Europeans underestimate J.D. Vance. Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty
There is no longer any doubt that Europe and America are parting ways. The death of the transatlantic relationship was foretold many times, but at the Munich Security Conference this weekend, it finally ended.
The great American-European divorce has played out in three areas — Ukraine, free speech, and trade. Last week, Donald Trump blindsided the Europeans with his announcement of peace talks with Vladimir Putin. (He said he would do this during his election campaign, but Europe’s leaders were clearly not paying attention.) Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, told the Europeans on Saturday that they will not be included in high-level peace negotiations.
Europe’s leaders are aghast. Some of them, including Keir Starmer, were still peddling the idea of future Nato membership for Ukraine when Trump announced that Ukraine will not become a Nato member. Trump said that, from a Russian perspective, it was the prospect of Ukraine’s Nato membership that triggered the war — a version of events the Europeans profoundly disagree with. He has also concluded that Ukraine cannot possibly win the war (a point on which I agree).
The outlines of a peace deal are emerging: no Nato membership for Ukraine; a frontier that respects the current military situation; a demilitarised zone around the new frontier; and, I presume, a return of Russia’s frozen assets, and a gradual lifting of the sanctions. Trump even wants Russia back in the G7.
This has left the Europeans furious. The European media, and numerous academics, keep up the increasingly implausible narrative that Ukraine can win the war only if the West maintains its support. But this is how people talk with no skin in the game. Robert Skidelsky, the British economic historian, recently pointed out the uniformity of pro-war views in the British media. Ukraine’s unconditional supporters within the British media, European think tanks, and US university history departments have all failed to heed an important lesson from the German military historian Carl von Clausewitz: do not go to war unless you know how to end it. For the Europeans, war is a spectator sport. Their support for Ukraine was all about principles and promises; there was no strategic planning, no endgame, no agreement on second-best outcomes, no concrete planning for post-war scenarios.
The Ukraine war must end because Ukraine has lost. It’s as simple as that. Russia has shifted to a war economy, and outproduces the West in military gear and ammunition by a large margin. There’s no way it can lose now. A Ukrainian victory would have required the US and Europe to have taken different policy decisions early on: a complete oil and gas embargo on day one, a total cut-off of all Russian banks from international financial networks, an immediate increase in defence industrial investments, and a readiness to make sacrifices. Ukraine needed brave supporters. It got cheerleaders instead.
Having been relegated to the kids’ table of international diplomacy, the Europeans hoped for some soothing words from the Americans at the Munich Security Conference. Instead, they got a scolding from J.D. Vance, the US Vice President. He told them that the biggest threat to the West is not Russia or China, but the suppression of free speech in Europe. You might think this is an odd issue to raise at a conference about security, but for Vance the two issues are linked.
The Vice President cited a number of outrageous cases of state censorship, the most extreme of which was the cancellation of Romania’s presidential election last year, after the wrong candidate won. The decision was widely applauded in the EU, which I also see as an alarming sign of how censorship has been normalised in modern Europe. The argument for cancellation was Russian interference. Someone, apparently, had lied on TikTok.
Vance then repeated a threat he’d first made shortly after the American election — that any attempt to censor US-owned social media companies by the EU would lead to US disengagement from Nato. “I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your very own people,” he said. “Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now… is one of our own making. If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you.”
Europe was at a loss to respond. Its centrist governments are running out of ideas in the fight against the Right. They fear that uncontrolled free speech could turn into an existential threat to European integration. After all, the EU was never a bottom-up democratic project, and support for the euro was feeble from the outset. There was, for example, no majority in Germany in favour of the euro. This lack of popular support is what paralysed the EU during the sovereign debt crisis.
What sustains the EU is not a democratic mandate, but the mainstream media, academia, and think tanks — a blob of organisations that together exert indirect control over what gets discussed and published. You will not find editorials in German newspapers in support of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), despite the fact that this party now accounts for approximately 20% of popular support. The new Right-wing parties communicate through social media instead. This is why the EU is so focused on content moderation for social media, and it’s why we have seen a recent explosion of fact-checking units in broadcasting companies and media organisations.
But the Left is rarely subjected to such fact-checking. Quite a few members of the blob have abandoned X for the alternative Bluesky, which resembles the old Twitter. There, on a much smaller scale, the old echo chamber still works. There, users describe the Trump presidency as a coup d’état, and still think that Ukraine is winning the war. No one interrupts them — or checks any facts.
The Germans believe they are champions of free speech, but in reality they are among the worst offenders. The only censorship I myself have ever experienced was from a well-known German news magazine.
When Vance threatened in November to link censorship of US social media to America’s continued support for Nato, hardly anyone in Europe took him seriously. Vance is the kind of American character Europeans habitually underestimate. This is why his speech came as a shock. The Germans were particularly outraged, because Vance called on them to drop the political firewall against the AfD. He made a point of snubbing Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, but met with the AfD leader Alice Weidel at Munich.
The BBC described Vance’s speech “extraordinarily poorly judged”. And yet the intelligent way for the Brits and Europeans to respond to America’s new regime would be to stop hyperventilating and take matters into their own hands. The EU and the UK are now responsible for the security of the European continent — the question is whether they can rise to the occasion. They will need to find more money for defence, and to coordinate and pool their defence procurement more intelligently — EU countries, for example, have 12 types of battle tank, while the US only has one.
The trouble is that in Europe, every nation has its red lines. The Germans don’t want to send any troops anywhere. Emmanuel Macron is already calling for defence to be funded by European debt. The Poles reject a European army, while the Brits don’t want to take orders from the EU. If they are to get through this, they will all need to be pragmatic and fast. The brutal reality is that Europe’s governments have starved their militaries for decades, shifting their resources into social programmes, which they will now struggle to reverse.
There’s no denying that Trump is throwing Europe under the bus. Angela Merkel predicted this in 2018, when she gave an agitated speech in a Bavarian beer tent shortly after meeting with Trump. She said then that Europe needed to become less dependent on the US. But then she did nothing, as did everyone else. And so here we are, with EU leaders meeting to sit around yet another table. They are the Norma Desmonds of geopolitics — convinced that they are still the stars.
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Subscribe“They are the Norma Desmonds of geopolitics — convinced that they are still the stars.”
Brilliant concluding line.
Cameras! Action!
No one more so than the truly awful Sir Keir.
Vance did NOT endorse AfD, or any other party. And if Herr Muenchau actually thought for a second, he’d realise Vance’s words were at least as much a challenge for Orban as for Scholz and Macron.
He met with AfD after his speech, but not any other party. He pretended that Musks targeted support of AfD during an election was no more significant than the banner waving of a teenage environmentalist.
We are constantly being told that AfD is a far right party – but I can find no discussion of actual policies which fit that description. Can you enlighten me?
Probably in favour of defending Germany from invading hoards?
More correctly the hordes carrying their hoards.
You’ll want to get his definition of “far right” prior to subjecting yourself to the (probable) blithering nonsense spoon fed to him by the globalist’s talking heads.
You have found no discussion of any policy of theirs that fits that description? I think you might be looking in the wrong places! Try typing into google “is AfD a far right party?” Some of the links there will be to exactly that sort of discussion.
Agree with this analysis entirely. And as far as I’m concerned good riddance to the Europeans. And until the UK comes to its senses and gets rid of Starmer and his woke, anti-semitic and pro-illegal immigration policies, the same should apply. Tim, for the UK to become the 51st state ahead of Canada.
Now there’s a proud Brit if ever I saw one, super keen to become a vessel state of a bully
The UK should remain the UK, but as a return to its former glory. No need to think about joining the US of A. Even Puerto Rico can’t seem to manage this final step …
Yup – by the BBC.
Reading this was accompanied by the sound of nails being hit on heads, quite possibly being hammered into Europe’s coffin; unless, something drastic were to come about. What that might be, who yet knows?
Meanwhile, our multi-tier PM is bleating about “British boots on the ground” in Ukraine. Q. are you even big enough to fill your own boots, Starmer? Perhaps a rejection of such an order by the defunded, demoralised and disrespected Armed Forces might be something like the catalyst for the change that’s needed.
There’s a new script in town, much to the relief of the public, in most European countries. The future might be better, it might be worse, but at least it will be a change. And a change is as good as a rest.
You comment had 20 plus thumbs up until I pressed the like button and it reduced to 4! Noticed that a few time with Unherd comments section.
I’ve just tried and it was plus 4!
It’s been going on for some time, this weird bug with the vote counts. Often I’ve returned to an article after a few days to see comments of my own which had lots of upvotes (and the occasional downvote) showing none at all, and it appears as if this applies to all the other comments too.
They really need to fix it. It’s not hugely important obviously, but it’s been going on for quite a while and should have been fixed ages ago.
It could also be deliberate, i.e. those who comment early (if it’s anything like a good comment) will attract more upvotes which everyone then sees at the top, especially if they haven’t time to read all the comments.
There may well be even better comments further down which don’t get much attention, therefore by levelling the voting it gives those a better chance of being read.
There’s also the switchover of articles around midnight UK time, which gives US commentators an advantage – apart from UK night owls such as myself!
Envelopes with cash are being quietly exchanged.
Excellent. The first true LOL of my day. Thank you sir
HM Forces are already 2-0 down, do we really want to go any further?
Aha the ‘sainted’ BBC, a national icon no less!
I had the misfortune recently to watch a BBC supposedly ‘genealogical’ programme entitled “Who the hell do you think you are” or some such nonsense.(My Chief of Staff is sadly addicted to such rubbish!).
The object of the research for this programme was the BBC’s ‘Security Correspondent’, one Frank Gardner. When the programme revealed that Frank was obscurely related to some ‘Tudor’ traitor who had been summarily beheaded, and who Frank had never heard of, astonishingly he began to BLUB on air! Even my Spaniels were distraught at such an outrage!
I am sure that the late Lord Reith would be equally outraged by how the once great organisation he created has degenerated into the ‘bien pensant’ orifice it has now become. All thoughts of impartial reporting have long gone, and where it should ‘stand like an oak’, it in fact it ‘bends like a willow’ to every whim emanating from Quislington and elsewhere.
Well put. Quislington isworthy of Orwell ,who said the Left despised patriotism, physical courage and British culture.
Yes, I think he was the first to really highlight this truly despicable behaviour.
Every now and then Starmer is dressed up by Lord Ali in full military kit and looks able to lead a regiment over the top waving a sword.
Along with many here in the UK, I wish Starmer the Granny-harmer would defend our borders in the Channel, before blithely committing us far away to protect Ukraine’s; that he would protect our farmers, rather than taxing them here in the UK where we are going to need food independence soon enough, whilst giving millions away to 3rd-world farmers in the Foreign Aid budget.
A very good summary.
The UK would be wise to follow the US lead and not get involved in whatever “Europe” decides to do, if anything of consequence at all.
“They” aren’t friendly towards the UK, (no matter how much Starmer sucks up to them) and will, as usual, seek a high price from it for being part of their boondoggle.
In any event, the UK’s military capability has been so run down as to be useless, and won’t be revived under any branch of the current uni-party.
Starmer does not suck up to Europe, he IS Europe. He wants Britain back in the EU where he himself has always dwelt. Davos over Westminster all day long as he baldly said.
Perhaps that is right but we could extract a high price (free trade access) for access to our nukes.
Our nukes? I don’t think we get to fire them without permission from Washington. And besides aren’t the submarines in dry dock?
Be America’s poodle? Why should we? Is America interested in our welfare?
Not that I claim to have the answer.
Pace Saint Augustine, the Eurocrat’s prayer: “Oh Lord, make the European Union a world superpower…but not yet.”
Excellent essay. This is a very perceptive comment; “ What sustains the EU is not a democratic mandate, but the mainstream media, academia, and think tanks — a blob of organisations that together exert indirect control over what gets discussed and published.”
They used to Jim but now no one listens to them. That is what the EU and the rest of the globalist apparatus is crumbling.
You can witness this by the increasing open discussions about subjects that the liberal elite have previously deemed unacceptable.
They are neither Liberal or an elite . They are an effete affluent bureaucratic oligarchy- EABOs. Much in common with the Roman Catholic Church pre Reformation.
Perhaps more like the irrelevant Byzantine Empire in 12-15 centuries? It wont take centuries however for this empty Euro vase to crack.
So is Mr Trump Martin Luther and Mr Vance Huldrych Zwingli?
Well Trump had taken on many federal agencies who in many ways mirror some of the many position in the church such as those who sold indulgences. People who consume but do not produce.
“They do not toil, neither do they spin”.
Off course Thomas Cromwell did a pretty good job of dismantling the English Monastic Church which had long passed its “sell by date”.
The Spencers did very well out of buying church land.
Not the only ones by any means.
It was the greatest land transference since the Norman Conquest. I estimate about 5 million acres.
it seems so. They speak up my mind and sentiment.
That anti-democratic push was a broader Western phenomenon, which actually started in the Anglosphere. It may have been triggered by a publication from Trilateral Commission called The Crisis of Democracy in which it is posited that the West suffers from “an excess of democracy”. In any case, at the end and after the cold war we see democratic and public institutions being replaced by market fundamentalism and things like new public management. This is the period of think tanks, privatization, unaccountable public-private relationships, offshoring, manegerial bureaucracies, networks of NGOs and of course supra-national organisations such as the EU itself. Incidentally we also saw the suppression of wages and an enormous transfer of wealth during this period – which further weakened the power of the middle class. Generally speaking, I think it is this order that the people are revolting against and the so-called populist parties capture this momentum.
I’m sure Dominic Cummings would agree. It was the undemocratic nature of the EU that motivated the Brexit campaign.
this blob of organisations is what I call THE MATRIX and a strong majority of Europeans are still anchored to it unaware. On my recent trip to France, it struck me how far too many do not use free speech platforms. It is our duty to help them see the light gently but firmly.
“If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you.” Wow, what a quote! The Totalitarianism rightly attributed to the Soviet Communists seems to be growing in Western Europe. (I thought the Europeans knew history.) Power is addictive, and the leaders of the EU seem not to want to relinquish it. Someone wrote in an UnHerd article recently that the lessons of the French Revolution should not be forgotten. I think this admonition can be applied here.
All my life I have heard the US castigated for involvement in foreign wars. Now that we want to pull back from all of that, there is consternation. All these years of providing a security umbrella did not engender gratitude from those helped, rather our beneficence has been taken advantage of.
Isn’t it time for the peoples of Europe to rise up against their overlords? I would welcome it.
Nuts
Amen!
Is there any quote that sums that sneering arrogance more than this line?
‘The BBC described Vance’s speech “extraordinarily poorly judged”. ‘
We’re trying to remove the power-hungry ‘centrists’ in Europe. For example, in France where I live, Marine LePen and her party garnered far more votes in the first round of the presidential elections than the current incumbent. The people of France wanted change. But all they got was more of the same as a result of political maneuvering before the 2nd round.
Keep up the good work.
I’m reminded of a famous quote: “This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.”
God, what an uplifting quote!
In 1915 the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci wrote: “Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity…in the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”
It was an idea embraced mainly in academic circles that eventually leached out across institutions. It would probably never have become dominant in the West had not the globalists saw in it a means of covering up their own desire for power and control over the masses by adopting the “caring sharing” language of socialism.Far easier to get younger generations on board that way.
Supra-national entities have long wanted to see the erasure of nation state identities and confidence in order that globalism succeeded. Mussolini said: “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
The will of the people doesn’t figure in this scenario.
Brilliant.
Socialism/Communism and Fascism are Statist in nature, and so I recoil from them both. I could never give my highest loyalty to the State. Oikophilia, on the other hand, is a love of one’s home(land), and this comes quite naturally to me.
I believe Jefferson noted the need for periodic revolution when government becomes too onerous, and this seems like one of those times, not only here but also in Europe. May they be bloodless.
I write as an American. There is a 1737 family letter from one branch of my family describing the richness of America to their family back in Solingen. 20 years later that family was massacred by the Delaware tribe and the children taken captive. Our men fought the bloody British and the South.
Vance has deep roots also here. Trump, although only a third generation American, is “the running stag, the gull at wing, the pure elixir, the American thing.”
You people of Europe don’t understand us well. We came from Europe centuries ago and think highly of the England of the Magna Carta and Churchill and many other English ways. I now see Europe as emasculated. You care more for your imported muslims than for your historic populations. You are run by skirts in pantsuits. Not a manly man among you. There even seems to be a ruling member of the surrender monkey nation named Hadad.
so, here is what this American thinks of the Ukraine mess. First look at a map of the original 1947 NATO. Russia was told there would be no eastward movement of NATO. Hah, that was a lie. Russia has not been fighting only the tiny area of Ukraine but the entire West writ large and Russia has beaten the West.
Russia is the greatest landmass on the Planet and has untold wealth of mostly untapped resources. They are the last Christian nation. I did not like the USSR which now seems to moved their nasty communism to the West and even jumped the Pond to the democrat party.
We got you out of WWI and WWII and supported your bombed cities when you looked like Gaza. Now you could be successful on your own if you had a chap or two. Man up Europe.
“We got you out of WWI and WWII”
Still with this? What do they teach you in American schools? Not much from what I can tell.
Probably still on with it because, despite being a long time ago, it’s still true.
Without finance and materiel from the USA, the Western Allies in both wars would have been unable to continue to fight, let alone the US manpower in both wars.
The WW1 debt to the USA owed by Britain remains unpaid. I’m not sure if that’s taught in American Schools, but it should certainly be taught in British ones…and European ones.
Wars cost money. Indebted countries with failing economies can’t fight them and shouldn’t assume Uncle Samuel will pay.
If Mr Paul Warburg and chums hadn’t supported us in late 1916 we would have LOST in 1917, which in retrospect may have been a better solution than what actually happened, not only for us but the World in general.
The implication is that they would be happy with the other side winning, and Britain initially went to help an old friend, Poland.
I’m sorry but since when had Poland been an “old friend of ours”?
It had only been recreated in 1919 after more than a century of oblivion.
I think UHR means the United States WON both the Great War and the subsequent WWII, or didn’t ‘they’* teach YOU that?
*’Bog standard’ Comp no doubt?
No question that the British and French suffered far more at the hands of the Kaiser’s aggression. The fact remains that European Parliament would be speaking German today, King George would been deposed, not the Kaiser, the British Empire would have ended, and Britain would still be paying off WWI debt if the U.S. didn’t intervene in that European Civil War. Hitler would never have risen to power and WWII would not have happened — or it would have been Europe snubbing out Stalinism 50 years early. Bizarre coincidence that you’ve replicated the Great War, bleeding the Ukraine and Russia white. Ukrainian lions led by European donkeys, again, 100 years later. Imagine if Woodrow Wilson negotiated an armistice similar to Trump in 1916 before Germany and Russia collapsed, leading to Hitler, Stalin, National Socialism, Soviet Communism, and WWII…
I don’t think that wild conjecture can be considered ‘fact’.
If you think Putin’s squalid dictatorship is “the last Christian nation”, I have news for you. It is not a nation, but an authoritarian empire, filled with ethnic minorities, some Muslim, others not.
You sound like a nice guy, albeit sadly misinformed. Why don’t you take a trip over the Atlantic and see for yourself?
They need to man it up for him first. Maybe by channeling a version of Jesus that’s some cross between Putin and Andrew Tate.
He’s talking about the countries’ elites.
Our current government are Fabians, not Christians, where even silent prayer can be forbidden. Some even prefer Davos. Even our Legacy Media is sympathetic to such an agenda.
And when Britain’s bishops are as dysfunctional as they are, it all seems so inevitable.
Americans don’t travel overseas. Most of them don’t even have passports.
You’re just one self-satisfied man, not the Voice of America. Our own house is not in good order here in the USA, and the fallout of Trump and Musk’s purge and scourge mission remains unknown.
The idea that all or even most Americans share your contempt for Europe writ large and servile defense of Russia is absurd. So is your idea that the whole place just needs a surge of testosterone for some kind of righteous “bro-verhaul”.
What does the “Voice of America” say?
I am rather surprised many Americans know or even care where Europe is.
I suspect ‘you’ represent a minuscule minority.
[Please excuse the long reply]:
Well I’m.gonna be honest about what is probably plain to you (no retaliatory ‘scare quotes’): I’m not deeply knowledgeable about Europe. I have a decent general knowledge of English Lit and some European history, Ancient to Modern. But many of the dates you throw out don’t ring immediate bells for me—perhaps that’s true for many of your fellow Brits, I don’t know. I appreciate your references and lessons, especially when I’m not the one being ‘schooled’.
My point is that no one speaks authoritatively for all Americans. Right now people are calling each others’ views ‘un-American’ left and right. Let me speak for all Americans by saying: We need to stop saying that so freely. There are quite a few different versions of what it means to be an American, though in my view the stronger and more admirable ones don’t tend to demonize political or religious opponents, especially en masse. We have to get back to ’hating each other in peace’ again.
I’d personally like to see the Ukraine War resolved in a way that allows each side to claim victory, however hollow. Looks like they are close to some version of that. Biden and Trump both handle(d) Putin quite foolishly, with Old Joe publicly bragging he told Vlad ‘you have no soul’ (Putin replied ‘we understand each other’) while Trump admires the ex-KGB prez and aspires be him in terms of total authority. The Donald’s admiration for people like Vlad and Xi doesn’t bode well, even from an America First standpoint.
Many Americans can’t even identify France or Europe itself on a map. That won’t get better right away now that we’re a nation largely of vidiots mesmerized by screens or ‘autodidacts’ absorbing a biased stream of opinions through a curated or algorithmically-bent feed. Some people actually read real books and listen to sane, intelligent podcasts etc. but I think this is far from the norm among the self-declared self-educated. They must be teaching the basics in most schools, but except for (let’s say) the top quartile of school quality and involved, educated parents, I don’t think it’s getting through.
As you know. In Britain and the rest of Europe (and Canada) people tend to know far more about the U.S than the other way round. Part of that is our big Yankee luxury to remain ignorant, or declare ourselves exceptional without bothering to learn about ‘exceptions’ or counter-evidence elsewhere, now and in the past.
I wonder whether you think English kids know much history nowadays. And having glimpsed an earlier version of it yourself, as a child I think, are you 100% percent sanguine about the Rightward shift across Europe and in the Americas?
Do you really think Trump has exceptional admiration for Putin and Xi? I think it is more flattery.
I think it’s a bit of both. Exceptional in what sense? Considerable admiration and power envy, yes.
“are you 100% percent sanguine about the Rightward shift across Europe and in the Americas?”
Yes, delighted as plain common sense is finally asserting itself again, after years of vanity/virtue signalling.
After four score years and ten the “dawn of reason” is not hard to spot.
Good to put “dawn of reason” in scare quotes. An hundred-percenter you say. Such absoluteness sounds unreasonably keen. Hard to know where the skeptical aristocrat ends and the rogue provocateur begins with you, sir. If you get Farage, Wilders, Le Pen et al., which you probably will, we’ll see. Stick around for it.
“dawn of reason” is a quote from the late, lamented, Sir John Betjeman.
The pendulum needs to swing back, this present malaise cannot continue indefinitely.
I probably won’t see the end of all this but it won’t be the end of the world I can assure you of that.
In your reading of history: Does the pendulum ever rest near the middle for long?
Only once that I recall, from about 30 BC to about 230 AD.*
*To use Christian chronology.
“I probably won’t see the end of this” – please do try, if only because your remarks give me tremendous amusement and occasional enlightenment.
Thank you.
I shall .do my best!
What is considered Conservative varies from country to country. In France it could be Republican or Royalist and largely RC. In Spain it would be Francoist and/or Roylist but both would be Roman Catholic.
In Britain it could be Scottish aristocratic and RC or in England aristocratic Anglican and Evangelical , urban or rural.
I would say the traditional British Conservative beliefs were freedom of speech, freedom of action,individuality combined with a belief in being able to stand up and fight for one’s freedom; property rights, small government and low taxes, a sense of humour, taking part in local life whether it is hunting, playing cricket, drinking in the pub, running the church fete; of being in local play and a belief in privacy.
A belief in character was was more important than brains . By character I mean common sense, physical and moral courage, robustness ( hunting in all weathers), support for the under dog, belief in fair play, being straight forward and honesty, calling a spade a spade and modesty . A family friend was askd what he did in the RAF ” he replied” I flew a desk” which was true at the end . Prior to that he flew bombers over Germany, was shot down, was tortured by the SS, survived the death marches and after the war was test pilot. He resigned as a Conservative councillor when his council took decisions he considered unethical. He said ” I did not fight the war for this.”
Well put, and I agree with every word.
Adam Tooze’s detailed work, The Deluge (Allen Lane, 2014), provides the detail for your observations about the USA and Britain in World War One.
Vice President Vance’s address in Munich is another attempt to call in the New World to redress the balance of the Old. The EU leaders who were so put out by what he told them have forgotten that the original purpose of creating what became the EU was to prevent another war of the type of 1914-18.
When President Woodrow Wilson visited Britain after the Great War he told his audience that the British must stop thinking of Americans as cousins.
It’s notable how little detail of Vance’s address was reported in that mighty organ of free speech, the BBC.
The Second World War is used in Britain as a morality scripture. The media regularly reports flights of Russian bombers intercepted by RAF fighters as if it were the Battle of Britain, part two, and in full colour. At the same time that parts of UK cities look like Gaza without the bombing.
The quality of UK leaders can be seen in the prime minister’s puff that UK troops would be part of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine. Before giving the Kremlin a casus belli at least we should get Trident working properly. It must be disconcerting to Americans to have these things veer out of control over Nebraska.
As for the bloody British, the War of 1812 has a certain romantic air. Canada may now not be entirely friendly to the US, but at least she can be brought to heel without war.
UHR omitted to mention how we WON the War of 1812 “hands down” but are too polite to brag about it!
I am even in the fortunate position of possessing two small bits of ‘furniture’ apparently looted from the White House on the night of the 24th August 1814 last, when having enjoyed a sumptuous ‘Presidential’ supper, we burnt the place and all the other Public buildings of DC ‘to the ground’.
Happy days indeed!
“They are the last Christian nation” – a neighbor of Russia here. They haven’t been a Christian nation since 1917. Look at their rates of divorces, abortions, STDs, violent crime etc. On top of that, not even 1% of their population regularly goes to church. The Soviet authorities did a pretty good job of diverting people from church and they never came back. You seem to be using some obsolete data, Sir.
The last Christian nation- really ? And it’s not winning it’s stuck in a stalemate having lost almost 1000000 men 10000 battle tanks etc etc. It’s no secret that the Russian economy is absolutely on its knees. Russia is the titanic Ukraine is the iceberg. Russia is also a kleptocracy run by one man who kills his political opponents (maybe you didn’t know that).
A small correction, but given that D Trump’s paternal grandparents were born in Germany, and his mother in the UK, that doesn’t make him a ‘third-generation American’, unless I am missing something.
There is no record of Russia ever being told that NATO would not stretch eastward. Given that NATO was formed essentially to guard against Russian aggression it is entirely logical that when those Eastern European countries were released from Russian serfdom they would try to find some way of making their eastern borders secure; it’s shame that Ukraine’s leaders were Russian satraps and didn’t jump on that bandwagon before they got kicked out (in a popular revolution not a CIA coup) in 2014.
A return to the status quo ante (in terms of the de facto 2015 borders) is not a loss for Ukraine. Ukraine can brag that they saved their nation and its independence. Russia can claim that they liberated the ethnically Russian region of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. This is the only rational solution.
A perfect 18th century Compromise Peace where everyone could claim to be a winner.
Do you mean that Russia can claim to have occupied parts of Ukraine which when they last had a free vote voted to be part of Ukraine and not Russia?
Ukraine is a winner. They fought and won their independence and have given Putin a bloody nose doing it.
It’s a phenomenal result and proves the adage that nobody can gift you your independence.
Trump is appeasing Putin by unilaterally giving up Ukrainian territory. Sound familiar?
“A quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing.”
Spot on, Champagne Socialist.
Ukraine, and Europe, can always reject any agreement and fight on without US help.
However, the final agreement is likely to be less favourable.
At least Chamberlain’s government ensured that the RAF and Royal Navy were equipped for war as far as the fragile economy of the time allowed; modernising the navy, completing the radar net, and producing the latest design of aircraft.
Off you go then. All you need is a pair of Doc Martins and a fur-lined parka. They’ll provide the gun.
What about the coffin? Or will he just get a hole the ground?
The latter, dug himself and only after forking over every article of his state-issued effects, is the world he demands, so why the hell not?
Why should we, as Americans, defend countries that are neither democratic, nor free?
Trump warned Germany, to their very faces, about Nordstrom 2 and that energy dependence on Russia was dangerous. He was met with the usual condescending sneers, and then the Red Army rolled into the Donbas.
By the way, “centrist” Europe looks to many of us stateside to be authoritarian, elitist, and parasitic, spending far too much on butter and next to nothing on guns.
And far too lenient with movements from the hard left and radical Islam.
Ukraine long ago degenerates into a gory stalemate that resembles WWI, but with drones. Much of the billions we’ve sent seems to have vanished, while tens of thousands of young men are dying.
I seem to be the kiss of death to the thumbs up button – just liked your comment and the number reduced to one! Very odd.
Ah they corrected the problem. Good.
However look on the bright side, thousands perhaps millions of young Americans have been making munitions for this tedious conflict. “Every cloud etc etc”.
‘And far too lenient with movements from the hard left and radical Islam’.
True, but the same could have been said about America until this January. And it was on American campuses that many progressive liberal hobby horses first raised their ugly heads. All Europeans ever did was to watch your movies, listen to your pop songs and minutely copy the latest racial obsessions on American campuses. I’m not sure which is worse, to be so pathetic as to ape all America’s dysfunctions or for America to have birthed them in the first place. However, I will grant you that Europe’s decision to spend all their money turning their populations into fat couch potatoes through super-generous welfare and none at all on defense is something we can’t blame America for.
The Marxists have always been strong in Europe post 1945. Marxists in the Sorbonne supported Pol Pot. Sartre wa a Maoist. The Huitards entered resulted in vast numbers ofMarxists entering universities as academics. The various terrorists groups Red Army fFaction , Z2, Action Directe, Red Brigade, etc did not change their politics , they just joined The Green Party and more main stream left wing groups. When Communism was collapsing post 1985 Gorbachev suggested they join the EEC. many Marxists joined the UN.
Look at how many leaders of EU and Europe are Marxists, Barroso, Merkel , etc
The massive expansion of welfare, reduction in defence and mocking of physical courage and patriotism are all aspects of communist subversion.
The early Labour Party was all about self help ( Keir Hardie said Smiles book Self Help was a manual of socialism ) . The British Labour Party is now Trotskyist and believes the state should be all powerful which cannot occur if there are tough skilled patriotic and courageous individuals who will fight to defend freedom. A reason why Britin was able to must an adequate number of figthing men and women was because in 1939 there were arge numbers of tough skilled people, a result of hard manual practical work and sports such as boxing, rugby, cricket, rowing,hockey, lacross, swimming,tennis. One cannot turn a flabby milk sop into a commando in a year but one can if they are are Paddy Mayne or Reg Seekings.
It saddens me when people talk about Europe as if it were a state. It is a continent that includes non-EU members, including both sympathetic independent nations and vehemently opposed ones. The EU is neither a single state nor the entire continent.
Blimey the USA now only defends countries that are democratic and free?!! Well you’ve all changed your tune. South America, Asia, Africa used to be full of dictators backed to the hilt by Uncle Sam! Whatever happened to “he might be a sonofabitch but at least he’s our sonofabitch!” Why the sudden fit of the vapours when Europe bans some tweets? Methinks the USA doth protest too much! What’s the truth behind all this? Where’s the money angle?
Maybe Europe should have tried being their sob? Instead of making alliances and then not meeting their commitments?
The young male Ukrainians slipped away West, leaving the war to be fought by men in their thirties, forties and even fifties.
Fair points, but Trump insisting that Ukraine pay the US huge reparations that will cripple then, for the privilege of loosing some of their most valuable territory, without and guarantee of security, is no better than the playground bully. Raping and pillaging Ukraine while she lies bleeding in the gutter. That is not a US anyone should be proud of.
There are 500 million Europeans governed by 50,000 democratically elected politicians that could avoid that happening but won’t.
I wonder what the most efficient ratio of government agent to population is.
Hard to argue with anything in that brutally honest appraisal. It is also no surprise that the entrenched political and bureaucratic elites are moaning and whining about how Trump is ‘ruining everything’ to deflect from the social and economic misery they themselves have caused.
I would add that a while back Unherd’s Freddie Sayers interviewed economist Louis Gave who opined (correctly in my view) that the West was trying to fight a two-front war: Russia and Climate change. We had to pick one or the other.
Is it too soon to say that Trump is the new Churchill? Or maybe it’s JD Vance.
Probably, but IMO the duo has already made an important contribution. They have reminded us and more importantly western elites of the damage done by false equivalencies. Intellect is not Wisdom. Power is not Leadership. Ideology without consensus is not Democracy but Tyranny.
A strange reading of history. Churchill was the one who said that appeasing fascists is merely feeding the tiger; Trump is very clear that he wants to rule as a dictator (ie a fascist), untrammelled by any law, so very happy to hobnob and appease the likes of Putin and Rocket Man.
It is quite sad that whenever we use the term, honesty, lately, we feel compelled to add brutal, to it. Why is honesty so brutal?
Because in the fantasy land we occupy all truths are hard.
IMO brutal honesty is the truth you get from friends and loved ones. It’s not done merely to hurt but to pass along “news you can use” despite the hurt it may cause.
The EU should be grateful that the US still cares enough to state the truth. The progressive Great Reset experiment has made a few oligarchs very rich, granted immunity from the standards of civilized behaviour for a few more and demeaned and devalued the trusted and tested moral fabric for many.
It’s brutal where delusion is so widespread and entrenched
Or neither. Both could have been avoided.
“do not go to war unless you know how to end it”
Does this guy not realize that Ukraine was not given a choice about this war?
The pro-Russia spin here is incredible and most Unherd readers will just regurgitate the latest idiocies from Trump, Hegseth and Vance rather than actually think for themselves.
Amazing.
The author must be referring to the USA. It began when George W Bush announced that Ukraine should join NATO.
At the same time the author is referring to Russia. Believing their own propaganda that the Ukrainians would not fight, the Russian army was routed when trying to capture Kiev by, apparently, squads armed with anti-tank weapons driving around in Volkswagen camper vans.
The Russian army, persistently called a ‘war machine’ in Western media, cannot recapture the small part of their own Kursk region.
How many wars have the USA started that they have not been able to finish?
Quick question. How do most wars end?
An outright victory. Not likely given the size of the Russian army.
Or a negotiated peace settlement. Which was always the likely outcome. And like all peace settlements there will be compromises. And the forces with the upper hand will get the better of it.
I’m staggered by people and their gung ho attitude to this war. The Ukrainian army would eventually run out of manpower or European weapons (we didn’t appear to have the stockpiles necessary to carry the war on anyway).
And the talk of NATO boots on the ground is insane. That ends in WW3.
Negotiated peace is the only outcome that seems possible at this point. Sad but true. And given the frankly shoddy state of Euro politics I’m not surprised that no Euro leaders will be present. The more heads in the room, the less likely we are to see peace.
The fewer heads in the room, the freer Trump is to sign any piece of paper and call it victory
Any negotiated deal is unlikely to be as good as the Minsk Agreements, 2014, 2015, that were on the table, and Ukraine refused to implement.
Merkel said the delays were to allow the West to rearm Ukraine: so how did that turn out?
Are you going to fight? Or send your kids to die in the mud? No, you’re not, are you?
Since 2021 you neo-cons have given the Ukrainians just enough support to allow them to go on dying in large numbers without achieving anything. Now it’s time to put your own kids and money on the line or else stfu. What are you waiting for?
They courted NATO which is no different in substance than Mexico asking to join a Russian Alliance that can place missile silos in Tijuana. Answer (in both cases), invasion. US would take over Mexico in a day being the only difference.
Funny to think as Vance says that the biggest problem is lack of free speech in Europe and not Russia or China that instead are a model of it. Regarding the democratic process why should we be more concerned about traditional media than a platform like X who can decide what is discussed or not. Or do you think X is a free speach Heaven where you can criticise mr Musk? To win an election does not make you a democrat in Romania or the USA. Also Hitler won the Elections in Germany in 1933. Than he started WWIi with Russia in 1939 dividing Poland among than exactly as Russia would like to do today with Ukraine. Food for thought. Europe has it’s own problems and responsibilities, that is clear but to put it at the same level of Russia or China where you cannot even look up on Wikipedia what happened in Tiennamenn square is simply delusional. Sad times. Sad people.
Vance was not suggesting that Russia or China were “models of free speech”. He clearly stated that the suppression of free speech – and therefore democracy – in Europe would do more damage to them than either Russia or China. Your misrepresentation of these comments is unhelpful to the debate.
Yeah, Wikipedia is the standard we should be aiming for…
I’m guessing that is meant ironically? Just checking.
Sad & strange the Eu saw the U.S. as an eternal rather than temporary shelter.
You are talking about the European political bubble, where failed graduates, in Law, History ‘of any sort’, and Politics, accumulate, and try to relive their heros of the past: Churchill is a favourite.
The European public are as sick of them as much as Vance is, but still some of them prefer their comfort zone.
Well Wolfgang, there are many points to this article assailing my senses, including siding with Vance about suppression of media when Trump/Vance/ etal. are rapidly maneuvering our media sphere into a fascist corral. But I defer to the following article in yesterday’s Guardian and the rapid decent of Trump’s mind, as well as Vance’s, into the emperor state.
HE WHO “.SAVES “ HIS COUNTRY DOES NOT VIOLATE ANY LAWS
Critics rounded on Donald Trump on Sunday for likening himself to Napoleon in a “dictatorial” social media post echoing the French emperor’s assertion that “he who saves his country does not violate any laws”.
The post came at the end of another tumultuous week early in Trump’s second presidency, during which acolytes questioned the legitimacy of judges making a succession of rulings to stall his administration’s aggressive seizure or dismantling of federal institutions and budgets.
His defiance of some of those orders, including one ordering a restoration of funding to bodies such as the National Institutes of Health, has led to several of the president’s opponents declaring a constitutional crisis.
At this moment, it would not surprise me if at the rate of Trump’s assault on the world continues, and I see no let up, the Administration will will in a vary short period declare Martial Law attempting to thwart all resistance to the imminent coup.
Babble as you will, but this man and all those about him are insane, and they believe unrestrainable
Just a quick tip: the fastest way to destroy your credibility is to start describing people as ‘fascists’ and then double down by quoting the Guardian.
Having a friendly Media Outlet isn’t creating a fascist corral, when it is one or two among many. A fascist corral requires total control of the media, something that occurred while the Dems were in the WH.
And please give some description of Trump’s assault on the world, though it would appear to be the case if your world was DC.
Trump wants to remove the obvious corruption within DC, especially the FBI, DoJ, and CIA; ensure the US border is regulated; stop sexualising children, especially in schools; bring at least some manufacturing back to the US, creating well paid jobs and improving national security; And returning the Military to defending the nation.
And I wouldn’t expect the Guardian is happy with that.
“HE WHO SAVES HIS COUNTRY DOES NOT VIOLATE ANY LAWS”
Sounds like a rephrasing of the oft-quoted “The constitution is not a suicide pact”, often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but apparently anticipated (in sense if not verbatim) by Thomas Jefferson, who wrote:
“A strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means.”
“Its centrist governments are running out of ideas in the fight against the Right.”
Listening to voters and taking their concerns seriously as Vance mentioned would help a great deal. Alas, this is beyond our leaders’ powers of imagination or courage.
European censorship: I have recently had comments deleted from the comments section of Austrian daily DerStandard (where I went to discuss with people who don’t think like me without risk of losing friends) which either provided a factual account of things I had seen myself (people with a migrant background behaving badly) without articulating an opinion on what I saw or simply pointing out simple democratic principles (ie in a secular society, church and state(and therefore politics) are separate: therefore I thought the Episcopalian priest who criticised Trump in church was wrong to do so).
None of this was at all controversial and you see far worse written by other users there, including clear abuse. But what I wrote did not suit the desired narrative, which is basically Bluesky-ish.
Vance was right, and many of us know this perfectly well but still end up paying the price for our elites’ arrogance.
I for one will have my eyes trained firmly across the Pond when it comes to finding a touchstone for the ideas of freedom that, as an English woman, I considered my birthright. I can no longer recognise a commitment to it back home, so I guess I’ll plug my cultural jump wires into the American idea instead.
Katherine, your posts make so much sense to me. You have the ability give an overview of an argument and then focus on the detail. Thank you.
Thanks, Jayne! I was struggling to find motivation this morning and that’s really cheered me up.
I second that motion.
Wasn’t it an Episcopalian ‘Priestess’?
Bishopess? Episcopa? Spell check didn’t like either.
Bishopperson?
Flaminica
You might be interested in this:
Organizations Speak Out Against Trump’s Censorship of Data, Journal Publications
Julie Ehlers; Jen Smith | Publish Date February 12, 2025
https://www.clinicaladvisor.com/news/trump-censorship-federal-websites-academic-journals/
Scientific/academic research really isn’t my bag but as far as I can tell this concerns orders to remove certain terms surrounding gender ideology (i.e. “pregnant person”, as quoted in the article).
It’s impossible for me to tell as a non-scientist whether the usage of those terms in the “censored” papers was actually relevant to the substance of them or whether it was a consequence of the political ideology that has prevailed over the last few years – in which case removal and restricting references to biological sex might be appropriate.
It is unfortunately normal for science to be affected by politics (how did terms like “pregnant person” get into scientific papers in the first place??) so waving this article around as an example of how the Trump administration is engaging in some sort of uniquely awful and dangerous censorship isn’t the knockout argument you seem to think it is.
Your post put me in mind of Blonde’s reply to Bassa Selim in Die Entführung aus dem Serail:
Bassa hin, Bassa her! Mädchen sind keine Ware zum Verschenken!
Ich bin eine Engländerin, zur Freiheit geboren; und trotz jedem,
der mich zu etwas zwingen will!
Well put. Orwell warned us of this trend by the Left in his essay ” Prevention of Literature “.
Had either Europe or the US under Biden treated the war in Ukraine as something that had to be won by the West by putting our industry on a War footing so that we outspent and out produced the Russians in armaments we would not face having to see Trump adopt the brutal realism that Ukraine is unable to rollback Russia from Ukrainian territory and peace on unpalatable terms must be sought. Instead Europe has preferred to continue to deindustrialise to “save the planet”, preferred to spend welfare on its own and invading populations, preferred to fight the culture war against rationality and its own population.
Trump is a pragmatist who sees that under these circumstances Ukraine has no realistic chance of rolling back Russia from its territory and that a total collapse of Ukraine or the less likely scenario of the collapse of Russia under the pressures of war is in no-one’s interests.
His peace may be that of Chamberlain’s but a temporary one. The question is what does the EU and UK do next? Prepare for war or just hope that this is Herr Putin’s final demand? Will we cease to deindustrialise and stop spending on the work-shy and incomers? It is hard to see a fundamental change coming.
Strange pragmatism to have conceded whatever Putin wanted before starting ‘negotiations’.
Conceding? I would say that Trump is dangling many carrots. It’s a bit early for Herr Putin to plan his celebration meal!
The collapse of Russia is in everyone’s interests (apart from the Russians, of course).
I tend to think a structural shock and serious reform following that could be a good thing for the Russians as a whole. Russia as is is today isn’t really being run for the benefit of ordinary Russians. Of course, I see no chance of this happening. For context, Germany, Japan and Italy ultimately gained from rebuilding better institutions after WWII. And Argentina after losing the Falklands War.
You don’t want to set the stage for the next invasion.
This all seems a bit hyperbolic, some hasty conclusions in my opinion.
First of all. Russia did not lose on the battlefield. But did they win? On day one they dropped paratroopers in Kyiv hoping the regime would fall. Instead they were pushed back to the Eastern, mostly Russian speaking, provinces.
Russia, however, has a second objective clearly expressed by the (allegedly) influential philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. In his view Russia should push back NATO and push to break the transatlantic world order in general. This would usher in the “multipolar” world. In fact, he hopes that Europe can be pulled into the Russian sphere of influences and away from the Americans.
I think we are a bit distracted by the issue of the day. What we are seeing here is more generally the erosion of Western liberal democracy as it was built after the WW II, and especially an erosion of the post-cold war consensus. To give an example based on an assumption from author:
This is hardly correct. Especially the European exporting core, notably Germany, has not built a military precisely because of that consensus. This can be summarized by this motto of NATO: “Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down“. Preventing Germany from becoming a military superpower again was part of the consensus. It has little to do with welfare programs. In fact, during the neoliberal period a lot of it was cut. Instead exporting EU countries invest their profits back into the dollar dominated market while their own citizens are heavily taxed. Another pillar of the transatlantic deal.
On day one they [Russia] dropped paratroopers in Kyiv, ensuring the military surrounding Kyiv stayed there, and didn’t get moved to Eastern Ukraine, where the fighting was fiercest.
As far as we know the initial invasion plan was based on launching attacks from Belarus and Russia as well as taking major cities in the hope that Ukraine would fall because it was assumed that the current Ukrainian regime was unpopular and fragile.
Russian special forces (Spetsnaz) and airborne units were in Kyiv but suffered heavy causalities pretty much immediately. Just a few special forces does not seem to be a strategy to keep the military busy. The original part of the “special military operation” was indeed to fight in the Eastern provinces against fierce militants. But that conflict had essentially been going on for a long time.
Basic modern military tactic – capture the airport and use that to bring in more substantial forces to take nearby objectives. It was not done to pin Ukrainian forces down – that would be more readily achieved using a simple ground assault. It was an unequivocal failure for Russia.
“and the Germans down“.
No, if that had been the prime motive the US would have implemented the MORGENTHAU PLAN, and Germany as we knew her, would have ceased to exist.
In retrospect did the US perhaps blunder?
That was immediately after the war. The fact that it was even considered shows the sentiment. Of course, different geopolitical realities quickly developed when the Soviets were identified as a serious competitor. So the Marshall plan was used instead. Nevertheless, the militarization of Germany always remained controversial also for the Germans themselves.
Put another way the Cosy/Cold War quite correctly took precedence as the preservation of American jobs was of paramount importance. Something that was rather ignored post 1919.
However had LeMay, Patton, McArthur and chums had their way the USSR would have been bombed back into the Stone Age if not beyond by 1948 at the latest, and China carved up into ‘bite sized pieces’, much to the benefit of humanity it must be said.
Very Hawkish. But okay, how realistic would that have been? I don’t think the American public had a lot of appetite to fight another world war and wide scale nuking would have been a disaster. The fear of communism was also not as significant as after McCarthyism. Actually, after the great depression there was some sympathy. In fact, we now know from published documents that leaders and planners feared that communism would appeal to the working classes as an alternative more and more, especially because the Soviets developed much faster than anticipated. The Marshall plan and the postwar welfare states can, at least in part, be understood from this perspective.
Perhaps, but in the summer of 146 BC* Rome, almost simultaneously, destroyed both the cities of Carthage and Corinth. It had a most salutary effect.
The American public would not have to have fought the war, the USAAF would, and assuming all the nuclear strikes had been ‘airbursts’ the collateral damage would have been quite acceptable.
*To use Christian chronology, but really 607 AUC.
They wouldn’t have had to “fight a war”. They would just have had to “drop some nukes”.
The blunder the US made after WW2 is not nuking the Soviet Union before they developed nukes.
Russia hates Western Europe. Western Europe would do well to hate Russia back.
This article is a good summary of what happened. I believe that the “End of the Transatlantic Alliance” is actually a good thing based on what the alliance was all about, how it worked, and what the results were. It’s not as if European nations and the US are going to never be friends, or work together again in the future, it’s just that the relationship has new boundaries, some new barriers and it’s going to require some growth and maturity from these nations as they will be forced by the reality to stand in their own frames. They now have the opportunity to rediscover their own identities, and values, and focus on the good of their own people within those boundaries.
This will be good for the people living in those nations, because when your government is all about the will of someone outside of your country, and you’ve got to convince everyone within the country to sacrifice for these agendas, or take the right position so that some ideal gets advanced in other places that are not really your nations sphere of responsibility, then that leads to disfunction.
So, in some ways the US is pushing the little baby birds out of their nests to begin to fly on their own. They need to focus on flapping their own wings, not their neighbors wings, or if those wings are rainbow colored, or green energy driven wings, or refugee loving wings, or whatever.
The end result should be better and healthier relationships moving forward. Sort of like when your children leave the home, grow up, and come back as adults, not dependent children.
I think you are referring to the European ‘elites’, mostly failed Arts and Humanities graduates in the political bubble, with grandiose ideas about emulating their heros of yesteryear.
However, there are many in Europe that have realised, for decades, that wealth creation was the secret and that studying STEM subjects, and putting them into practice was the way to prosperity. And that includes the luxury of enjoying the Arts and Humanities which, ironically, will be out of reach because of those in the political bubble, misapplying their ‘skills’ in the past.
And that narrow focus on STEM assists with the commodification of everything under the sun. Including our very attention and opinions. Algorithmic anti-humanism, concerned with Making the World a Better Place as a slogan, with minimal thought of the air, water, soil, or state of society and wellbeing of the younger generation. What’s ruined more children’s lives, gender treatments or tech assisted insanity (hard to separate the two in some sense)?.
Now the Tech Broligarch mentality is far from mainly right wing, but drifting more that way, and decidedly detached and elite, One of their number is the world richest man, a South African with autism, now at the center of power. There ought be a cooperative movement by sane people in the broad middle. Viable third party now!
I agree. Most people think I’m hopelessly naive and optimistic. However, I prefer that to misery and cynicism
We should be giving our national ally the USA our utmost support* in this little matter and NOT prostituting ourselves to the wretched EU.
Under Starmer & Co it seems we will forever drink from the well of national humiliation, why do ‘they’ hate us so?
Finally you “don’t argue with a man who has thirty Legions at his back.”**
*Feeble as it maybe.
** Historian Augusta: Life of Hadrian. II.
The ending of WW2 still dominates our ideas about how wars end – the bad guys are crushed and their leaders put on trial. That isn’t how wars have typically ended. Ukraine was never going to absolutely defeat Russia.
At the same time the Ukrainians has shown that Russia is militarily weak. The Z invasion failed. Their navy is a collection of rustbuckets. Their army badly equipped and corrupt. Their soldiers are badly trained. Prigozhin had to be murdered and Wagner absorbed. They have had to bring in North Korean troops. The brightest young Russians have emigrated to avoid a draft.
A co-ordinated and prepared European defence force could easily resist Russian attempts to rebuild ‘Greater Russia’.
All true. And precisely why the US is turning its military attention to China who have built a modern high tech fighting force.
Hopefully this is what is happening – Europe being told to beef itself up to protect itself from Russia, so the US can redirect it’s military to the Pacific. Trouble is, all this takes time.
It is possible to see the end of a NATO involving the US. But for the moment the US will use European partners in the Ukraine. They might then provide air support to patrol the new border but that may well be their parting shot during the peace.
Another outstanding piece of writing
Great analysis at the tactical level, but I would welcome “saying the quiet part out loud” for a strategic overview. Who is “Europe”? Is it a collection of European oligarchs of all countries that rule via Brussels, and use national parties to blameshift onto the EU for policies they couldn’t pass in national parliaments? Or is it a core set of countries acting this way, against their own voters but also against Eastern & Southern semi- colonial countries ? Which would be the core countries (Eurogroup+UK?)? And by what means do they subjugate non core states- i.e. through local comprador elites, judicial interference plus Eurozone/funding coercion that’s “beyond” EU treaties? Are these core countries’ elites peers of the US elites, or vassals that kiss up and kick down, and are now crying because they too have been kicked and fear being replaces by a new class of “populist elites”?
From the perspective of an American, you lost the people. For example, 80% of Americans support Israel in its battle against Hamas. The EU on the other hand has sent significant aid to Hamas through UNWRA and embraced the ICC ruling against Bibi. The EU has spent years not honoring its pledges to NATO (including Canada), while leaving America holding the bag . European companies still did significant business with Russia. Germany just purchased 40 cargoes of Russian LNG through France. Americans don’t see the EU as allies anymore.
Does anyone know when Germany and other countries started to spend less than 2 % on defence and how much this amounts to ? What are the basic fitness tests for troops and are these tough enough? What are the markmanship tests required for soldiers and are these good enough ?
One does not build warships from balsa wood but oak and teak. How much of the youth of Europe is balsa wood rather than seasoned oak and teak ?
All materials have to undergo rigorus integrity testing to make sure they are fit for purpose.
The late Lt Colonel Peter Walter MC and Bar , ex SAS and Parachute Regiment said ” Any fool can run like a rabbit under fire. A good soldier needs to be able to march long distances with pack and rifle, across all terrains in all weathers and be fit to fight at the end “.
What percentage of the youth of Europe are fit and tough enough to start military training?
0.22% at a guess!
Much truth said in jest.
Colonel Walter was obviously a splendid ‘hard’ soldier (I’ve just read his biography – very interesting) but his ideas of soldiering are now somewhat behind the times. No doubt there will always be room for such physical hardnuts, but what has emerged from the Ukrainian front is a much greater reliance on technology, easily handled by women and those less physically strong. Apart from which mental resilience is always more important than the physical.
So passing selection into the SAS/SBS does not require physical resilience: to to master a vast range of technologies including languages?
The modern day battlefied requires rapid mobility which will mean a lack of sleep. The modern soldier needs brawn and brain.
I don’t think that you read my post properly!
Although you might argue that the fashionable European Elite have been laying down in front of the bus for some time to prevent travel because of ‘climate change’, ‘uncontrolled movement’ or that ‘bus companies need to pay their fair share’.
Excellent analysis on where Europe finds itself and the reality is they will not change, the loss of face is more than they can bare.
So where to for Europe now, defenceless with a dodgy currency there is only one option, turn back to China and Russia and to hell with capitalist America.
Good luck with that Europe, you will keep your institutions but you will impoverish your people.
On the related point of Defense spending (European countries as well as the UK), what does it say about the resiliency of national level budgets, that these are so tight, that a half a percent increase is seemingly near impossible? As in, any system that is running so ‘right on the edge’ that it doesn’t have leeway for changes of at least a few percent is fragile, and clearly heading for disaster sooner or later.
The UK currently spends 5.1% of gdp on state pensions, 2.3% on defence. It’s a question of choices.
My point is slightly different – why does our budget have no slack built in at all? That’s an assumption of permanent ‘happy path’ running, which is a recipe for disaster. If an IT Project PM did that, they would get sacked when the first little kink skewers the project because of increased costs . It seems however it’s fine for the country’s PM to do that. No wonder that for technocrats, they are so dreadful at execution.
… and has pretty much the lowest state pensions in western Europe – could you live off less than £1,000 per month in the UK?
Here’s an interesting source. Looks like the USA spends a higher proportion of its GDP on state pensions – even more interesting.
https://forcespensionsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/HCRL-Pensions-international-comparisons.pdf
I did not read Vance as abandoning Europe or NATO as much as saying we have to drop the cant about democracy and shared values. Europe may still be useful to the US as a buffer between Russia and the Atlantic shoreline, so we have a geostrategic interest in that. But you have abandoned “shared values” AND responsible defense policies, and that, too, is the reality we recognize going forward.
I also observe that nobody voted for the EU, itself. D’Estaing’s European Constitution was defeated in multiple national referenda and then withdrawn, replaced by the nearly identical Lisbon Treaty that did not require popular assent. The EC/EU really abandoned even the pretense of democracy at that time, now almost 20 years ago. What is censorship to someone who does not even pretend to care what his populace thinks?
This could well be what will make the EU itself collapse. The refusal of the Western, wealthier nations to help provide an effective eastern deterrant against Russia. The EU eastern bloc nations didn’t join the EU for any of the reasons western opinion-formers typically tend to believe: they did it because NATO membership was dangled in front of EU membership like a carrot.
That said, for the first time in decades I’m starting to hope that the EU’s own instincts for self-preservation might just kick in before irreversible disaster. The reason I say so is that the EU in its present form is only 25 or so years old: the bloc with its own currency and an obvious convergent path that leads to nationhood as a single entity. NATO is a lot older than that, and it is what kept Western Europe safe during the post-war period from the USSR, which was a far more potent enemy than modern Russia. However, if the USA is not seriously involved in NATO, then Russia is a considerably larger threat to the whole of Europe, not just the former Communist countries in the East. That means, to be quite clear, that the UK has skin in this particular game whether it’s in the EU or not, and whether the EU itself survives or not. This is about the nations and peoples of Europe, not whether the EU’s federal model survives.
If this reality is not concentrating minds even in Brussels, I would be very much surprised. It seems to be doing so in London, with Keir Starmer now talking about British boots on the ground, which is I suspect something that will make him even less popular than he already is. But while the optics on this don’t look good, it’s probably a sign that genuine panic is now taking hold in the political capitals of Europe. If this is because European leaders are finally having to face grown-up decisions at last, that’s a good thing. If it’s because they’re worried about having to fire their propagandist armies in order to keep the USA invested in European defence, that’s not a good thing at all.
We appear to be living through interesting times. Or to put it more bluntly and using an Americanism which I can’t usually abide, shit just got real.
Great article. Short and succinct – and I believe, accurate. A glass of ice water to the face. America has bridled at European-style collectivism for a long time, and last November decisively did something about it. Europe must do the same or America Can Do Nothing For You. Good luck and all best.
Excellent and sobering article. Here in the US, the yellow and blue Ukrainian flags are fewer and those that are still flying are faded and torn.
I want Ukraine to win this war. Early on I was happy with its heroic defense and victory in the Battle of Kiev, recapture of lands in its northeast, clearing out the Russian navy from the Black Sea and attacks on the Kerch Bridge. I was frustrated by the Biden Administration’s cautious management of aid provided. Delays with Patriot missile defense systems, F-16s and Abrams tanks, and restrictions on what munitions could be used where and how, handicapped Ukraine’s effectiveness. As the song goes, “You can’t always get what you want.”
I fully agree with Helen when she states, “Their support for Ukraine was all about principles and promises; there was no strategic planning, no endgame, no agreement on second-best outcomes, no concrete planning for post-war scenarios.” I would add not enough weapons sent or how about – few European volunteers to go fight. If Russia uses North Korean troops, how about letting Ukraine use Polish or British troops?
It’s eighty years since the end of World War 2. We’ve had the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Europe and NATO for nearly as long. If the US can spend 3.4% of its GDP on defense, why can’t the so called “rich” countries of Europe, especially those that can afford large amounts of social welfare and climate spending do the same?
Because they can no longer afford the welfare and climate change “investments” and can even less afford to cut back on them, for fear of being voted out and replaced by more sensible government. Is this a collapse in slow-motion?
“The only censorship I myself have ever experienced was from a well-known German news magazine”
Give them time and I think this will come as something of a shock to the scentific community:
“Oncology
Organizations Speak Out Against Trump’s Censorship of Data, Journal Publications
Julie Ehlers; Jen Smith | Publish Date February 12, 2025
This article was updated on February 11 to reflect new developments.”
Opening paragraph:
“Over the last few weeks, certain terminology, web pages, and data have been removed from federal health websites to comply with orders from President Donald Trump.1-8 This censorship has been extended to include prospective publications in academic journals as well.9-11”
And later:
Censorship Extends to Publication of Scientific PapersHowever, research papers have already been removed from federal websites.7 A paper by Gordon Schiff, MD, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, was recently removed from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Patient Safety Network website. The paper, which concerned suicide, included a sentence listing the following high-risk groups: “male sex, being young, veterans, Indigenous tribes, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ).” Dr Schiff said last week that he knew of 19 other papers and summaries that were removed from the same site.
https://www.clinicaladvisor.com/news/trump-censorship-federal-websites-academic-journals/
.
Best essay I have read on this subject. Vance hit the nail on the head in his speech but our prime minister and European leaders refuse to accept the unpalatable truth. It is up to European leaders to defend their countries. If they are not prepared to do so and accept the sacrifices that will entail and the ensuing unpopularity then they have to take the consequences.
Europe, including the UK, is a tired, sclerotic, self-enfeebling shadow of its former selves. It has denied, and in many cases suppressed, all the ideas and initiatives which gave it vigour, – free speech, personal, familial, and corporate responsibility, the pre-eminence of facts and evidence over feelings, valuing success, – leaving the field open to the most determined, ruthless, and best organised religions – Islam, human rights, ‘my truths’, and identity politics – to feed off the carcass. It has no confidence in itself or self respect, and at the present time deserves none. There is hope, but Starmer isn’t it. Quite the opposite.
“There was nothing like facing facts. They blew in the face hard, like a stiff, exhilarating, decidedly gritty breeze, which brought sanity with it, even though sanity might be unwelcome.” – A Dance to the Music of Time, A. Powell.
There were for years two messages emanating from the US talkathon:
The US is in relative decline, and can’t afford the overseas bonanza.
The US its in charge of European security.
As we all know, the Europeans since the early 1970s opted for “détente”,social programmes, and wound down their armed forces on the belief that a change in mood altered the permanent realities of international relations.
We can thank Vance for what he said. What he didn’t say is that the Europeans can take charge of their own security. He said they should do more. What is being done at home is that the Washington stables are being cleaned, and a hyper-ambitious programme is being launched to propel the US into an even stronger position. In the early 2000s, the EU per capita income was circa 45k dollars, and the US was 48k dollars. Now the EU is circa 48k dollars and the US is 86k dollars-streets ahead of Europe and out of reach of any “great power” which would want to challenge it.
We can thank Vance in particular for revealing what a bunch of fifth raters were have running Europe. I believe that Thatcher was the last leader in the UK, but by 1990 she was exhausted. She had to go. She was replaced by Major, then by Blair ‘n Brown, then by Brron, then by Cameroon, with deputy PM, Clegg! (whom Farage revealed to be an empty chamber), then by T.May!!(who should have done no more than teach geography to the girls school in Maidenhead), now we have Starmer, who was a member of the communist Haldane Society. In France, Macron is talented, but suffers from a French élite delusion that the French view of Europe is applicable. I can vouch for how deep seated that is, having taught at one of the leading schools in the world at Fontainebleau for 40 years. Then, no matter what German politicians babble, the country is militantly pacifist. Poland, by contrast, is ready to fight to the last man, and I believe will go nuclear if the US shows the slightest wobble. Italians don’t want to go to war, same as their forebears.
Paradoxically, the only Europe that can possibly work is a Europe of the Fatherlands-the Europe that the EU blob has done everything to dismantle(with Blair ‘n Brown to the forefront). They have forgotten completely how to think strategically, and believe politics is about sloganeering.
So what to do? For the UK, it is strait forward. There has to be a massive mandate for a through-going clean out of Westminster, Whitehall, the media, the PPE faculties- in general, the goody-goody banalities that tripped off the tongue so easily since the days that Way Jenkins was Home Secretary. He wanted a “civilised society” because he believed with Rousseau that people are good. Well Why, here we are with divorces through the roof, knife crime in London at an all time high, hospitals being invaded by foreign vandals, wokerati running expensive DEI programmes, and talking about such significant issues to the running of the country as trans rights, or debating earnestly about what defines a woman.
Labour has been taken over by the Corbynista communists; the Tory MPs are T. Mayites; The Lib Dums are Cloggites; Reform is the only possible contender, and it has to be tried and tested in the battles that inevitably lie ahead.
Thank you Mr. Münchau. Well observed, as usual.
The reaction of European “leaders” has been absolutely pathetic.
Where I disagree with it seems most posters here – looking to the US for guidance or salvation is just a continuation of Europe’s fecklessness. We have more than enough intellectual resources and political traditions in Europe to deal with our problems ourselves.
JD Vance may have been right about identifying our aberrations, but, “in the spirit of comity”, it bears pointing out that his speech was a prime example of the kettle calling the pot black. Physician, heal thyself.
I have to say the behaviour of European governments seems to echo that of The People’s Front Of Judea. So It looks likely Ukraine will collectively suffer a similar fate to Brian.
In normal times that would be obviously satire, but it looks closer to the truth at the moment.
Good piece.
What has been of considerable concern to me is the extent to which censorship has been aimed at “population ecology” which as a branch of biology is a natural science.
https://www.britannica.com/science/population-ecology
More broadly still, censorship has been aimed at biology in general whether it is understanding humans as animals, sex as a biological binary, race as genetic difference, or the chained causation of genetics and epigenetics.
This active suppression of biology in terms of the political pursuit of humanism including a rights based global order, tabula rasa and the inherency of cooperation, has been masterminded to turn people away from understanding themselves as living biological organisms largely determined by nature in order to create political capital out of anti-biology especially in terms of actively denouncing “natural” expressions arising from competitive genetically determined humanimals.
In other words, it could be argued that Progressivism is a backlash to Darwinism with attempts to co-opt natural selection for political gain with this anti-Darwinism being the very basis of the therapeutic Progressive State.
As such, the Progressive culture war is a full frontal attack on biology in order to create a kind of messianic reverence for culture over and above biology.
I can sort of see the logic of this humanistic approach to human life (which I’d argue has its precedence in New Testament Christianity in terms of trying to evolve the base animal into a saintly human) but what is really being attempted here is the use of memetics to try and overpower and override genetics which simply cannot be done despite system level censorship.
Personally I think this is the wrong approach especially if it involves despotic curbs on free speech and in particular the free exchange of ideas. I think it is wrong because from my point of view, the best way to deal and navigate the human condition is to not deny biology but embrace it in terms of “knowing oneself”.
This means looking within and understanding how our genetics and epigenetics creates conflict in our lives which isn’t because of a malevolent use of free will as portrayed by the Progressive blob but because we don’t really have the necessary free will to control our biology and so are largely governed by biological processes of which we have little control.
However if we do acquire a deep understanding of our biological selves rather than continually divert into our cultural selves, then maybe, just maybe, we can have more enlightened discussions about what is triggering conflicts beyond shallow Progressive soundbites such as racist, far right scumbag.
So whilst the Trump turn towards biology might be traumatic for the cultural ears of the Progressive blob, we are at least going in a more honest direction that better understands our biological selves. Now let’s build on that before we embroil ourselves in WW3.
Probably not the end of the Atlantic alliance. Trump most likely wants to make Europe more openly subservient to American interests so that he can look more like a world emperor. NATO is (and has always been) a US-driven operation, which puts the European states in the position of vassals. Trump and Vance say that quiet part out loud — it’s their specialty — and in so doing rip away the pretense that Europe makes its own military decisions. The Ukraine war has always been a proxy war between the US and Russia and that is why the negotiations will involve only the US and Russia. Zelensky is a puppet and the EU states are passive observers (with some added mischief from the UK). As Victoria Nuland said at the time of the 2014 color revolution, as she was handing out cookies to a crowd of make-believe revolutionaries, “F### the EU!”
JD Vance : “If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you.”
“.. there is nothing America can do for you..”. that should be a chilling statement for everyone hearing it.
That is America saying, ‘You are on your own and we are not partnering you and we are not stepping in and we are not bank-rolling you’.
The BBC and the EU can opine of how ‘badly judged’ Vance / Trump are – BUT they are in charge and with a full house of cards – President, Congress, Senate and Supreme Court – for the next 4 years.
The Ukraine war will be long over by then. Gaza will be sorted this year. The USA will have rid its federal government of many tens of thousands of socialists and DEI grifters. USAid will be a skeleton and under tight political control.
All USA foreign policy will be aligned with Trump for 4 years!
There’s no denying that Trump is throwing Europe under the bus.
A tad hyperbolic perhaps but its wake up time for the complacent technocratic elite of “Europe”-the European economies are in pretty much terminal decline( -Italy now well into its 3rd decade with out any real growth..I mean!) and the social contract is rapidly breaking down throughout Europe with an increasing chasm between what the voters want and the elite with their obsession with open borders,international law and nut zero .I suspect the vast majority of the Munich attendees were probably just expecting a mild rebuke instead of a full broadside.I note that the German Green party are particularly upset –Green Party Chancellor candidate Robert Habeck appeared even more deranged. “What Vance said yesterday is none of his business,” he told ntv and RTL the next day. “You have to be clear about that.”
Thats as may be but don’t complain when the USA says “fair enough” and walks-after decades of financing Nato so the European states could s***k the peace dividend on increased migration,welfare and virtue signalling economic suicide -as well as supporting Ukraine at a level twice that of the combine EU.
Trump did predict US was getting out. Arrogant but impotent Euro pashas deaf?
There is a sensible outcome to ending the conflict in Ukraine. Cut a deal with Russia just as the US is planning and put UN troops in to keep the peace. Otherwise I can see a situation, ( quite plausible) where an Azov Batt surface to air missile shoots down an RAF transport full of British troops and blames it on Russia. Azov have form. Then we have a hot war with Russia. Starmer is clueless.
Yeah, or we could put in a bunch of those fan-driven “men” that “wave their arms” outside businesses to attract the attention of passers-by. They would be as effective as UN troops.
An army of UN rapists is just what Europe needs at this point.
When the Euro was introduced the proportion of British people who wanted to adopt the Euro was higher than the proportion of Germans. None of this mattered to the German elite, who have even greater contempt for their own people than their British equivalents.
Not adopting the Euro was the most sensible thing the British did in the latter half of the 20th century.
Can’t Europe be solved with another meeting in Davos?
I think in much of Europe, politics itself has become a spectator sport. I think too that the left/right labels, so quickly launched to silence or punish, have been hopelessly weaponised.
At this rate some people will soon believe that war is just another social media platform! We have to get real. The old socio-economic right/left debate was fine when EU treasuries were fuller. Now, deeply in debt and with fewer paying tax and for pensions, many countries are being forced to realise that the wriggle room has run out. We are still all overspending and not even getting value for money on welfare, medicine, immigration, justice, and of course government and more.
But it’s no longer a debate about ideologies, we simply don’t have the resources to do this any more. Realism is taking over and forcing us towards difficult priorities and accepting the reality ignored for so long. Pragmatism will for a while at least, displace idealism.
I also do not think Trump is dropping the UK (not sure about the EU). His approach is “shock and awe” in the media. And everyone is scurrying off to dramatic conclusions! Personally, I reckon Trump is playing a longer game than most of us realise… Some of those expecting to gain (or lose) from Mr Trump’s many and diverse “solutions” may yet get a few surprises…
Vance is right about free speech. If you don’t have that, you’re not a free society. How is JD the only guy in the room to notice that?
Good to see all that book banning in the US then! Or did he mean the arrest of Palestinian booksellers in Jerusalem?
Vance is a Catholic, isn’t he? I wonder if he would support my right to free speech if I hung around outside his Church on a Sunday, regaling the parishioners with shouts of “All Priests are paedos!”
Vance and Trumps finger wagging is only an excuse to simply drop out of a war, which the US entered gleefully and pulled the rest of the world into supporting. Now the Ukraine War its draining the US coffers. Trump needs to pay off the national debt so he can give his corporate oligarch sycophants the huge tax break he promised them. Critiques about free speech and other countries immigration policies are out of line on the world stage but the US feels their monetary support pays countries to tow the American line. (Its almost like when someone loans/gives us money and feels qualified to lecture us on our lifestyle.) The UN was created to help solve these disputes but the US refused to capitulate to world courts or UN fees and decisions and adulterated its influence. If there was any intellect at all in the Trump government they would have seen that skillful negotiation, diplomacy and transparency might have helped them find a way out without losing their valuable allies. Who appointed the US as saviours of the world?
What’s the polling situation among European peoples re: support for the EU?
I am a US reader. The US has sought to warn its NATO allies that they need to increase defense spending and capabilities for over 40 years – it has fallen upon deaf ears. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, regardless of their wisdom or lack thereof, fatigued the small proportion of the US population whose sons and daughters serve in our armed forces. To hear the Eurocrats bleating about how much the US must do to protect Ukraine is utterly insufficient without them showing they are equally (or more) committed to the cause. They all calculated that the US would be unwilling to let Ukraine lose, but Biden was unwilling to help them win when he could have done, and the EU and NATO allies did so little. Three weeks into the war, when it became clear that it would not end in a matter of weeks, Europe lost its opportunity to set about real military production, deciding instead to hope for the US to fill the gaps and needs. Hard to imagine Trump was too difficult to understand in his prior presidency or that he was hard to understand in the election season. The real shock of the Vance speech is not its contents, but that it was in any way a surprise. As the Biden administration’s pusillanimous approach became clear, any one of the European governments could have stepped forward to lead. None did. So here is their chance – “we don’t want Putin to win, so we’ll put our sons and daughters in harms way and we’ll spend our treasure to prevent it. That is what will impress Trump and his administration that it is actually important.
All fair points. Russia is the enemy now, and will still be so in 100 years’ time. Europe would do well to rearm with that in mind.
The alliance will be fine when the people finally throw off the EU/Bureaucrats yoke and it might be sooner than you think. It happened in the US when the Fascist”s, er uber left Dems, controlled the Government, the Media, and the universities/colleges. They are now falling like dominoes. You need a leader, a disruptor. Go find one.
While I agree with some of the Ukraine comments, the conspiracy nonsense about free speech undermines the credibility of this article. Every single UK government since the war has promoted, democracy, free speech and the rule of law. The hypocrisy of the jury-convicted Trump who tried to undermine democracy on Jan 6th and his unelected advisors like Musk is outstanding. The fact so many Americans have been brainwashed into believing this guff is very sad.
Careful Andrew, the UH commentariat don’t like those facts!
What facts?
Thank you for this. A well balanced, sober analysis of what ails Europe and the cancerous rot of the Woke and Academia who dominate so called “Think Tanks,” that churn out leftist “Group Think” and utterly wrong, sterile analysis and conclusions. Trump has to be taken seriously but not literally. Wake up Europe!!
To summarise the meaning of “Democracy,” “The people periodically get the opportunity to vote the current authorities out, and replace them with new authorities who will implement new policies.”
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-2-7-democracy-american-and-european-versions
Now we have Trump in his second term, and it would seem that there’s to be a big change of direction, decisively approved by the voters at the ballot box. In other words, this is how Democracy is supposed to work. The single biggest theme of the recent campaign of Democrats and of Kamala Harris was that we had to vote for them to save “Our Democracy.” This is the well worn mistaken “Group Think” rhetoric of the Left.
They and the writers at the big legacy media outlets seem to have meant something completely different when they talked during the campaign about saving “Our Democracy.”
“If things are to remain the same, there has to be changes made around here” Italian proverb.
Would you take someone seriously who said that USAid gave $100m worth of condoms to Gaza, when in fact they gave NOTHING at all related to condoms there!
Well said. Trump and Vance have shown the Europeans up, including our own PM, for what they ae, inflexible eurobigots disconnected from their own people in the worst ‘we know best ‘ way. The Brussels response to Brexit was exactly the same. UK could have parted company on friendly terms but no, the likes of Barnier, Verhofstadt and Tusk couldn’t keep their leprous fingers from our throats. Not forgetting our own Quislings of course.
UK’s problem, a government 75% of the people don’t want who’ve betrayed us on the world stage and impoverished the already struggling. Once dealt with, some sensible conversations will cross the Atlantic again. Hopefully Europe will throw out it’s duplicitous Wormtongues and the world will start to mend.
There is no getting away from the fact that the British electorate gave Starmer a huge majority.
Dreamland is a nice place to live. Why would anyone ever want to leave? But then a look out the window shows the dark shape of what’s coming.
Vance is the kind of American character Europeans habitually underestimate
More correctly he is the kind of American Europeans habitually ignore because what they say is inconvenient for the Europeans. After all, America is required to do what Europe wants, even when Europe wants America to ignore its own Constitution by say, arresting Elon Musk for freely speaking to an American politician during an American political campaign.
i was born and raised in germany and i always get a good laugh when people talk about “our allies ” or how respected the US is around the world , of course most of the folks uddering those statements probably never been to europe or never rubbed noses with “common folks ” over there !
Ask yourself just how many european countries would come to our help if the US was attacked ? the answer is NONE !
Just look back at WW2 , the german army was taking one country after the other , the glorious french army surrendered fairly quickly , great britain resisted mostly because bein a island offered some form of protection but they got beat badly at dunkirk. Russia was the only country that managed to give germany hell but at the end of the day without the US europe today would be part of the reich !
The US supplied goods to russia and great britain that kept them afloat , after the US joining the war it was US forces and equipment that helped win the war .
Yet there was little gratitude from the nations we helped , the french hated the US from day one , germans called the US soldiers occupiers and well we know how things went with russia
Cards on the table I’m not a right winger. I agree that cancelling election results because the outcome is not to your liking is absurdly dangerous. The left has certainly got itself into a pickle with cultural issues. But it seems the centrists have been in control for a long time. Centrism seems logical on the surface. Compromise and technocracy seem perfectly sustainable and non-ideological. Until they aren’t anymore. And dogmatic ideologies have caused many many problems. But the right should beware, be careful what you wish for. The political spectrum is a horseshoe and the further left or right you go the closer the extremes become to each other. How democratic are the right wing parties really? How much do they really care about free speech? Are they really any less elitist than the status quo? It amazes me how confident both tribes are of their own agendas.
Not a right winger? What are you doing here then?
Thank you. Well said. One tiny thing is that I think it may be fair to describe most of the European leaders as more PMS Wing (Progressivist-Marxist-Socialist) than centrist. Much of what the PMS Wing does in the US and elsewhere is unconstitutional in one way or another.
If Europe disintegrates politically, it will affect US security in one way or another.
Vance made reasonable points about speech though they are somewhat undermined by his own boss denying the result of a democratic election in 2020.
The US also needs to be careful about promoting Europe to lessen its dependence – while financially beneficial to the US, if Europe *did* find its feet (obviously seemingly unlikely just now) it might challenge US primacy esp if it increased its nuclear capabilities.
Trump dislikes the EU because it’s a powerful trading bloc.
If recent developments do not convince Europe to drastically increase its nuclear capabilities, nothing will.
One of the greatest mysteries of our time is what EU leaders talk about when they are together
My Father was horrified when the Cold war ended. I asked why? He replied “It divided the world into The West, democracy and freedom or dictatorship and communism. It simple, just chose sides. Now historical conflicts will once again arise based on race, religion, languages, minerals, etc . It will be far more complicated.”. My father spent 5.5 years in combat in WW2 on the convoys, 42, years at sea and was at Calcutta in 1947, Biafra in late 1960s and Ethiopia in early 1970s during famine. He witnessed how brutal, cruel and blood thirsty humans can be and what it takes to win a war.
The end of communism in 1990 also resulted in the retirement of those who had seen combat in WW2 and those who had fought in post colonial conflicts such as Palestine, Malaya, Cyprus, Borneo, Aden. It also meant the end of leaders who had performed National Service. In Britain our leaders, whether politicians, civil servants, lawyers, academics, journalists, bishops are effete affluent naïve suburban clerks who believe they are intellectually and morally superior to others. If any of our leaders had witnessed the Biafra War, Bangladesh war of Independence, Ethiopian famine, Yugoslavia, the slaughter of Arab by Arab in Iraq they would not be naive.
The conflicts such as Yugoslavia, Jihadism, Arab slaughter of Arab in Iraq, Russian invasion Ukraine occur because nasty people have seen the weakness of our leaders.
The Trump administration is trying to occupy the plinth of honour? Trump lost the popular vote in 2016, so though fewer people voted for him than Clinton, he became president through an arbitrary technicality.
Trump defecated on the USA democratic process in 2020, tried to rig the election, providing no proof of material levels of fraud (particularly in comparison to previous elections) that otherwise would have lead to him winning. He threw Rafensburger under the bus, and if Pence had succumbed to Trump’s crazed coercing the country would have been plunged into a civil war.
Trump, after all that disrespect shown towards ‘the American Way’, was allowed to run again – and subsequently elected
This sort of behaviour is entirely consistent with that of a banana republic.
Echoing old, incorrect stories doesn’t make you look smarter.
Congratulations and cheers to Mr. Munchau especially because in spite of being a German (a troubled nation) and a believer in the Utopia of EU, he can still discern the truth.
VP Vance spoke truth to the collected Emperors of Europe. He pointed out they are naked. At least in the fable the Emperor had a sense of shame.
Vance is right… Two days ago the French “Conseil d’Etat” (State Council – a supposedly independent authority) implemented the closing down of 2 TV channels for allegedly failing to comply with the rules set out by ARCOM (the – again supposedly independent -media regulation body).
Two days prior, the State-owned and tax-payer funded France 5 ran a feature on the theme of “Is Hamas still dangerous?”. Obviously not, judging by recent events and certainly not an issue for ARCOM…
Brilliant
“Ukraine has lost” – Just an opinion – an uniformed one that takes no account of the parlous state of the Russian economy and struggling war machine. Britain had “lost the war” in 1942 – at least according to Lord Haw-Haw. There are such things as “darkest hours” – and Ukraine’s were in the first 2 weeks of the war. Russia’s intention was and is to obliterate Ukraine once and for all – there can be no surrender to that, and Europe needs to grow a pair right now and replace America as the leader of the free world, since Trump just threw that mantle in the garbage bin