The White House Misreads U.S. Interests in Europe

The 2025 White House National Security Strategy, released last week, includes a long and controversial passage on Europe. It might have helped if someone in the Trump administration actually understood what “Europe” is these days and how it works.

The document set off a wave of outrage because the administration warned that Europe faces “civilizational erasure” that would make it not worth the trouble for America to defend. Particular concerns are the waves of migration reshaping Europe’s demographics and intrusive governance at odds with prosperity and political freedoms.

The strategy takes particular aim at the European Union, which the administration numbers among the “transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty” on the Continent. The document envisions a greater role for American meddling in Europe’s domestic politics, particularly to support insurgent parties challenging the EU.

If all of this were true, the White House would be right to adapt America’s national strategy. But most of it isn’t. Europe faces many and varied political, cultural and economic ailments, several of them severe. But the administration—and America’s neoisolationist “national conservatives” in general—are glaringly wrong on three major points.

First, Europeans appear to be much less bothered by a loss of national sovereignty than Americans assume. Majorities of the citizens in the EU’s largest member countries have a positive opinion of the EU, the Pew Research Center found in a poll conducted this spring. In Germany and the Netherlands the figure is at least 70%. Given the choice in a referendum, voters would prefer to stay in the EU, according to a You-Gov survey in nine countries this autumn. This includes culturally rightleaning Poland.

Of particular note, 70% of people in countries that are part of the euro currency believe membership in that bloc is good for them, even though the euro entails a greater loss of national economic sovereignty than membership in the EU itself.

This is why successful insurgent parties of the right typically end up abandoning their anti-EU antagonism to expand their electoral reach. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s insurgent-right National Rally, has all but dropped any suggestion that France should leave the euro or the EU. Some U.S. conservatives go gaga for Hungarian President Viktor Orbán when he feuds with Brussels over sovereignty, but he has never proposed exiting the bloc as the U.K. did.

Americans and others who argue for breaking up or “abolishing” the EU—as Elon Musk has amid a recent regulatory feud with Brussels—

The Continent practices values that are different from America’s. Yet it is still worth defending.

merely make themselves look out of touch. “Dismantle the EU” isn’t a viable element of any U.S. policy toward Europe.

Second, the potential friends the Trump administration has lined up on “cultural” or “sovereignty” issues aren’t the best ones to make. They aren’t friends of America on the issues that matter, and palling around with them drives off allies who support the U.S. in meaningful ways.

The clearest example comes from Germany. Vice President JD Vance and Mr. Musk waded into German domestic politics ahead of February’s election, throwing their support behind the insurgent-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD. They appear to have been suckered by the AfD’s antiestablishment tilt and its hostility to the EU, ignoring well-documented concerns about Nazi sympathies among some of its leaders.

Yet the parts of AfD’s agenda that Messrs. Vance and Musk like either are unlikely ever to happen (Germany leaving the EU) or can be achieved by mainstream parties (tighter immigration controls and abandonment of ruinous green-energy policies). What chiefly distinguishes AfD in German politics—beyond the Nazi allegations—is that it is one of the more anti-American, pro-Russian parties. The ultimate winner of that election, center-right Friedrich Merz, is the most pro-American chancellor Germany has had in years—and Mr. Vance managed to goad Mr. Merz into declaring German “independence” from Washington.

Third, Europe’s values aren’t our values. Despite common origins, we hold a fundamentally different understanding of the proper relationships between individual, society and state—one reason we split from a European empire when we did. We’ve developed very different traditions on matters such as free speech, religious liberty and economic management. One can believe, as I do, that the American model is superior for fostering prosperity and human flourishing. But any realistic and credible U.S. foreign policy has to acknowledge that Europeans will disagree.

The U.K. experience since Brexit tells the tale. Even in the only country ever to leave the EU, voters have refused to abandon EU rules and regulations. Nearly a decade after the referendum, Britain continues to impose most of the laws it inherited from the EU because every attempt to pare them back has proved politically unworkable. Despite major controversies over speech rights, Britons are likely to accept—and desire —a speech-regulation regime that’s more restrictive than America’s.

U.S. conservatives might look at the foregoing and think it’s further proof that Europe isn’t worth saving. But Europe’s differences from us doesn’t diminish America’s national interest in peace and security on the Continent. A better strategy would focus on how we can work with our allies, not on fomenting domestic revolutions most of their citizens don’t want.

POLITICAL ECONOMICS

By Joseph C. Sternberg