Too Bad! Trump Cannot Allow A Declining Europe To Drag America Down With Them
Last week, leaders of European governments got very upset with the new Trump administration.
First, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said a return to pre-2014 Ukraine-Russia borders was an “unrealistic objective” in the coming peace negotiations and that European leaders shouldn’t assume American troops would be present on the continent forever.
Then, Vice President JD Vance gave a speech at a security conference in Germany in which he admonished European governments for repeatedly violating the liberal democratic principles they loudly and falsely proclaim to defend. He cited the recent reversal of an election in Romania after the result went against what the ruling regime and its Western European allies wanted, as well as a plethora of crackdowns on political dissent from some of Washington’s closest allies on the continent.
Finally, President Trump announced that the US government would begin direct talks with the Russian government to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. Those talks began on Tuesday without any involvement from other European governments, including Ukraine.
Needless to say, these statements and developments greatly angered European leaders who were evidently convinced the US would continue to station troops, send weapons, and provide funding for the continent’s security while letting the governments act however they wanted and while treating them as the primary parties in the proxy war we’ve been bankrolling.
By all indications, the Trump administration’s goal here is to pressure European governments to spend more of their own taxpayers’ money to fund NATO. Which is unfortunate, because Europe is deep in a self-inflicted decline right now, and US taxpayers should not be forced to take part in it at all.
From an American perspective, the decline of Europe is tragic as some of the best aspects of our institutions and culture can be drawn back to the period after Europe’s rise. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Western Europe splintered into many small political units. The relatively small territories of these states, along with the presence of strong non-state institutions like the Church and an international merchant class, meant power was highly decentralized. As scholars like Ralph Raico, Nathan Rosenberg, and L.E. Birdzel Jr. have demonstrated, the highly decentralized set-up of Europe in the Middle Ages was the primary factor in generating the prosperity that went on to give the West more power and a safer, more comfortable standard of living than any other civilization in history.
https://real.news/geopolitical/trump-cannot-allow-declining-europe-drag-us-down
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