In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk, Timothy Garton Ash, Sabina Ćudić, and Nathalie Tocci explore the relationship between the United States and Europe, the Ukraine peace talks, and whether Europe has any hope of reinvigorating itself.
Timothy Garton Ash is the author of Homelands: A Personal History of Europe and writes the newsletter History of the Present.
Sabina Ćudić is a member of the National Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina, vice president of the Foreign Relations Committee, vice president of the European liberals in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, and the president of Naša stranka, a progressive, social-liberal political party.
Nathalie Tocci is Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, Professor of Practice at the John Hopkins University SAIS, and independent non-executive director of the multi utility company Acea.
This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Yascha Mounk: Welcome to the thirteenth edition of The Good Fight Club. Today we decided, given current events, to do a Europe extravaganza. We are going to think about what Donald Trump’s new national security strategy means for Europe, what is happening with the peace negotiations in Ukraine, and whether Europe can try to assure a decent future for Ukraine on its own. More broadly, the question that most interests me: how should Europe respond to this political moment? Is Europe destined to be a continental museum, or can it actually meet this political and historical moment? What does it need to do in order to accomplish that?
I have a star-studded panel of Europe experts—and some of my most beloved Europeans—with me today. In alphabetical order of last names, we have Timothy Garton Ash, the author of Homelands: A Personal History of Europe, as well as the Substack History of the Present.
We have Sabina Čudić, who is the president of a social liberal party in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the vice president of the European Liberals in the Council of Europe, and one of our regular guests on The Good Fight Club.
We have, for the first time on the podcast, Nathalie Tocci. She is the director of the Institute of International Affairs in Rome, and she has a job title that she shares word for word with me: she is a professor of the practice at SAIS, though she has the good fortune of serving her duties in Bologna rather than Washington, D.C.
Let’s talk about this national security strategy. It was published to much shock and some fanfare last week. It is obviously the administration’s attempt to set out its priorities around the world. But a surprisingly large portion of the strategy was devoted to Europe. The document says that the Trump administration sees Europe as a key “civilizational ally,” talking up the importance of Europe in a way. But it also says that Europe, as it currently exists, is a deep problem for the United States, that it is on the way to self-destructing, and that the United States should think of many European governments and institutions as undermining the alliance because they do not share the values of Donald Trump.
Nathalie, make sense of what this document is and why it sent shockwaves around Europe.
Nathalie Tocci: Well, firstly, Yascha, let me point out that I actually think it is a rather coherent—and let me say even strategic—document. We have spent a long time over the last year and more describing the Trump administration as unpredictable, incoherent, and inconsistent. Actually, I think the national security strategy paints a rather coherent picture of the world. I would describe it as a picture of imperial collusion.
It is essentially a world in which there are empires. The United States is the first and foremost of those empires. It has a view of the Western Hemisphere—so obviously there is a big Latin American part of the story. But I would say that at least a big part of Europe belongs to the U.S.’s colonial menu. Then, of course, there is the Chinese empire, there is a Russian empire, and perhaps there are elements of tension and even competition, but broadly speaking, the intention is one of collusion with these other empires.
If we start from that premise, it is no surprise that Europe takes up so much space in this national security strategy. I think there is, in fact, a strategy toward Europe, one aimed at weakening and dividing Europe. Of course, this starts with the capitulation of Ukraine, which we will talk about a little later, but it does not end there. Indeed, I think there is very much an aim at disintegrating Europe.
Now, you may say—and you did start off by saying—that this is all about Europe as a civilizational ally, and the U.S.’s great concern for undemocratic practices in Europe and for “ethnic replacement.” I think that, frankly, this civilizational element is probably the least interesting part—or I should say the least sincere part—of the story. Because if there were, for instance, a real concern for migration in Europe, it would not explain why Italy, which has seen a very significant inflow of migrants since the far-right government took power three years ago, is being looked at as a shining example, while Denmark—with a Social Democratic government that has had an extremely restrictive migration policy—is not mentioned at all.
So I do not think there is a real concern for democracy, civilization or culture. What I do think is that these far-right, populist, nationalist governments or parties or movements in Europe serve the strategic purpose of undermining Europe. They are essentially the fifth columns. It is no surprise that they are exactly the same parties, governments and movements supported by others—especially Russia—who also want to weaken Europe.
So I actually think there is a strategic intent behind this national security strategy that fits within a broader worldview that is dreadful in many respects, but actually quite coherent.
Mounk: Timothy, does Trump want a weak Europe, or does he want a strong Europe that is run along the lines of MAGA ideology?
Timothy Garton Ash: I think he wants a different Europe, and a weak European Union. So I think the civilizational component of this is a bit more important than perhaps Nathalie was suggesting, although I entirely agree that it evokes a world in which the United States is one transactional great power among many, one empire among many.
When it says, for example, that within a few decades at the latest certain NATO members—i.e., in Europe—will become majority non-European, that is very clearly code for non-white. That is a pretty startling statement to find in a national security strategy of the United States. When it says “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” that is a declaration of political war against the European Union.
Particularly, by the way, Yascha, if what has been reported elsewhere is true—that an earlier version of this suggested that four EU member states, Austria, Hungary, Poland and Italy, should be wooed away from the current European Union. It is a frontal declaration of political war against the European Union.
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In historical context, I think it is interesting because, as you know very well, Yascha, for a large part of its history the United States was indifferent to Europe, wanted to stand apart from it, pulled away from its isolationism. Since 1945, we have had a United States that has supported a more liberal, more united Europe. This is the first time ever in history we have had a United States explicitly supporting an anti-liberal, xenophobic, nationalist, populist Europe. In a way, it is playing our own worst reactionary past in Europe back to us.
Mounk: Sabina, what does that look like from your part of the world? I agree with Timothy that the most striking—frankly shocking—line in that document was this idea that Europe will one day be majority non-Europeans. Do you think he thinks of Bosnians as European or non-European in that context?
Sabina Ćudić: Well, it depends which Bosnians, because in a country with a majority Muslim population—somewhere around 50 percent—certainly half of the country is not perceived as European, no doubt. When we talk about whether the document is strategic and coherent versus perhaps more haphazard, one can be strategic and coherent while still producing outcomes that are a total mess.
Nathalie underestimated the cultural, civilizational, religious, and racial aspects of the document. That does not mean those aspects are the strategic point of the document. I think the strategic point is the interest—business interests, economic interests—that stand behind it. In that sense, Europe and the European Union serve those interests. The EU’s high standards—environmental protection, mining, food production—are today seen as fully contrary to American interests.
We are currently living that in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The energy interests in Bosnia and Herzegovina today—the building of the southern interconnector, fully financed and awarded to an American bidder or corporation—are now, and I think completely wrongly, openly seen by the American administration as being contrary to American business interests. Specifically because of standards on coal production, clean versus dirty energy, and so on.
But I want to underline this: even if the cultural, racial, and religious aspects are a decoy, the implications—and the way the document was received in Europe—and the devastation it has already caused are significant. Psychological, anthropological, racial, religious tensions: the language alone, the publication of it alone, has already done enough damage. Particularly in my region, the concern now is: are we all waking up in the same paradigm, and are we all operating under the same cultural and civilizational assumptions?
Tocci: I totally agree that there is this vision of “we, the white and Christian West.” Clearly this is what underpins the document. I guess what I was trying to say is that if, for the sake of argument, you were to have the current German government pursuing an extremely restrictive migration policy, pushing for a rowing back on climate legislation, but still remaining fully committed to European integration, that would not be a government the Trump administration would support. This is what I was trying to get at. There is this overall cultural vision, but ultimately what is really underpinning this exercise is the aim of division and disintegration.
Garton Ash: I think this is spot on, which is that even if half of this does not happen, the impact has already been enormous. The way I feel it is: for Christ’s sake, this is really the last straw. After everything Trump has said, after Vance’s speech—which was a kind of official version of this at the Munich Security Conference—after the absolutely disgraceful 28-point peace plan proposal, the Russian-American proposal, this is it.
I am a lifelong British Euro-Atlanticist. Being British, one tends to be born that way, unlike if you are born in France—but consciously becoming so in the 1980s because of the great contribution the United States made to the liberation of Eastern Europe. At the time of the Iraq War, I wrote a book called Free World, which is all about how the Euro-Atlanticist option is the best one for Europe.
Now, when I hear all of this coming from the United States, what I feel—if you will pardon my French—is: if that is what you really think, if you really cannot see the difference between Zelenskyy and Putin, between Churchill and Hitler, between good and evil, between the aggressor and those who are attacked, then fuck off.
If I feel that, imagine what other Europeans are feeling. Now, of course, that is not a dispassionate intellectual analysis. It is not a policy prescription. But the feeling remains. Even if, wonder of wonders, the perfect Atlantist, pro-European liberal president comes back in 2029, it will never be “glad, confident morning” again. We will never again have that confidence that the United States is on our side. I do not know if the others agree.
Ćudić: Exactly. That is the point about the damage that has already been inflicted. That is exactly what I was thinking: even if we woke up next year with a complete reversal of results in the midterms and then new outcomes in three years, the damage to the confidence in the relationship has been done.
That will have a lasting impact, I think, not just in the short term but for future decades. Are you a reliable partner? If this war in Ukraine had been fought the way we fought it for the past couple of years, and then you have a complete U-turn and reversal, that has implications. In the same way, I think it is incredibly unfortunate that the Iraq intervention and the war in Afghanistan diminished our appetite for interventionism—which I am a big supporter of. They created a lasting echo of unjust war or unjust intervention. I think we are going to be experiencing the same. I just regret that I am a middle-aged woman who maybe will not live to see a full repair of confidence and relations.
Mounk: I have been struck by two things. I have done a lot of French, Italian, and German media over the course of the last week. The first is that when I was growing up, there was a lot of anti-Americanism in Europe. But that anti-Americanism came from the far left and from the far right. Then there was a kind of cautiously pro-American stance from the center-left in most European countries, which found all kinds of things about the United States ghastly but ultimately realized the United States was the natural partner of Europe. Then there was full-throated pro-Americanism from the center-right in most European countries, bar perhaps France.
That landscape has completely shifted. Now smart journalists—and also less smart and less thoughtful journalists—frame the whole issue as: is the United States out to get us? Is it our number one enemy? How do we protect ourselves from the United States? You see the same framing in the remarks of many center-right politicians from political parties that used to be the most pro-American. That, I think, is a sea change. As all of you point out, it is not going to suddenly change or disappear, even if Gavin Newsom or Josh Shapiro or Pete Buttigieg or whoever becomes president of the United States in 2029.
I do have a question, which is that I found it striking to what extent the European public has framed this debate as a kind of culture war between the United States on one side and Europe on the other. It is: “these weird Americans under Donald Trump are attacking European values, and they hate Europe, and we should defend ourselves against them”. There is a very straightforward geographic logic to this.
But when I look at the societies on both sides of the Atlantic that I know pretty well, it feels very different to me. There are a lot of people in the United States who are shocked by this. Even though Europe cannot rely on those forces being dominant or in power all of the time, about half of the American population deeply and viscerally disagrees with the statements in this national security strategy.
On the other hand, when I look at Europe: who is leading the polls in the United Kingdom? It is Nigel Farage and the Reform Party, which is rather close to Donald Trump. Who is leading the polls in France? It is Jordan Bardella or Marine Le Pen, depending on who is allowed to run, and they have their own deep criticisms of the European Union. Who is leading, at least in some polls, in Germany? The Alternative for Germany, which itself shares many of the views about Europe becoming less European and this being a way in which the continent is abolishing itself.
So are America and Europe really as far apart as we think? Or is this simply a cultural war within each of these societies, in which, at the moment, it so happens that Donald Trump is in power in the United States and Britain and France and Germany are governed by people on the other side of the debate, while Italy is not, and Hungary is not, and who knows where Germany and France and Britain will be in a few years?
Garton Ash: This is not Europe versus the United States. That was the classic framing of the reactionary right in Europe and of the anti-American left in Europe. It is a culture war inside the West.
In a sense, it illustrates that the West still exists. There is a broader cultural, intellectual, and ideological conversation because what we are seeing here is the Trump administration backing one Europe against another. There is a battle of two Europes going on. There has always been an illiberal or anti-liberal Europe. It is very strongly represented by people like Viktor Orbán or Jordan Bardella or Nigel Farage.
What is new is that they are backing that Europe against a more liberal Europe, which we all support. But as you rightly say, Yascha, all my American friends—almost without exception—are as outraged as I am.
Tocci: I think that that’s right. But in a sense, precisely because of this, it’s what makes this inter- and intra-cultural war far more existential. We’re no longer in Iraq War days in which Americans renamed French fries freedom fries and hundreds of thousands got out on the streets in Europe to demonstrate against America’s invasion of Iraq. That was a classic Mars–Venus culture war, but it was a clear transatlantic culture war.
Whereas here, what makes this existential is that it is about fighting your enemy within who is being supported by those outside. So it is literally a battle for survival because it’s an internal battle. That is, I think, also what makes this fundamentally different.
I think you’re absolutely right in saying anti-Americanism used to come from the extremes and now it’s coming from the center. Well, it’s coming from the center because it’s that center—whether it’s center-left, center-right, liberals—that built that united Europe that once upon a time was supported by the United States and now is being undermined by the United States.
Ćudić: I think it’s incredibly important what you’re asking, and it gets to the center of a question that I’ve been pondering for some time now. It is not about Donald Trump supporting or creating these powers in Europe. What he’s incredibly skilled at, and has always been, is recognizing trends and profiting from them. He didn’t create these parties. Marie Le Pen was there before him. Farage was a member of the European Parliament before Donald Trump was in politics. The National Rally not created by Trump. The impact of people like Musk on electoral outcomes in Germany has been minuscule or nonexistent.
The way the national security strategy has been met—or not commented on—by these parties indicates that there is a risk for them in welcoming it, because even their voters perceive Donald Trump’s policy, or this administration’s policy, as bad for Germany. The same goes for France. In the UK, Reform UK is polling at around 36 percent, and even there, many voters are questioning whether America First comes at the expense of UK First, or Germany First, or France First.
What I am leaning to believe is that he has recognized, exactly as you described, Yascha, the trends in Europe and is riding that trend because it serves this administration on multiple fronts—both domestically and, more importantly, by weakening the European Union. It follows the sovereignist, anti-multilateralism agenda. Look at what these parties are advocating at home: coal production, moving away from Brussels bureaucracy, and, in the case of Reform UK, leading the Brexit movement. Similar discussions are taking place in Hungary, in France, and in Germany. So in that sense, you’re right; it is something whose similarity has been recognized and is now being exploited for particular interests.
Mounk: I want to make sure that we get to the question of how Europe should respond and how Europe can try to escape what, at the moment, it seems to be resigned to, which is a kind of museal future. But there is a pressing question that we need to address before we get to that, which is the situation of Ukraine. Timothy, the Trump administration has proposed a peace plan for Ukraine. It has attempted to negotiate without the direct involvement of various European parties. It is a little bit difficult to know what the state of any of these discussions is. Is there any chance at this point of assuring—not the ideal outcome of this horrible war, certainly, but at least some way to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty over the territory that it currently controls in a lasting way that would deter further Russian aggression? Or do you think we have to start reconciling ourselves to a tragic outcome to this war?
Garton Ash: The answer to your question is yes, there definitely still is a way. This is the start of the answer to your larger question about how Europe responds.
You remember Eisenhower famously said he has two kinds of questions on his desk: urgent and important. The urgent are usually not important and the important are usually not urgent. But Ukraine is one that is both urgent and important, because the nature and character of Europe’s response to the entire Trump challenge starts here with Ukraine. It is not about day-to-day Trump management. It is not about track-changes diplomacy and trying to amend the latest American/Russian peace plan. What it is about is ensuring that we, as Europe, can enable Ukraine to continue to defend itself, because it is wrong to say Ukraine is losing this war. It is losing small amounts of territory, it is under a lot of pressure, its energy infrastructure is being bombed, its front lines are very thin, but it is not yet losing this war.
Given sufficient military and economic support—which is why the issue that will be debated in just a few days’ time of using the Russian frozen assets held in Europe to give economic and therefore also military support to Ukraine is so crucial—Europe can enable Ukraine to continue. So the issue is not about any detail on the peace plans. The issue is whether Europe has the ability and the political will to sustain Ukraine even when Donald Trump is strongly tempted to try to sell it out. Potentially, we in Europe can do that. But it comes back to the question of political will.
Mounk: That to me is the million-dollar question about all of these peace plans, which depend ultimately more, as Timothy is saying, on Europe than on the United States. Whatever the details of the peace plan that is being negotiated at the moment, ultimately we will not really know what comes out of it until the parties get into a room and at least attempt to hash it out—if indeed Russia at this point is finally willing to do that. That has always been the sticking point.
The question then becomes: Does Europe continue to support Ukraine in the coming years in such a way that it deters further Russian aggression, or, the moment the weapons are finally silent, does Europe move on, forget all about it, and therefore make Ukraine tempting prey for Russia again? Perhaps it will make other European countries—perhaps even NATO countries—tempting prey for Russia.
Do we think that Europe is going to sustain the political will to make those investments, to become capable of providing security on its own continent even if some kind of peace deal is made? Or is the attention of European governments going to wander quickly to all of the other challenges and problems the continent faces, in such a way that we then invite a reigniting of this conflict within a matter of decades, or perhaps years, or—God forbid—months?
Garton Ash: That’s the right way to ask the question because security guarantees don’t exist. Ukraine knows that better than anyone because they had so-called security assurances in the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. The only security guarantee is: my country is able to defend itself with the help of its allies. Even Article 5 of NATO is not a 100% security guarantee, as we’re finding out.
But also what I would just say is that I have—and I’d love to hear Sabina on this—what I would call the post-Dayton nightmare. There were all these magnificent speeches and gestures of European solidarity to Ukraine over the last three years, with some romantic idealization of Ukraine, as there was some romantic idealization of Bosnia. Then the Dayton accords happen. Think what you like of Dayton. But what happens afterwards is that the attention of the rest of Europe turns away because there has been “peace achieved.”
Sabina can speak to this better than anyone—here we are 30 years later and many of the fundamental problems have not been addressed. So that is my nightmare for Ukraine. Of course it’s Putin’s hope for Ukraine. Because obviously he wanted to control the whole country, but even if he doesn’t, if he controls, by the way, a territory the size of Portugal and Slovenia combined—because that’s what he roughly controls at the moment—and has a dysfunctional, demoralised, depopulated Ukraine that is also deeply insecure and very susceptible to Russian influence, he’s won.
Ćudić: Thank you, Timothy, because that’s exactly where I was heading with my line on this. Bosnia was under enormous pressure to sign the peace agreement that was signed in Dayton, Ohio, and it created our non-functioning constitution. As Timothy said, once the cameras are off and once it becomes an administrative dinosaur of a problem with a huge body and a tiny head, then there is not enough pressure to achieve something functioning.
However, functionality aside, even if you genuinely didn’t care about Ukraine, even if you couldn’t care less how much territory is demilitarized, how much is given to Russia or not given to Russia, there are long-term security implications for Europe for decades to come—even after Putin dies—if the lesson we get from here is: this pays off.
I know it’s intellectually lazy to constantly revert to the analogy of the policy of appeasement. But the reason why we revert to it is because we are frustrated that we haven’t learned the lesson. The consequences of Ukraine are enormous. But if the EU and America—here they are jointly to blame, and for a long time Europe was much more to blame than the United States—played the appeasement game in a place that’s far less consequential, being Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Western Balkans, than the outcome of Ukraine, if local warlords such as Milorad Dodik and various Putin wannabes and direct Putin puppets were appeased for years, for decades, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I am looking for a triumph of hope over experience in the sense that in Ukraine the mistakes will not be made again because the consequences for Europeans will be far larger.
So let’s assume the peace deal is signed. What does that mean for Estonia, for Lithuania, for Finland? What does it mean for Eastern Europe and Europe in general if the appetites of Russia grow? Because if we are relying on their rationality, it wasn’t perfectly rational to start this to begin with. So if we are starting from a place of “I wouldn’t do that, therefore why would Putin,” obviously we are in the wrong debate.
Mounk: Nathalie, Sabina is hoping for a triumph of hope over experience—a triumph that will depend in part on what countries in Europe that are less directly exposed to this danger, because they are more geographically distant, like Spain or Italy, are going to do. Now, it so happens that the Prime Minister of Italy, who I’m not a fan of and I imagine you’re not a fan of, has been relatively good on the issue of Ukraine. But that is in some sense ideological happenstance. A lot of the Italian political spectrum is much less willing to invest in Ukraine and to help defend Ukraine against Russia than Giorgia Meloni is, including some of the forces on the populist right that may very easily have been in office instead of her. Speaking from the perspective of Rome, do you think that we might see a triumph of hope over experience, or do we need to expect that experience will prove the better of us?
Tocci (36:04.079): Although over the last few years, I have tended to be quite dark when thinking about Europe, I actually think, and not just hope, that we will do it. Firstly, let me say that for all the talk about Trump and pressure on Zelenskyy and cozying up with Putin, Trump does not have all the cards at all. The United States, precisely because it has stopped providing military assistance to Ukraine, has lost significant leverage over Ukraine, and it never had much influence over Russia either—especially not if you are not even trying to exert the little influence that you do have.
So I actually think that Trump does not have the cards to impose a capitulation. I think Europeans have many more cards than the United States. They have the sanctions card—which, of course, is available to the United States as well, but the sanctions that really bite are European sanctions. They have the frozen-assets card, which Tim referred to. We have already seen a first, very important step: shifting the renewal mechanism for those frozen assets to qualified-majority rules. So we are no longer subject to Viktor Orbán’s blackmail. We are the ones providing economic and military support to Ukraine, precisely because the United States no longer does.
So I think we are at a time in which we do not have the cards to ensure a sustainable ceasefire today, but we do have the cards to prevent Ukrainian capitulation today. I actually think we are in a scenario in which, for the time being, the war will continue.
Now, this opens the question of whether, at some point when we do get to a sustainable ceasefire, Europeans will drop the ball on security. If we were to see a capitulation of Ukraine, we would probably not see Europeans dropping the ball on security, because that would mean opening the front gate for Russia’s security threats to other European countries.
If instead we get, at some point, to a sustainable ceasefire in Ukraine—well, firstly, when is that going to happen? Presumably it will happen at a time when the strategic culture in Europe has already changed. It has changed in Northern and Eastern Europe long ago. It has changed in Germany. Then you raise the question: what about other European countries? What about the Italys and Spains of this world?
My hunch is that when, in Europe, you have a critical mass of countries moving in a certain direction, the others—if only because they do not want to be left out—eventually jump on the train. Not because they believe in it; I actually do not think that Giorgia Meloni is particularly concerned about or committed to Ukraine. I think it has been expedient for her for a while, now less so, and she is trying to figure out how to wiggle out of this. But what she says to me—and not just she, but any Italian, Spanish, Dutch or Portuguese leader—is that none of them will ever want to be left out of something that eventually takes off.
I think a European security “something” is in the making, because on one hand the threat from Russia is not going away, and on the other hand the American abandonment—or betrayal—is not going away anytime soon. So, inevitably, there is a reaction taking place.
Mounk: The question of whether Europe can actually secure Ukraine’s security and, more broadly, step up to provide safety on its own continent is, I think, one very important facet of a broader question. I have been struck by the extent to which Europe has felt hopeless in determining its own fate in recent years as the change in America’s character has become clear.
You can see that on the security dimension. You can see that in the fact that the greatest ambition of Brussels seems to be to regulate technology like artificial intelligence that is produced elsewhere, rather than to have a realistic hope of being at the forefront of that technology itself. You can see that in the fact that, apparently, in 2024 the European Union took in more money from fines on American tech companies than it took in from taxation on European tech companies, which tells you something about the difference in size between these industries. You can see that in the orientation toward the future that I feel when I talk to young people in the United States or in Europe. I think a lot of European citizens have a vision of the future—which I would argue may not be realistic—in which everything in twenty or fifty years is going to be more or less like today, except a little bit worse. It is not clear to me that a world in which everything is “kind of like today,” even if somewhat worse, is realistically on the table.
So the question to me is: can Europe actually reinvent itself? Can Europe get out of a funk in which it assumes it will be a museum continent—proud of its history and its art and the beauty of its landscapes and cities, attracting tourists from around the world—but not at the forefront of technology, not a geopolitical actor in its own right, but rather a bloc buffeted between the forces in Washington, Moscow, Beijing, and perhaps eventually Delhi and elsewhere? And can it become a continent that is also more optimistic about its economic future?
What would it take, both in terms of the steps that countries have to take and in terms of the change in mindset that we would need in how European citizens think about this problem? Sabina, why don’t you get us started with this set of questions.
Ćudić: I think the biggest challenge for European leaders in the upcoming three years is this devastating choice between the political mood of the voters of the day, which may be fickle, prone to trends and obviously highly influenced by the extreme right-wing’s skillful use of simplified political messaging, and whether, for example, what we are seeing in the struggles of the government in the UK—although we are not talking here about the EU, but still about a European power—to perhaps meet Reform voters halfway by minimizing, let’s say, the European Convention on Human Rights in order to appease those voters. That would be one strategy: trying to court these voters and digest them, in the way Angela Merkel did for mostly left-wing voters.
The other strategy would be a brave vision in which you create a trend rather than ride the trend in the way that Donald Trump is riding the trend of a populist moment, rather than creating it. I would advocate for the vision. I know I am again grabbing the cliché that crisis is an opportunity, though I would prefer opportunities outside of crisis; I have had enough of them in my life. There is an opportunity here. I think we are seeing a glimmer of that in the EU on qualified voting and on different ways that countries will now be joining. Not everyone will immediately have the same voting rights, because they have realized that, as unfair as it might be to overrule the will of the Hungarian people, it is even more unfair that all of Europe is held hostage by Viktor Orbán. These are the messages we are hearing now, and I don’t think we heard them five years ago—certainly not ten years ago. In that sense, I would not call Europe hopeless. I think it is seizing this opportunity, whether that is too late or not.
We also need to see this foreign US policy failing, in the sense of not delivering its promises. I think that is what will happen. The US is not winning over the European soul. The only people who believe that America is winning the ceasefire in Gaza, the peace plan for Ukraine, or the national security strategy that is supposedly going to save Europe are the staunchest of the upper ranks—the very epicenter of MAGA. But deep down, in their hearts and minds, the majority of Republican lawmakers have had enough experience in Congress and the Senate to know they are not winning, that they are appeasing the wrong people, and that they are actually selling themselves short.
People who were removed from sanctions lists here, who will probably be removed in Moldova, Belarus, potentially Georgia—what will the United States get in return for that? The perception currently, even in my part of the world, and perhaps especially in my part of the world, is that they are losing, that they are selling themselves short, and that they are not getting what was promised from these wannabe autocrats on the ground. I think we will see more of that.
Garton Ash: I actually think the question is even larger than the one you posed, Yascha, because I think the question of the future of Europe and of liberalism are now inextricably intertwined. What we are talking about, in a way, is a liberal Europe—and its pessimism, defeatism, and fatalism—but it is also liberal pessimism, defeatism, and fatalism more broadly. If liberal Europe goes, what other major geopolitical area is going to defend the substance of liberalism?
I think there are at least two dimensions to this. One is what Sabina was talking about: the politics—how do we see off the AfDs, the Rassemblement Nationales, the Reform UKs, thee Voxes and all the rest? Now, I think in the short term there is a question about the Trump influence. My observation would be that Vance’s support at the Munich Security Conference did actually give the AfD a boost in the German election soon thereafter. Certainly, in the other country that you and I know well, Poland, Trump’s support helped Noworowski get elected as president. But I think that is a short-term effect. As Sabina says, if Trump starts tanking, that effect is diminished.
In the rest of this conversation, Yascha, Timothy, Sabina, and Nathalie discuss whether its risk averse culture is holding Europe back, why young people seem to lack agency compared with in the United States—and why we should still have hope. This part of the conversation is reserved for paying subscribers…
