesperson for the freed nations of the world, should be mindful of its implications.