The Resurrection of Europe

The Trump administration is finally rejecting a decades-long mutual European-American slip away from the cultural foundations that made our lands so great. But it is not enough for us to simply complain about this drift and reject Europe wholesale as part of this program. Instead, this mission should be a cause to reform and resurrect the transatlantic relationship, because the alternative of turning away from Europe in favor of the Middle East or Asia is far more uncertain and unappealing. Berlin and Paris are increasingly hostile to the traditions of the West, but thought leaders and policymakers should be wary of finding any more hospitality in Singapore or Abu Dhabi.

Instead, American leadership must work to restore Europe as a pillar of Western civilization. Revival does not mean modernization; it means reawakening the institutions that forged the West’s cultural capital. America must help Europe remember.

The Abandonment Policy

In a recent State Department Substack post, Samuel Samson cast President Trump’s foreign policy in light of the decay and chaos undeniably present on the European continent. Samson rightly expounds on the degradation of the West’s foundation via mass migration, the oppression of free speech, and the collapse of religious freedom. This is a righteous and welcome change from a bipartisan foreign policy consensus that has sought to march with Europe towards illusory progress without consideration for the American interest in recent decades.

But one must wonder, however, if the nation is confusing a justified realignment of foreign policy priorities and resources with a fool’s errand to find another epicenter of commerce and cooperation to serve as America’s premier partner. Samson ends his essay with a demand that Western civilization retain its original focus on virtue and human flourishing, perhaps with a veiled threat to the European continent rightfully seen as the vanguard of the revolution against this vision for humanity.

Samson leaves an “or else,” unsaid, but therein lies the crux of the issue: if America cannot find an alliance based on shared heritage and values in Europe, where else should our resources, people, and organizational bandwidth go? If, as Samson so righteously explains, Europe is succumbing to anti-Western ideologies, then there is still a real question as to the best mechanism to reclaim Europe as an ancestral homeland for the American people instead of lurching towards a “shift” to more foreign lands like security relationships in the Pacific, or economic efforts in the Middle East.

We are not even asking this question. Washington foreign policy officials increasingly prioritize the Indo-Pacific and the evolving Arab world, with gleeful anticipation of moving on from Europe in the process. Over the past decade, they have dismissed Europe as a post-historical continent—a museum of soft power and technocratic drift.

These views are by and large shared by prominent voices within the America First movement. Elbridge Colby has rightly argued for a concentrated re-allocation of defense resources to the Pacific theater, warning against the overextension of American hard power. His assessment of China as the primary pacing threat to U.S. national security reflects the reality of the current defense landscape. Simultaneously, voices like Steve Witkoff have suggested that the Middle East—particularly in its post-Abraham Accords, (hopefully) post-American military intervention phase—could evolve into a more vital economic partner than Europe. These arguments deserve serious attention. Both reflect the need for strategic prioritization and a reevaluation of America’s legacy alliances. This is not meant to reconsider or discount this policy orientation.

But the view of both the mainstream and the America First movement fails to recognize the core truth: Europe remains America’s most critical cultural, economic, and strategic partner. America must assert influence over Europe’s future, not walk away from it. In a world where America rightly seeks the isolation of China’s economic and security spheres of influence, America cannot ignore Europe.

Prioritization does not require abandonment. The pivot to Asia need not come at the expense of decisive leverage in Europe. Nor does the rise of Gulf financial capital require America to loosen its grip on the continent that undergirds its cultural and industrial heritage. A mature foreign policy recognizes the necessity of hierarchy: not all partnerships are equal, but some are foundational, so foundational that the chaos of the modern age should not dampen our commitment. Europe is one of these foundational partnerships.

The Chinese Communist Party actively deepens its presence in Europe because it understands Europe’s role in global power dynamics. In 2023, China became the EU’s largest source of imports, surpassing the United States ¹. Hungary alone received over €7 billion in Chinese investment, most notably from Huawei and CATL, entrenching Chinese control over key infrastructure ²³.

Europe is the crux of China’s expansionist mindset, and thus the cause for a pause in any American effort to withdraw from the continent. Beijing cannot construct a durable global alternative to U.S. power through Africa or Latin America. Africa lacks scalable consumer markets and infrastructure. Latin America remains fragmented and unstable. Europe, however, offers both wealth and legitimacy. America can shut that door. Washington must deny Beijing its last viable beachhead in the Western world, even if that requires wading through the migratory and cultural morass of Europe in 2025.

Realigning Europe

Europe has a choice to make, but so does America. The Atlantic alliance cannot survive as a nostalgia project. Instead, it must deliver tangible benefits to both sides. This requires that Europe must be made to stop triangulating between China and America—particularly when key NATO members like Hungary host Chinese defense and technology investment while seeking increased cooperation with American institutions ⁴. Hungary has emerged as the most aggressive European recipient of Chinese funding, and yet its leadership also courts American conservatives. While Prime Minister Viktor Orbán appeals rhetorically to conservatives abroad, he hands strategic assets to the CCP; it is worth it to ask him to align economic and ideological partnerships with America.

The United States cannot permit these contradictions to endure unchecked. Economic partnership with China should impose a cost for dual loyalty. Washington should demand alignment and eliminate ambiguity, imposing painful consequences on its European partners if necessary.

America has critical leverage in this realignment. American companies still lead the world in advanced technology. As of 2024, they hold more than 60% of global AI patents ⁵, produce over 50% of high-end semiconductors ⁶, and control approximately 70% of global cloud infrastructure ⁷. Europe depends on U.S.-made F-35s, HIMARS rocket systems, Patriot missile batteries, and American-led air defense architecture. The United States supplies 41% of NATO’s total defense procurement ⁸. Europe cannot field its own deterrent force without American logistics, platforms, or industrial support.

Washington should use this leverage, not apologize for it. It must condition trade, defense access, and intelligence cooperation on strategic alignment. It must formalize dependencies to crowd out Chinese alternatives. European governments must choose: American leadership or foreign compromise.

The American military presence in Europe represents another strategic asset that Washington can wield far more assertively. The United States maintains more than 100,000 military personnel across the continent, with major bases in Germany (Ramstein, Grafenwöhr), Italy (Aviano, Vicenza), and rotational deployments across Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states ⁹. These installations do not exist solely to protect Europe; they exist to anchor American power.

European states have failed to meet basic security obligations. Only 11 out of 31 NATO countries meet the 2% GDP defense spending threshold ¹⁰. Germany, despite announcing its Zeitenwende in 2022, has failed to convert funding promises into deployed capability. The Bundeswehr’s ammunition shortfall, fighter pilot shortages, and spare parts deficits persist. France’s security policy remains divided between African retrenchment and Indo-Pacific forays. Brussels talks of “strategic autonomy” but lacks the lift, munitions, or intelligence backbone to act without U.S. command.

America must treat forward presence as a tool of enforcement. It should threaten to shift logistics eastward, relocate strategic platforms to Poland, or reduce support to noncompliant partners. NATO must become transactional. American troops should never serve as passive insurance for allies who refuse to meet minimal thresholds.

Revitalizing the Nation-State

Along the process of this negotiation, the United States should not embrace the supranational bureaucracy of the European Union. Instead, it should affirm the enduring strength of Europe’s nation-states—civilizational units that share ancestry, faith, legal tradition, and cultural kinship with the American experiment. European nations remember who they are, even if the EU bureaucracy does not. They are our natural ally, not Brussels.

This requires that American become involved in the pivotal matter of European borders.

Migration remains the central fault line of European sovereignty. In 2023, the EU registered over 1.14 million asylum claims, with Frontex recording 380,000 illegal border crossings ¹¹¹². These numbers surpass even the peak years of the 2015 migrant wave. The consequences have been violent and destabilizing: terrorist attacks, welfare overload, and the rise of parallel societies.

Despite institutional denial, many governments have begun to reverse course. The United Kingdom launched its Rwanda deportation program and withdrew from several human rights treaties. France passed sweeping reforms tying legal residency to work and cultural assimilation. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni authorized naval blockades and expedited deportation mechanisms.

America must amplify these reforms. Just as the Global War on Terror enabled transatlantic coordination on intelligence and counterterrorism, the new frontier demands a migration security doctrine. Washington should condition trade agreements and military funding on Europe’s ability to police its borders. The United States should help allies build detention centers, deportation pipelines, and anti-smuggling task forces. NGOs that enable human trafficking should receive the same scrutiny as extremist groups.

Civilization begins at the border. That is as true in Texas as it is in Tuscany.

Don’t Give Up The Ship

There are some who will frame America’s choice as one between reindustrializing the homeland and projecting influence abroad. The United States can do both—precisely because influence, particularly in Europe, sustains domestic economic renewal. U.S. military and technological dominance in Europe directly supports the innovation base that revitalizes American manufacturing, logistics, and high-tech employment.

The debate should not be about whether we “return home” or “stay abroad.” The goal should be to impose American economic models in allied nations and scale a secure transatlantic sphere. Therein lies a crucial reason President Trump’s chastisement of the US-EU economic relationship is so important; the EU is dependent on our security guarantee, and we should acknowledge the reality of such leverage to remake the Europe into the partner it rightly should be.

The moment is now. The election of Pope Leo XIV in 2024 marked a turning point. His commitment to tradition, doctrine, and order exposes Europe’s exhaustion with rootless cosmopolitanism. The West has begun to stir. American strategists should view this moment not as a threat, but as an opportunity.

America roots its legal system, religious tradition, and political philosophy in European soil. Christianity, common law, classical virtue, and natural rights—all emerged from the European civilizational core. The American founding extended and refined those traditions. Europe represents not a foreign outpost but the ancestral wellspring of American identity. It should not be so easily abandoned.

But more than this, the case for Europe does not rest on nostalgia. It rests on cold strategy. Without Europe, America loses the only region with the moral, industrial, and geographic capital to anchor a global order. Without American leadership, Europe defaults to bureaucratic stagnation or foreign penetration.

If the United States retreats, China and others will replace it. If America leads—with conditionality, cultural confidence, and political will—Europe will follow. Not because it is weak, but because it remembers.

Washington should not aim to reform Europe. It must resurrect it.