Maximum polarization has begun, and no state, no city, will be able to resist it
These days, Washington is sending the European Union a message so clear that it is hard to imagine how anyone in Brussels can still ignore it. Roughly translated, it sounds like this: “We don’t need you the way we used to; you are expensive, problematic, and replaceable.”
Trump’s new National Security Strategy, openly hostile toward the current European course, and Elon Musk’s simultaneous media performance calling for the “dissolution of the EU” are part of the same story. While messages of distancing are coming from the U.S., in Europe’s capitals the mantra is still repeated that America is the “greatest” and “most important” ally – even when the American side is increasingly loudly stating that it no longer wants that alliance, at least not in its old form.
Of course, we have seen all of this many times before. When more than a decade ago Edward Snowden released classified documents of U.S. intelligence agencies, it turned out that EU leaders were directly under surveillance. It was revealed, among other things, that the most spied-on country in Europe was Germany, including the private phone of then-influential Chancellor Angela Merkel. And what was her first comment after the discovery of this major, tectonic scandal? Roughly the same as what today’s leaders are saying – Merkel stated that despite everything, the U.S. was still “the most important ally.” So it turns out that whatever happens, however much America “steps on” Europe, the current (decades-long) ruling class will simply bow its head and accept everything, even with a smile.
Trump’s new National Security Strategy is particularly significant because it is not just an offhand remark but an official document defining how Washington views the world. In it, Europe is no longer a natural partner in the “defense of democracy,” but a continent openly warned that it faces a “civilizational erasure” if it continues on its present course. The document adopts right-wing rhetoric about “demographic replacement” and suggests that some NATO members may soon no longer be considered “European” countries in the classical sense. The message is sharp, and today’s EU, with its migration and social policies, is viewed as a strategic problem, not a resource.
Even more importantly, the strategy practically breaks with the postwar logic of U.S. policy toward Europe. Instead of encouraging integration and shaping a different yet close Europe, fragmentation is now preferred — one might even say “Balkanization” — and cooperation with forces that support national barriers and the weakening of Brussels. In doing so, Washington not only signals that the EU as a project interests it less and less, but also that it is ready to rely on the far right as an instrument of pressure. For Europe this means that the “special relationship” is no longer something to be taken for granted. It is conditioned, redefined, and, if necessary, replaced by something entirely different.
If the EU were a strong project, this would be a call for mobilization of all true Europeans in defense of the established order. Unfortunately, the EU has so deeply disappointed its own citizens — including those who truly believed in it — that this will now be extremely difficult. The American game is perfidious, cruel, imperialistic, but — and this is deeply troubling for our entire continent — they have a “fifth column” everywhere they turn. In every country, in every city…
Musk’s personal mini-crisis with Brussels fits into the same frame. The €120 million fine against X for violating EU transparency rules would, under normal circumstances, be a typical clash between a tech giant and regulation. But Musk responds with a political bomb: “The EU should be dismantled.” Under the guise of fighting bureaucracy, he is actually clearly expressing what many in the American political class think (and perhaps many on this side of the Atlantic as well!) — that the EU is above all a barrier to American power, whether through regulation of digital giants or through trade rules.
Interestingly, part of the American establishment immediately sided with Musk, not because they care about freedom of speech, but because they see the fine as an example of “European undermining of American interests.” Senior officials accuse Europe of simultaneously demanding American military protection via NATO while, as the EU, pursuing a policy “often opposed to U.S. interests,” from digital rules to trade. In other words, Europe is accused in Washington of both begging and blackmailing. When it wears the NATO hat, it speaks of an unbreakable alliance; when it wears the EU hat, it “hits American companies” and pushes its own interests and regulations.
Of course, there is truth, half-truth, and deception there. Regarding the many EU regulations, they may be the only quality we still have. These regulations often protect us — at least partially — from aggressive American capitalism, which cares about nothing except, of course, capital. It is no secret, for example, that American business hates EU food quality regulations. They prevent the continent from being flooded with “junk” that even their own public, accustomed to many things, would protest against.
From that perspective, both Trump and his people are “solving the problem”: either you follow the American line in everything — as the EU and as NATO — or we will reconsider why we defend you at all. Along those lines is the demand that Europe quickly take over most of the conventional defense within NATO — from infrastructure to missile systems — and significantly increase military spending. Naturally, with the implicit assumption that a good portion of this new weaponry will be bought from the American military-industrial complex. “Burden sharing,” as they call it, in practice means: pay more, arm yourselves more, but stay within the political framework we set.
In this vicious game, the faceless European leadership both accepts and squirms, depending on what is imposed. Instead of absolutely rejecting militarism with all its might — every mention of war in Europe — it hysterically accepts it, “pumping up” new arsenals and its own population for war (with Russia). The Americans, of course, enjoy watching. They will dismantle and break apart the continent in such a way that we become a giant springboard for yet another “American century.”
On the European side, the response is always the opposite of what one would expect from political elites claiming to defend “European values.” Instead of a sharp political or intellectual response to a document describing Europe as a continent on the verge of disappearance, we get statements like that of Kaja Kallas, claiming that America remains “the greatest ally” and that we “must stay together” despite “harsh criticism.” Moreover, Kallas even accepts part of the criticism, saying that “in some things they are right” and that Europe needs to be more “strengthened.” This sounds reasonable until one notices the basic contradiction — how can Europe strengthen itself while remaining in a position of constant subordination?
This passivity is not just psychological or rhetorical. The EU is objectively “dependent” on the U.S., especially in military-security terms — and will remain so as long as it continues a catastrophic policy that creates the very possibility of military conflicts on the continent.
Years of cutting the welfare state, deindustrialization, and reliance on expensive and insecure energy sources — including American LNG — have left member states without real instruments for autonomous policy. The war in Ukraine exposed this dependence even further. European armies rely on American logistics, intelligence, ammunition, and even political protection. In such a constellation, European leaders cannot even imagine saying “no” to Washington, even when Washington openly states that it does not want to be Europe’s umbrella without serious profit.
The result is a humiliating scene: Washington pushes Europe toward the status of a second-tier region — strategically less important than the Indo-Pacific or Latin America — while European elites beg to remain within the old narrative of a “transatlantic community of values.” It is like a bad marriage in which one partner clearly says they are thinking about divorce, while the other desperately tries to convince both themselves and the public that “everything is fine, we’re just going through a crisis.” The difference is that here it’s not about emotions, but about power, money, and hegemony.
The irony is that precisely now, when the U.S. is demonstratively cooling relations with Europe, the EU theoretically has a chance to seek its own strategy. Yet instead of reflecting on a different stance toward Russia, China, and the broader multipolar world, Brussels clings to a framework in which the main goal is not to be left alone. Fear of independence has replaced the former ambition for Europe to be a third pole of global politics.
An important detail in Trump’s strategy is the return to the logic of the Monroe Doctrine — the idea that the U.S. must primarily dominate its own “backyard,” the Western Hemisphere, while increasing its engagement in the Indo-Pacific. In that picture, Europe is increasingly a secondary theater. Useful as a market and as a buffer zone against Russia, but not central. While Washington strategically shifts its focus, Europeans themselves are pushing into the role of a border province that pays the military, energy, and social cost of American decisions, yet has less and less ability to influence them.
As aggressive and ideologically toxic as Trump’s strategy is, in one thing it is revealing — it clearly shows that the myth of eternal transatlantic alliance lives only in European speeches, not in American power calculations. This is a painful realization for a political class that built its careers on blind Atlanticism for decades. If that elite is not ready to acknowledge it, reality will — through new crises, new wars, and new divisions. The only question is whether this realization will come while Europe still has the strength to choose, or only when all bridges to a different position have already been burned.
And then we come to the raw need for rapid change, and we fall into an even worse situation. Who will change Europe at this already belated moment? We may not even be aware of the enormous extent to which we are looking at a terrible political vacuum. We are left with two political currents that will run us aground together, regardless of which prevails. The liberal current, which has absorbed everything progressive, including shy attempts at democratic socialism, is the one most embarrassed and bending under American pressure. The other, right-wing current, now emboldened — that is actually Trump’s fifth column. They will celebrate, and their golden age is coming. All those numerous organizations for diversity and inclusion, which invented their own purpose in order to attach themselves to funding pipelines from which they lived comfortably for so long, will now be left “high and dry,” while the new America (bigger than Trump, certainly) will begin pumping that money into the pockets of any destructive right-wing group that waves at it. Without censorship, without scrutiny. That America will eagerly finance, quickly if necessary, even neo-fascist vulgar groups that see their rise in the toppling of the EU flags they despise.
People will never even consider that there should be — must be — a third way in this fateful moment. The more conservative will join their “tribe,” the liberals their own. Perfect conditions for an American geopolitical hurricane. Europe will let Trump become its supreme architect of fate, and he can play endlessly with pawns on that tectonic board. And Russia will be thrilled by this — or so it optimistically thinks — because many Russians have recently lost sight of the dynamics of modern times. Those who were excited by the thought that together with America they might “govern” something, let alone Europe, were deeply and painfully disappointed, and so will the Russians be, without doubt.
It would be nice to believe in some European “silent majority,” a vast reservoir of untapped political potential, but we should not deceive ourselves. This “silent majority” exists only to be sorted into left-right camps, nothing more. We are all witnessing this right now. Total social polarization is the perfect strategy for that. Polarization is what literally no longer allows room for a “third way.” Every country will choke on its own contradictions, to such an extent that we will manage to follow only our own and perhaps a few major ones. In Croatia we are experiencing a frenzy around the topic of war unlike anything since the breakup of Yugoslavia. All planned, all on time, fully in the spirit of a Europe at a dead end in a blind alley.
The distribution of polarization is carried out effortlessly. It is very easy to “heat people up,” and if they endlessly hear only about options A and B, they will quickly believe that only those options can and should exist.
Europe, which could have been a beautiful idea, was lost at various points, but never as catastrophically as when we allowed the bridge to Russia and Eurasia to be burned — and that bridge was Ukraine. The moment it was said that Ukraine must “belong” to someone was the point of no return. It should never have been either Russian or NATO’s. It should have been the most valuable zone between two worlds — and with political wisdom (which, unfortunately, was not even close) it could have profited endlessly from that position.
And today Europe is the one stunned by militarism, which is sad for any reasonable European. But let us not forget our recent continental history, because it was not Europe that fanned the flames on the Maidan and beyond. All of that was done by our “eternal ally” across the Atlantic. What it is now preparing for all of us — not only for Ukraine — may be far more tragic.
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