{"id":182180,"date":"2025-12-09T02:53:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T02:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/182180\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T02:53:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T02:53:12","slug":"america-is-right-about-europes-civilisational-erasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/182180\/","title":{"rendered":"America is right about Europe\u2019s civilisational erasure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Between the Trump Administration\u2019s new national security strategy<\/a>, which described Europe as a continent facing \u2018civilisational erasure\u2019, and the EU\u2019s decision to fine Elon Musk\u2019s X \u20ac120 million for transparency failings, it\u2019s safe to say that last week marked a new low in transatlantic relations.<\/p>\n

From the American perspective, the latter issue is very much part and parcel of the former, a section in the national security strategy subtitled \u2018Promoting European Greatness\u2019 lamenting the key difficulties Europe is facing:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

To say that the Eurocratic response to this was impassioned would be an understatement; \u2018crash out\u2019, as Gen Z says, would be more accurate.<\/p>\n

European threats to political liberty and sovereignty do not come from within, they say, but from without: Russia primarily, but also the American oligarchs and other insidious actors that the EU simply seeks to protect its citizens from. Migration policies that transform the continent do not create strife, they say \u2013 that\u2019s the work of far-right agitators, and the Russian and American money and influence operations propping them up.<\/p>\n

Censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition? As if! Polls by ideologically-aligned organisations that receive European Union funding consistently show that European nations rank highest in the world for freedom of expression and press freedoms.<\/p>\n

Taken as incontrovertible proof of the Eurocrat\u2019s perspective, of course, is the fact that Elon Musk spent much of the weekend decrying the European Union on X, while Russia came out and said that the American security strategy was largely in accord with Moscow\u2019s view of things.<\/p>\n

As such, the Brussels\u2019 elite have responded to the American vision with disdain and disgust, shocked that their (formerly?) greatest ally could possibly take such a low view of them. Voice was given to this by one of the EU\u2019s more bullish mouthparts, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who said that \u201cEurope is your closest ally, not your problem\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cDear American friends, Europe is your closest ally, not your problem. And we have common enemies. At least that\u2019s how it has been in the last 80 years. We need to stick to this, this is the only reasonable strategy of our common security. Unless something has changed,\u201d Mr Tusk wrote on X over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Well, something has changed: America has decided that business as usual in the face of those elements it deems to be civilisational threats isn\u2019t good enough, and that it\u2019s now going to prioritise waking Europe up to those threats, by \u201ccultivating resistance to Europe\u2019s current trajectory within European nations\u201d.<\/p>\n

You can have your qualms with any number of aspects of American foreign policy, Donald Trump\u2019s administration, or current US governance more broadly, and I do, but the Americans\u2019 identification of the key problems facing Europe is flawless, and it would behoove European leaders to drop their pretense of moral superiority and listen, for once in their political lives.<\/p>\n

Not least because many of them have expressed similar sentiments in the past, in tones no less dire.<\/p>\n

The words of French President Emmanuel Macron<\/a> in 2020 (although it\u2019s a theme he picks up quite frequently):\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI can tell you this with certainty. We know that civilizations are disappearing; countries as well. Europe will disappear. Europe will disappear with the obliteration of this Western period, and the world will be centred around two main focal points: the United States and China. And we will have to choose between the two powers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or just last year, the aggressively confident Mr Tusk, speaking on the topic of mass immigration<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a matter of the survival of Western civilization. We must wake up and understand that we need to protect our borders. If we remain open to all forms of migration, our world will collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, even that degree of reluctant self-awareness is rare among the European elite, who\u2019ve been quicker to react with what they think to be witty repartees rebuffing the US assessment that all is not well. Our own representatives in the European Parliament have been particularly eager to be seen taking swipes at what they deem to be poorly-informed, or nefarious, American commentary.<\/p>\n

With the current crop of European leaders, dissatisfied Europeans and European allies are dealing with a blindness of biblical proportions. They are more concerned with inadequacies in X\u2019s \u2018blue checkmark\u2019 system \u2013 one of the grounds upon which they issued the \u20ac120 million fine<\/a> \u2013 than they are with the proliferation of speech-related offences for which people living in the EU have been arrested, fined and subjected to invasive house searches.<\/p>\n

But this should be no surprise. German publication WELT described German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, a man very much in the Eurocratic mould, as \u201cone of the most sensitive politicians in the history of the Federal Republic,\u201d<\/a> after it obtained documents indicating that he has filed \u201chundreds of criminal complaints\u201d for insults since 2021.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s concern is obvious, and is set out clearly in the national security strategy:<\/p>\n

\u201cShould present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deflection from some quarters that, for example, free speech is in an even worse state in Russia, and so America should stop worrying about the state of its closest ally, just doesn\u2019t fly. Naturally, the US is going to be more concerned about domestic affairs in Europe than elsewhere, especially as the continent labours under poor management.<\/p>\n

Whether that poor management can be rooted out, though, remains to be seen. The Trump administration was wise to focus on mass immigration, for that is the existential issue the greatest number of Europeans will readily admit exists. Which is also why immigration management has become the greatest challenge the Brussels\u2019 elite has yet faced.<\/p>\n

Differing standards regarding free speech and free expression on both sides of the Atlantic were always going to swell into a sticking point in the information age, especially as the European bureaucracy expanded and began encroaching on the operations of American firms, as attested to by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio\u2019s comments on Friday. Both powers, if they can both be described as such, suffer from plummeting birth rates and crises of national identity and self-confidence, although America less so currently.<\/p>\n

That said, none of these differences, or shared plights, should get in the way of a strategic recalibration on Europe\u2019s part.<\/p>\n

Modern Europe, or the European Union, rather, prides itself on being a beacon of progressivism in an increasingly fractious and threatening world. But what America has indicated, correctly, is that true progress lies in, as C.S. Lewis put it, \u201cdoing an about-turn and walking back to the right road\u201d when you find yourself on the wrong one.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man,\u201d he wrote, adding, \u201cthere is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake\u201d.<\/p>\n

In rejecting words of warning from messengers they find distasteful, the European elite out themselves as being truly \u2018pig-headed\u2019, incapable of admitting to mistakes.<\/p>\n

The ball is now back in America\u2019s court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Between the Trump Administration\u2019s new national security strategy, which described Europe as a continent facing \u2018civilisational erasure\u2019, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9710,1813,42,43,40,38,41,39,1066],"class_list":{"0":"post-182180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-censorship","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories","16":"tag-trump-administration"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}