The End of the West as We Know It: The Transatlantic Alliance in Crisis
Hamburg, Germany – Over a decade ago, at the height of the NSA scandal that exposed the United States’ espionage on its allies, German Chancellor Angela Merkel uttered a now-famous sentence: "Spying among friends — that’s just not done."
However, Merkel’s statement was based on a nostalgic misconception that painted a picture of a bygone era where the United States and its European allies were true friends. In that idealized world, memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the shared admiration for American icons, and the camaraderie between Merkel and President Barack Obama symbolized an unbreakable bond.
But beneath the surface, the transatlantic relationship was already fraying. Even during Obama’s administration, his intelligence agencies eavesdropped on Merkel. The alliance, in reality, was primarily based on shared interests and institutionalized through organizations like NATO, not on genuine friendship.
This week, the end of the West as we know it became a stark reality. The transatlantic relationship has undergone another painful shift. Europe and the United States are no longer allies in the true sense of the word. What was once a strong alliance has become a loose partnership, one that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. Right now, it mostly doesn’t.
At the Munich Security Conference, European leaders grappled with this harsh realization. An alliance is more than just a pragmatic arrangement; it requires shared values. It used to mean standing together against the Soviet Union, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and defending NATO members under attack.
But those shared values have eroded since Donald Trump’s return to the White House. One of his first acts was to threaten Greenland’s NATO ally Denmark with military force if they refused to sell the island. He suggested Canada should become the 51st U.S. state. And he bluntly told the Baltic states that they could not rely on American protection in case of a Russian invasion.
This is the language of imperialism, a power-hungry rhetoric that suggests that might makes right. Ironically, NATO may soon need to invoke a new form of collective defense: protection against an aggressor from within its own ranks.
At the Munich Security Conference, Trump’s Vice President, JD Vance, delivered a remarkably candid speech. According to Vance, the greatest threat to democracy does not come from Russia, China, Iran, or Islamist terrorists, but from within – specifically, from Europe’s supposed restrictions on free speech and disregard for the will of the people.
This statement is a twisted irony coming from a representative of a country that has a long history of undermining leftist movements in Southern Europe, overthrowing and assassinating leaders in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, and supporting dictators and torturers.
Furthermore, Vance’s refusal to acknowledge Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory undermines his claims about the importance of free speech and the will of the people.
Vance even likened Europe’s current state to that of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. For younger readers, the Soviet Union was America’s sworn enemy for decades, until Washington forced Moscow to its knees and won the battle of ideologies. Now, from Washington’s perspective, every European capital looks like Moscow once did.
However, it would be a mistake to read too much into Vance’s words. Hyperventilating politicians rarely offer valuable insights. His open support for Germany’s far-right AfD party and his meeting with its leader, Alice Weidel, are no more extreme than the tacit endorsements many European politicians have made for Kamala Harris. Moreover, Vance holds little real power in Washington, and the same goes for Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who also attended Munich and struggled to answer substantive questions.
The real significance of Vance’s speech was not in its details but in its bluntness: The "shared values" that he referenced at the beginning of his remarks are largely nonexistent, at least for now. Donald Trump, Vance’s boss, struts like an emperor, redrawing the world map to his fancy, claiming Greenland, renaming the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America." In the president’s imperial worldview, there are only provinces and vassal states, no allies and certainly no friends.
Difficult days lie ahead for Europe. Vance’s speech could be a prologue to an impending battle over regulations on global tech giants like Meta, Amazon, and X, corporations that have rapidly gained Trump’s favor after publicly bending the knee to his demands and have long complained about European restrictions. A trade war could soon begin.
That will be the moment when Europe must prove its resolve. It could consider forming strategic agreements with China or revisiting the United States’ unchecked access to military bases in Germany, from which it directs drone operations in the Middle East and military missions in Africa.
In a world increasingly shaped by the rule of the strongest rather than the rule of law, the issue is not about anti-Americanism but about Europe’s own survival.
Europe and the United States are going their separate ways. Maybe not forever, maybe not everywhere, but at key junctures like this, their paths are diverging. It doesn’t have to be a final farewell, but for now, it’s time to say: Goodbye, America.
Europe’s hard days are yet to come. Vance’s speech could be read as a prologue to an impending battle over regulations on global tech giants like Meta, Amazon, and X — corporations that have rapidly gained Trump’s favor after bending the knee very publicly, and that have long complained about European restrictions. Soon, the first round of a trade war will begin.
That will be the moment when Europe must prove whether it can play hardball. Consider, for example, coldly calculated agreements with China, or revisiting whether the U.S. should retain unchecked access to the Rhein-Main or the Stuttgart military bases in Germany, from which it directs drone operations in the Middle East and military missions in Africa.
In a world increasingly shaped not by the rule of law but by who’s the strongest, the issue is not about anti-Americanism: it’s about Europe’s own survival.
Europe and the U.S. are going their separate ways.
Maybe not forever, maybe not everywhere — but at key junctures like this, their paths are diverging. It doesn’t have to be a final farewell. But for now, it’s time to say: Goodbye, America.
