US President Donald Trump’s new strategic orientations have brought to the surface concerns that Europe has felt for at least a decade but has not processed before.
For at least a decade, Europe has sensed that the future of the defence architecture it has enjoyed since the late 1940s is looking far from certain. America’s pivot to Asia during the presidency of Barack Obama was the capstone of efforts over the past two decades by various institutions within and without the US government to entrench political, military, economic, and financial power in different parts of Asia.
Of course, the US has had a major presence in Asia since the end of World War II, but the efforts made over the past two decades were the result of assessments that serious challenges to US hegemony in the foreseeable future would come from Asia.
Opportunities have also underpinned the ways in which US power circles, whether in government or the private sector, see Asia. Asia, primarily but not only China, presents challenges, but also seems to offer many opportunities for well-capitalised, sophisticated, and patient actors that are willing to sow seeds and wait for them to yield in the future.
As a result, the US pivot towards Asia was anchored not only in mitigating risks but also in seeking new fortunes.
Feelings also matter. America, which remains a relatively youthful country in terms of demographics, and one where capitalism’s animal spirits are easily stirred and arguably have never been tamed, is increasingly drawn towards Asia, a vibrant continent witnessing the most transformative social changes in the world and towards which the centre of gravity of many industries has been moving for at least a decade.
By comparison, in the eyes of many in the US, Europe has for many years seemed to be growing more content with the status quo and arguably anxious at the prospect of animal spirits invading its quiet milieu.
As a result, Europe has occupied a vague place in American strategic assessments. In one view, Europe has hardly featured at all, since quite often American thinking is anchored on classic great powers dynamics in which hard power, the ability to compel others and steer developments, rules supreme. Those who lack the means of imposing their interests are not considered great powers and so do not command prominent places in assessments concerning the future.
In another view, Europe features as a pillar of the Western alliance, a cornerstone of American geopolitical positioning and of the world that America has played the most significant role in shaping over the past seven decades. However, that alliance, in the assessment of the most influential American institutions, is decisively led by the United States. American leadership has meant that America has shouldered the ultimate responsibility for the defence of the entire Western alliance, and with that have come major burdens, as well as unrivalled prerogatives. The inherent understanding, at least within these American institutions, has been that there is a hierarchy inside the alliance.
President Trump’s nascent geopolitical positioning has confirmed the pivot towards Asia, underscored the great powers dynamic, emphasised the implied hierarchy, and diluted the responsibilities that America assumed in previous decades, expecting Europe to rapidly shoulder major economic and financial obligations in the Western alliance’s defence architecture. It exudes a highly assertive expression of capitalistic animal spirits.
Some observers in Europe have focused on Trump’s rhetoric, which has not only been a major departure from the subtle and nuanced messaging typically employed in international diplomacy, and especially in intra-Western relations, but has also come as a shock. However, this rhetoric is the least of Europe’s concerns now, since Trump’s geopolitics have overhauled the foundations upon which European defence has rested for seven decades.
Underscoring European concerns is the clear realisation that such changes do not stem from the ideas of one man or from a powerful group within the US Republican Party alone. Instead, Trump is blatantly expressing and enforcing trends that have been brewing in American strategic thinking for years.
Today, Europe faces questions it has not confronted in many decades. The primary question concerns the future of its defence architecture and how that relates to the future of the Western alliance’s defence in general. However, behind thinking about defence and geopolitics, there lurk tough questions about the meaning of the European project, realistic scenarios for its future, serious strategic objectives for Europe as a political collective, and the resources Europe as a whole can muster towards meeting them, together with the collective will to do so.
The next article in this series will attempt to delineate these questions.
* The writer is the author of Islamism: A History of Political Islam (2017) and Egypt on the Brink (2010).
* A version of this article appears in print in the 27 March, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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