America & Europe in the Age of Trump

506 words

Diplomacy means dealing with foreign governments actually in power, not with the shadow governments of opposition parties we might prefer to see in power. So the Trump administration’s ability to cultivate relations with European populist parties will be limited unless and until those parties can break through to electoral success. Still, Vice President Vance has given us a good illustration of what can be accomplished even now. His calling out of the hypocrisy of Europe’s unworthy leaders to their faces at the Munich Security Conference was a glorious thing to behold, matched only by the miserable boilerplate with which the embarrassed dignitaries soon responded. Vance followed up this success with a well-deserved swipe at Kier Starmer’s efforts to obtain American cooperation in enforcing British censorship laws. If I were in a position to advise him, I could say little besides “give us more where that came from.” I hope he enjoys real influence within the second Trump administration, something that does not inevitably occur with Vice Presidents. I would also like to see this administration extend a hand to those European governments which already appear ahead of the curve, especially Orbán’s Hungary and to a lesser extent Giorgia Meloni’s Italy.

Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Accords seems to me correct, and I am not worried overmuch about the recent kerfuffle on tariffs. Trump’s purpose in raising certain tariffs seems to have been primarily to usher in negotiations, and he was successful in that respect. I would not like to see permanently high tariff barriers between America and her European cousins, but neither do I expect this to happen. Accusations that Trump represents a threat to European peace strike me as almost too absurd to deserve a response. He should be congratulated for having made clear to Ukraine’s ruler, whose electoral mandate expired over a year ago, that no further support for Ukrainian war aims could be expected from the United States. It is widely asserted that Trump’s actions have led to a decline in trust and cooperation between America and Europe, meaning Europe’s ruling class. If so, that is all to the good. That ruling class may not be with us much longer, and we should be more concerned about our relations with the ruling class of the future.

I want the historians of the future to see the most important aspect of today’s American-European relations not in the realm of official state diplomacy but in private contacts between the insurgent elites of both continents. If we nationalists ever hope to rule, we had better start learning to think like responsible rulers now. The international relations of the decades to come may depend on private contacts between patriotic citizens now occurring in venues like this one or the recent remigration conference in Milan. A long experience of defeat and marginalization must not fool us into thinking we are impotent hobbyists. Our enemies are scared, and this is the best proof of the importance and efficacy of what we are doing.