Cecilia Fabiano/LaPresse via AP
People protest during a pro-Europe rally in Rome’s central Piazza del Popolo, March 15, 2025.
PARIS – Fifty years ago this week, Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies. In clumsily attempting to declare a new official holiday, “Victory Day,” President Trump got his history wrong, forgetting that World War II continued until Japan surrendered on September 2.
The German surrender of May 7, 1945, began an 80-year period in which the United States was the global hegemonic power with Europe as junior partner. Trump has now brought that partnership to an abrupt end.
At its best, the Atlantic Alliance was the centerpiece of a rules-based global system that prized democracy and the rule of law. At its worst, the system was a vehicle for American overreach that sometimes gave priority to corporate interests at the expense of democracy.
It would be an exaggeration to say that Trump’s hostility to Europe is a blessing in disguise. But now Europe will have to figure out how to stand on its own, at least until sanity returns to the United States and maybe even after that. After close to a century of dependence, that may not be such a bad thing.
Over the past 80 years, the United States first rode to Europe’s rescue by leading the war against Hitler, and then by supporting postwar European reconstruction. The U.S. sponsored the Bretton Woods system, which aimed to create political and economic space for Europe’s formerly occupied nations not only to return to democracy but to opt for something like the American New Deal. It worked spectacularly.
Nothing like this happened after World War I, when the prevailing norms favored creditors and austerity, and the U.S. retreated to isolationism. Europe never had a postwar recovery, and Germany turned to Hitler.
After WWII, the U.S. was a big booster of what later became the European Union, both to contain Germany within a larger European democratic whole and to stimulate recovery. With Stalin’s designs on Central and Western Europe after 1948, the U.S. was also the prime sponsor of NATO. On balance, the U.S. was a benign hegemon.
By the 1960s, Western Europe was enjoying unprecedented prosperity, and (with the exception of Gen. de Gaulle) was mostly content to cede political and military leadership to the U.S. This continued even after 1989, when the Soviet bloc collapsed and the Common Market became more of a true political union via the EU.
Now, Europe will be the prime surviving democratic region, until America is able to defeat Trumpism.
Europe might have claimed more autonomy, but the prevailing narrative held that the U.S. was the sole surviving superpower. Washington’s grand design loomed even larger. And in contrast to the postwar era, that design was neoliberal. On both sides of the Atlantic, with different particulars, the economy stopped delivering broad prosperity, which in turn created a far-right backlash.
Europe has plenty of problems, but the remnants of social democratic Europe persist. Basic public services work. Health care is universal. Higher education is still free in most of the continent. Europe is serious about addressing the climate crisis. Europe still has a robust sector of small farmers, and markets with local produce are not a fringe curiosity as in much of the U.S., but the way most Europeans buy a lot of their food.
Trade unions are accepted social partners in much of Europe. The EU requires large corporations to have works councils to represent worker interests.
To the extent that Europe has been “Americanized,” it is a less attractive and less just society. The New York Times recently carried a story about the housing shortage in Madrid. Skyrocketing costs for tenants have been worsened by the purchases of about 100,000 units by U.S.-based private equity companies.
Private equity is an American invention. These firms are not interested in building more housing, but in taking advantage of scarcity to gouge rents. No, thank you.
IN TRUMP’S FIRST TERM, he put pressure on Europe to pay a larger share of the costs of its own defense, but otherwise left the EU alone. Now, however, Trump is in the process of demolishing the core institution of the postwar system, the Atlantic Alliance.
Europe is indeed substantially increasing its defense spending, but as much as a defense against Trump as a defense against Putin. And Europe is resisting Trump’s game of trying to divide the continent by cutting separate nation-by-nation trade deals. Trade policy in Europe is the responsibility of the EU.
Europe has its far-right parties, but in the major democracies they have not come to national power, and basic democracy is intact. In the U.S., the far right governs.
During World War II, democracy survived in the U.S., while the continent was under Nazi occupation. Now, Europe will be the prime surviving democratic region, until America is able to defeat Trumpism.
In the context of world history, 80 years is a long time for a stable international system. The record is probably the Concert of Europe, in which the great powers came together in 1815 after the defeat of Napoleon. That system lasted not quite a century, until World War I.
Now, Europe once again must look to its own affairs and interests. That is far from easy, with 27 member nations making up the EU. But the common menace of Trump will be a tonic.
If and when the U.S. purges itself of Trump, we will have to earn our way back to a new partnership with the European democracies. They may well think twice before taking us back.
