The week the US shook Europe’s world

18 comments

1. Can someone post the article please ? 🙂

2. **The Munich Security Conference, held from February 14 to 16, saw a fracturing of the transatlantic relationship. European leaders will hold an emergency meeting at the Elysée Palace on Monday.**

   Shaken, worried and sometimes outraged, the hundreds of representatives of Europe’s diplomatic and military elite who gathered at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend left the snow-covered Bavarian capital on Sunday, February 16, with the impression that they had lived through three days that had shaken the world. Or at least their world, that of an ironclad transatlantic relationship, a pillar of the international system since WWII, which suddenly appears deeply fractured. The Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, tried to sum up this feeling with a nod to Lenin, to whom he attributed this phrase: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

   To say that history between Europe and the United States has accelerated over the past week would be an understatement. On Monday, February 10, in an atmosphere that had already been electric since President [Donald Trump’s inauguration](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/videos/video/2025/01/21/trump-s-inauguration-watch-the-ceremony-s-highlights_6737247_108.html) on January 20, Vice President JD Vance, invited to Paris, [lectured the European Union](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/02/12/at-the-paris-summit-the-us-charge-against-ai-censorship_6738046_19.html) on its “over-regulation” of artificial intelligence. On Wednesday, February 12, Washington fired its first salvo with the announcement of a most cordial telephone conversation between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin with the aim of putting an end to the war Putin is waging against Ukraine. The American leader then called his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to inform him of this.

   Unsettled, the European defense ministers left Brussels for Munich. The worst was yet to come. On Friday, Vance delivered a virulent diatribe on the way Europe manages its democracy and stifles freedom. “A fascist, anti-European speech,” said one of the diplomats present. Without providing the slightest answer to the audience’s main question, namely how the Trump administration intends to make peace in Ukraine, the vice president refused to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, preferring instead to meet the candidate of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Alice Weidel, as the country’s in the middle of an election campaign. An unprecedented interference tinged with provocation: clearly, [ideological war has been declared](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/02/15/in-munich-jd-vance-declares-ideological-war-on-europe_6738189_4.html). “They want to kill us and divide Europe,” said German Christian Democrat MP Norbert Röttgen, a long-time Atlanticist.

   **Read the full article here:** [**https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/02/17/the-week-the-us-shook-europe-s-world_6738249_4.html**](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/02/17/the-week-the-us-shook-europe-s-world_6738249_4.html)

3. Eu is the proverbial frog in boiling water. Sad to watch from afar

4. Europe should offer all US citizens with graduate degrees a fast track to immigration. Accelerate the brain drain.

5. I think it is a slightly missleading take that he “shook Europes world”.

   What he did is equally surprising, if not more, to the previous political establishment in USA.

   Basically what JD Vance did was to break one of the most crucial taboos making the trans-Atlantic alliance working. Do not meddle in others *internal politics*.

   USA and Europe is much more culturally diverse than people imagine, and cant really understand eachother when it comes to national policy. People have this picture of “west” as something.

   USA is extremely shaped by a very specific part of European thinking, John Locke, Adam Smith, JS Mill, both in how its constitution and political institutions is shaped, and how they reason around values.

   Since this is ofcourse European aswell, it is easy to think that “its west”, but what about everything else in Europe? Platos and Rosseaus idealism, Socrates and Descartes scepticism towards any form of certainty, Hobbes “realism”, Hegels dualism, Marx class conciousness, and perhaps most of all, Immanuel Kants epistemology *and* ethics. Note that the whole concept of something like “universal principles” in regards to how you ought to act is completly absent in USA. As long as you follow the law, anything else is just a bonus. Compared to Europe, the idea that there is a collective responsibility towards people who dont do well, or in regards to using bikes for the environment is almost completely absent.

   This is when this divide was exposed in daylight, and therefore marks the end of the translantic Alliance, even though it might happen gradually depending on Trumps mood.

6. Just learn from it. America is no longer to be trusted on the world’s stage. The faster everyone decouples from their wares, view, and control the better. EU will emerge stronger.

7. [European leaders were warned for decades](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jun/07/uselections2000.usa)

   [time and time again](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna63881)

   [by the United States to make their militaries more powerful](https://www.politico.eu/article/report-joe-biden-should-push-eu-to-become-a-global-military-power-nato-defense/)

   Europe had decades to prepare for this moment. We’ve been trying to pivot to the pacific since the late 90s / early 00s. At some point America can’t keep asking nicely, at some point America has to realize Europe isn’t a serious partner and can’t be helped.

8. What are the chances of a full scale Russian invasion on Poland? With everything that’s happened last week I feel like a lot has changed in regards to that…

9. Everybody bitched about Vance’s speech but not a single person attempted to debunk it with arguments. Didn’t the elections in Romania get canceled cleary because the “bad guy” won the first round? Isn’t it true that Christian citizens are being prosecuted be the modern day European Gestapo? Isn’t it true that unelected commissars are ruling Europe? Stop being so hypocritical.

10. > Modern USA: Europe should protect itself!

    > Europe: Have the biggest war since WW2 because USA taken away nukes from European country, allowed to authoritarian country scot free violate (with help of WMD-proliferating authoritarian countries) almost all International Law because “WMD countries cannot lose!”

11. We had it coming. 

    Europe forgot that if you want to be listened to you have to count something. 

    No strong military and energic foreign policy = no seat at the table

    No technological break through on AI = You dont get to say its used.

    Unfortunately I could go on forever. We are becomimg irrelevant on the world stage and sadly we deserve it.

12. US is making quick work blowing up all of its most reliable alliances and partnerships. Canada, EU were first on this list. Australia, Japan and Korea next week probably. China must be loving this.

13. an honest accounting of the situation will acknowledge that Europe’s importance to America has changed since the Cold War. Europe is no longer an industrial heartland critical to America’s economy, Nor is it a consumer base that America and its businesses rely upon. The Russians no longer represent America’s primary adversary, and the Europeans do not fully participate in NATO usually missing their 2% minimum.  The broad perception of Americans leading up to the war in Ukraine was that Germany acted as Russia’s primary advocate to the west.  In essence, Europe could not be trusted to look after itself, even as America’s focus shifted towards the pacific. Europe continued to act as a free rider— while the conditions for American tolerance of it dwindled.  This change brought about by the Trump administration would have come regardless, but has been accelerated by Trump’s isolationism. 

14. Europe can’t carry their weight and we are all here laughing at them. Enough of the US carrying your sorry rears. Toughen up!

15. So it’s offside in Europe to publicly comment on the internal affairs of another state, but there is a belief that the US will provide ironclad total protection for all European NATO states if they declare an Article 5?

16. Go watch the 60 minutes segment from yesterday with the Germans about free speech. JD was absolutely correct in lecturing them about their abandonment of a core democratic pillar.

17. Perspective from Canada here.
    We are totally traumatized by the last month events. Multiple threats of annexation, economic war, tarifications everywhere, accusation of weakness in fentanyl crimes (which is possible, but not at this quantity).
    We painted ourselves in a corner, we can’t do anything, but wait and freakout. Long term solutions exist, but short term, nothing.
    But, the injury is done. The relation is broken, and, honestly, except from weak politics and politicians (which is really a possibility), nothing will come back as before.
    We leave in a strange world as a Canadian perspective…

18. I guess our leaders are like “Please take this seriously” otherwise there’s no way they’d word it like this in our news. It looks weak.

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