File Image. Photo: China Beyond The Wall.
By Lama El Horr – Mar 21, 2025
With the exception of the EU bloc, it would appear that the overwhelming majority of the world is impatient for a change of course in Washington.
At the end of a four-year term, the Blinken-Sullivan-Austin trio, showcase of the Biden administration, will have distinguished itself by multiplying hotbeds of tension all around China, a NATO-Russia hybrid war, two genocidal wars, one televised in Gaza, the other covert, in Eastern Congo, a bloody conflict in Sudan, with millions of refugees, and the umpteenth attempt to kill Haiti – all topped off by mass mutilation in Lebanon and the devastating fall of Syria. As for extraterritorial sanctions and regime-change operations, from Georgia to Venezuela, via Iran, Pakistan and Bangladesh, they have either been maintained or intensified.
It is a truism that success is measured by results, so it is premature to pass judgment on Donald Trump’s actions. The most we can say is that his statements in favor of resolving the conflict in Ukraine have been hailed everywhere outside Europe. As for his intentions to wipe Palestine off the map, seize new geographical areas (Greenland, Canada, Panama Canal, Gulf of Mexico) and appropriate Ukraine’s natural resources, they are an indicator of the seriousness of global tensions, but also of the tenor of the discussions underway with Moscow, and to come with Beijing, concerning access to strategic resources, the security of industrial and supply chains, and the place of the dollar in trade.
Faced with this restructuring of the global landscape, which is wiping the slate clean of Western privileges following the collapse of the USSR, European countries would be committing an irreparable error if they decided, against the tide of global change, that their subservience to American imperialism was inevitable. Asserting an independent policy will certainly be an arduous task as the Old Continent, locked behind the gilded bars of its Atlanticist prison, has become disconnected from the rest of the world.
The Old Continent, or the biter bit
Ever since Donald Trump and his squadron of anti-diplomats publicly lambasted European leaders in Washington, Brussels and Munich, there’s been a lot of chatter about the insolence of the MAGA style. “You’d have to call in a psychologist to analyze this behavior,” joked one senior official in Brussels. Yet, shameless as it may be, this style is merely a carbon copy of the condescending tone with which Washington and its European satellites have systematically lectured Beijing, Moscow, Teheran, Caracas and other chronic whipping boys of the Atlanticist bloc. What is unprecedented, moreover, is not Washington’s diktats towards Europeans, but the fact that these diktats are communicated through the media, thus depriving Europeans of their status as co-beneficiaries of American exceptionalism.
Equally striking is the content of the MAGA message. To justify his threats to resort to ultra-protectionism against the EU, or his more exotic threats to dispossess allies of strategic territories, Donald Trump invokes the motive of “national security” – an elastic concept that enables Washington to legitimize recourse to political, economic or military terrorism. These methods, obviously shocking, should not obscure the fact that the Europeans themselves, following in Washington’s footsteps, have exploited this concept of “national security” ad nauseam to justify the adoption of unilateral coercive measures, such as the suspension of the Global Agreement on Investment with China, the banning of Huawei from 5G networks, Italy’s abandonment of the BRI project, or the freezing and seizure of Russian assets. So, there’s nothing new under the sun, except that Washington is now using this concept, synonymous with raison d’Etat, even against its European satellites.
To denounce Donald Trump’s territorial ambitions, some European leaders have seen fit to point out that the inviolability of borders is a fundamental principle of international law, which must apply everywhere. No doubt the whole world would have applauded these clarifications, had European governments not irreparably discredited themselves, once again alongside Washington, by encouraging Israel’s bloodthirsty occupation of the Palestinian territories, denying the Saharawi people – but also the people of Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua – the right to self-determination, by pushing for the fragmentation of the Congo, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, and by cultivating warmongering duplicity over Taiwan, even though all European countries recognize the One-China policy.
But it was Trump’s announcement of peace negotiations between Washington and Moscow, a sign of a readjustment in American imperialist strategy, that dealt the final blow to the European bloc. It is true that shaping Europe’s security without the Europeans may seem incoherent – a point not lost on China, which refuses to isolate Europe. At the same time, if they had a better sense of chronology, the Europeans would remember that they pushed NATO to Russia’s doorstep without asking Moscow’s opinion, and that they organized peace conferences on Ukraine without inviting Russia. The contradictions don’t stop there, as Paris has reportedly offered Moscow a dialogue on Ukraine without Ukraine – which Russia has apparently accepted, suggesting that it is not Moscow, but Washington, that is seeking to isolate the EU, i.e., to prevent a rapprochement between the European bloc and Russia.
In any case, the presence of Europeans at the negotiating table will be subsidiary as long as the EU bloc is no more than a sounding board for Washington’s decisions – all the more so when Russia sees its conflict with Ukraine as Washington’s proxy war against Moscow.
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The strategic defeat of Old Europe
Against the backdrop of the bloody conflicts shaking the world, the countries of Western Europe failed to appreciate the geopolitical dynamics underway. London, Paris and Berlin, among others, have failed to grasp that emancipation movements across the world concern them not only as (neo)colonial powers, but also as vassal powers, subject to American tutelage. This misreading – a sin of pride? – prevented them from defining Europe’s place in the emerging world. As a result, at the start of the 21st century, the Old Continent is one of the last geographical areas in the world – along with Guatemala, the Philippines and Japan – not to have launched its struggle for independence.
The latest developments in the transatlantic alliance reveal unequivocally that the major European powers want to keep hanging over their heads the sword of Damocles that has stripped them of their sovereignty, downgraded them economically and discredited them morally: the American security umbrella.
Admittedly, a senior official in Brussels told us, the United States is not above reproach, and its contempt for multilateral structures such as the UN and the WTO is a source of frustration for its European allies. Nevertheless, this European Commission insider finds it “hard to see transatlantic relations as threatening”. In his view, we shouldn’t rely on the media brouhaha, because so far, Trump’s threats have ended in a “retro-pedal”, particularly when it comes to tariffs. He is not wrong, if we consider that this “retro-pedal” implies an adherence by the EU to Washington’s conditions, namely: a reorientation of European economies towards an arms industry, intended, in large part, to support the American strategy of a pivot to the Asia-Pacific, and to feed the American military-industrial complex.
This militaristic headlong rush will inevitably lead to an exacerbation of tensions, and even an explosion of insecurity on a global scale, particularly in the East and South China Seas, the Middle East , and the Nordic-Baltic region – insanity has reached such heights that some university professors are campaigning for European NATO members to confront Moscow there.
The people of Europe will soon discover that such a political orientation implies the implementation of Structural adjustment programs, similar to those that have struck down dozens of countries in the South as a result of their indebtedness to the IMF and the World Bank. These programs not only systematically weakened institutions and national sovereignty, but also compromised economic prosperity, workers’ rights and social peace.
Under the slogan of “Strategic Autonomy”, the EU’s arms race raises the specter of greater American tutelage over Europeans, with a more aggressive stick and a more insignificant carrot. In short, we are faced with a case where strengthening your defense capabilities makes you weaker.
Perhaps the time has come to take the taboo by the horns and question, once and for all, the European nature of the EU, this registration chamber for Washington’s decisions, which has never been able to aggregate the European space into a pole of power. Europe’s leaders can no longer ignore the fact that maintaining a military alliance with the United States, which has as its corollary the political, economic and cultural subjugation of Europe to the owner of the “umbrella”, can only be based on a strategic defeat for Old Europe.
Lama El Horr
Lama El Horr is the Founding Editor of China Beyond the Wall. She is a geopolitical consultant and analyst specializing in Chinese foreign policy, geopolitics and geoeconomics. She holds a PhD from Paris-Sorbonne University and has also studied at the LSE. Lama El Horr has worked in the government, academic and media sectors in Europe, China, Latin America, and the Middle East, and is fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic.
