Peak America: No matter who wins Tuesday, Europe has already lost

So long, America! It’s been real.

As U.S. voters choose a new president, Europeans are anxiously waiting to see if the victor will be Donald Trump — a nightmare for many — or Kamala Harris, who’s seen as much better for the transatlantic relationship.

Here’s a tip from a lifelong Euro-American: Worry less about the U.S. presidency and more about how Europe can hack it alone on a dangerous global stage. The uncomfortable truth is that American interest in Europe has been dwindling for the past 30 years. And neither candidate is likely to bring back the transatlantic heyday of the early 1990s.

That’s not to say this election won’t affect Europe. One candidate is an admirer of Vladimir Putin who wants to impose 100 percent tariffs on European goods and vows to end the Ukraine war the day after his election. His reported threats to pull Washington should be taken seriously because, this time around, Trump probably wouldn’t be surrounded by “Deep State” restrainers. Harris, by contrast, pledges continuity in the U.S. global leadership role and has a Europhile adviser, Phil Gordon, in whom Europe places high hopes.

But if you take a step back, the bigger picture is this: Europe just isn’t as important to Washington as it once was. Aging and shrinking, allergic to power politics, fractious and risk-averse, Europe increasingly elicits not fondness in many Americans but sneering disdain — a place good for holidays and not much more (see this characteristic tweet from a San Francisco influencer). It doesn’t help that the performance gap between the American and European economies is widening inexorably, to America’s advantage.

Transatlantic boosters will point out, fairly, that the U.S.-EU relationship has been good under President Joe Biden. His support for Ukraine (including a $20 billion loan announced last week) has been steadfast, even if it falls short of hawkish hopes. His administration, via national security adviser Jake Sullivan, has woven a tight relationship with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “Because of the Ukraine war I think the US is more passionately engaged with Europe than it has been in 70 years,” wrote Whit Stillman, an American film director who’s spent much of his career in Europe. 

But (here it comes), Biden is bound to be America’s last Cold War president. In his wake, le déluge — or more accurately a crop of policymakers who don’t feel Russia poses a core threat to U.S. interests, or have a vastly shrunken sense of Washington’s role in the world. Even Biden, when push came to shove, let Washington’s prioritization of the Indo-Pacific area shine through. Remember the AUKUS debacle, when the U.S. snatched a major submarine-building contract out from under France’s nose? French President Emmanuel Macron was furious. Washington’s muffled reply was reminiscent of the famous Don Draper line: “I don’t think of you at all.”

Behind the scenes, the French are typically clear-eyed about how Europe is seen by Washington. “It’s not hostility,” quipped one diplomat. “It’s indifference. Sometimes that’s worse.”

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To get a sense of how much things have already changed, it’s useful (or masochistic) to look back on the days when the golden standard of Pax Americana was at its highest and proudest position in the European sky — or the day when “Peak America” was reached.

The date was June 6, 1994. America’s allies had come together in northern France to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D-Day. A youthful, saxophone-playing president, Bill Clinton, was the star of the show. The U.S. had won the Cold War and now ranged across the western Eurasian landmass, militarily unopposed but still fielding more than 120,000 troops. A few years earlier, Washington had issued the call and — presto — 40 nations, including several European ones, joined Operation Desert Storm. On the diplomacy front, giants still roamed: Richard Holbrooke towered over Berlin from the U.S. Embassy.

Culturally speaking, it was also a different era. The Dream Team, featuring NBA stars Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and Larry Bird, had leaped and dribbled their way, effortlessly, into a gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. EuroDisney — a sort of American colony, smack on the outskirts of Paris — had just opened, imposing Mickey-mania on a groaning French public. American media outlets, from the swashbuckling Herald Tribune to the Wall Street Journal Europe, were still big, brassy presences in European life, richly staffed and highly regarded.

Compare and contrast with the state of affairs today. The U.S. has withdrawn or downsized its European footprint in just about every department except one — the digital sphere, where U.S. tech companies like Facebook and X reign more or less supreme on our screens, but bring no glamor. Troop levels are way below 100,000, despite the hot war on NATO’s doorstep. 

U.S. diplomats on the continent are, with the exceptions of David Pressman in Hungary or Bridget Brink in Ukraine, timid creatures who walk softly and carry no stick. The Herald Tribune is long gone, rolled back up into the body of its parent, The New York Times, while the Wall Street Journal has retreated back to its moorings in Lower Manhattan. Of the buzzy, digital-first media outlets that have popped up in recent years (POLITICO, Semafor, Axios), only POLITICO has put down roots in continental Europe. Even the tech giants are having second thoughts. Having developed next-generation artificial intelligence tools for consumers, they’ve largely decided against rolling them out for European users. The risk of falling afoul Europe’s AI Act is too great. Or maybe they just can’t be bothered.

For Jérémie Gallon, a Frenchman who worked in Washington and authored a biography of Henry Kissinger, the waning of U.S. interest in Europe isn’t a bad thing, per se. But it is, in his view, an incontrovertible fact linked to a turnover in Washington’s foreign policy elite. “There was an entire generation of senior officials who had organic links to Europe, either because their parents emigrated, or because they were refugees from Europe. Kissinger, [former national security adviser Zbigniew] Brzezinski, [former Secretary of State Madeleine] Albright. They were all European on some level,” said Gallon.

The formal shift away from Europe started under former President Barack Obama, who drove the Pivot to Asia agenda, said Gallon. But Obama merely pushed along a process already in motion, which may well now accelerate. “Now we have a new generation rising which reflects American demographics,” he said. “They [U.S. government officials or diplomats] are either linked to the Spanish-speaking world, or they look toward Asia. Those with links to Europe are simply less present.”

The downgrading of Europe in the psyche of American elites is reflected in educational and career choices. Mastering Mandarin shows more ambition for an aspiring diplomat than, say, French or even Russian. Studying Europe as a geopolitical entity, by contrast, is a niche pursuit. Gallon took note: “At Harvard, the South Asian studies building is big, bright and modern, clearly a prestigious department. The Center for European Studies is just what you would imagine: small, kind of decrepit.”

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The big irony of America’s yawn away from Europe is that it’s hard to pinpoint one specific reason why it’s happening. Per Ben Hodges, who once commanded America’s armies in Europe, the cost to America of fielding as many as 450,000 troops on the continent at the peak of the Cold War has been easily borne for the past 70 years, and delivers benefits for the United States that are far out of proportion with the investment. “It was always mystifying to me that people didn’t see what a huge advantage we have with our leadership inside NATO and our relationship with European countries,” he said in a Zoom call. The idea that America is somehow unable to be present both in Europe and the Indo-Pacific is “surprisingly uninformed,” he added.

What’s more, even now, the economic relationship between the U.S. and the European Union is bigger than it’s ever been in history. Volumes in transatlantic trade of goods and services are huge, and going up year after year.

Some Europeans have taken it on themselves to remind Washington of these facts. In a five-page paper delivered to European foreign ministers in July, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski urged his counterparts to speak up about the relationship’s mutual benefits, and dispel negative perceptions about the transatlantic relationship that have taken hold mainly on the Republican side.

But this is a lonely quest, and one that doesn’t seem to have much truck with MAGA isolationists. For Trump, who sees NATO as a burden, or his running mate JD Vance, who equates deterrence of Russia with “warmongering,” America’s overseas presence seems like an annoyance, a distraction from domestic priorities like deporting migrants or keeping prices low. 

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As the clock ticks down to Nov. 5, Europeans are grappling with the prospect of further U.S. disengagement. If Harris wins, the thinking goes, the White House will keep backing Ukraine but ultimately steer Kyiv toward a deal with Russia in the not-too-distant future. Investment in NATO would remain consistent, though the underlying trend would be further prioritization of the Indo-Pacific over Europe.

If Trump wins, there is a growing sense that all bets are off. Some believe his administration would behave rationally, or at least rationally by his standards, and not flip the table on NATO, and that he’d pursue a deal on the Ukraine war that would allow both sides to claim victory (for example, by giving more weapons to Kyiv and threatening to lift all restrictions on their use, in exchange for Putin ending offensive operations and getting territory). 

But not everyone is so sure. “We want to believe Trump will be rational but nobody can be sure,” said a senior EU diplomat granted anonymity to talk frankly about U.S. politics. “The adults in the room aren’t likely to come back.” 

Caught off guard in 2016, EU officials now say they are getting ready for anything Trump could throw at them. Diplomats and trade officials promise they are ready to hit back “fast and hard” if Trump tries to start a trade war with the EU.  Yet this sort of trade tit-for-tat is, arguably, the easy part when it comes to envisioning Europe’s long-term relationship with the United States. Far more challenging is planning for a future in which the U.S. will be significantly and permanently less engaged in protecting Europe. 

On this front, France plays the role of Europe’s Cassandra, warning that the bloc needs to get its act together on defense no matter who is elected president. “We cannot leave the security of Europe in the hands of voters in Wisconsin every four years,” French Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad said on LCI television last week. “Let’s get out of collective denial. Europeans must take their destiny into their own hands, regardless of who is elected U.S. president.”

The tune has been taken up by the European Commission in Brussels, which wants Europe to be more independent on tech, defense and raw materials. But the truth is that when it comes to envisioning a future with less America, the bloc is deeply divided. As enthusiastic as the proponents of European “strategic autonomy” may be, there is no momentum behind the creation of a European army or a European nuclear umbrella. 

Some countries — namely the Nordics and some Central and Eastern nations — see the push from Paris as a ploy to bolster France’s companies. They regard proposals for a stronger Europe with unified strategic and military goals as a Trojan horse that would only deliver submission to the larger states, i.e. France and Germany. For others, Putin’s Russia is simply an existential threat. Losing America’s protective umbrella is simply unimaginable. It would expose them to the brunt of Russia’s nuclear and conventional arsenal, with no credible counterweight. 

Some believe these attitudes would have to change in the event of a Trump victory. But the alternative is just as likely — that faced with further U.S. disengagement, EU countries will retreat into an “every nation for itself” mentality, regarding one another with greater suspicion and seeking an edge via deals with other superpowers, namely Russia and China. 

“Without the United States, Europe is lost,” wrote French analyst Nicolas Tenzer last year. Far more dangerous is the risk that Europe won’t acknowledge that it’s already lost, and that it remains motionless and paralyzed as a result.