Does the E.U. itself
instantiate a decline in European civilization? So says a National Security
Strategy for the United States released by the Trump administration in December,
2025. That report also claims that migration to Europe was in the process of
causing European nations to face “civilizational erasure.” That is to say, the
European nation-state was by the end of 2025 facing existential threats due to
the E.U. and migration. The report also highlights the loss of democracy in
Europe, due both to the E.U. usurping the governmental sovereignty of the states
and the clamping down on voices on the right in Europe. I contend that the
report contains a sufficient number of fallacies that it can reasonably be
dismissed as bias ideology under the subterfuge of national security.
The report “proposes to ‘cultivate
resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.’”[1]
This can be interpreted as an intent to aid Orbán’s anti-E.U. strategy in
Hungary and to encourage other governors of E.U. states to resist the E.U.’s exercise
of even its existing exclusive competencies, or enumerated powers (i.e., as per
the dual-sovereignty feature of that federal system). To hamstring President Von
der Leyen’s efforts to aid Ukraine, for example, “kills two birds with one
stone,” as the saying goes, because in keeping the E.U. from strengthening, Ukraine’s
strength against Russia is also held back.
The report finds “subversion
of democratic processes” in Europe, and claims that the E.U. undermines “political
liberty and sovereignty.”[2]
This would be news to the European Parliament, whose representatives, like
those in the U.S. House of Representatives, are elected directly by citizens
and thus represent them, rather than even their respective states (the European
Council and the Council of Ministers do the latter, as the U.S. Senate does in
the U.S.). So, the E.U.’s bicameralism, if anti-democratic, means that the U.S.
Congress also suffers a democracy deficit such that most Congressional powers
should be returned to the American member states.
Whereas in confederal systems
of public governance, democracy is only at the state level, which by the way is
fine because the states retain all governmental sovereignty, federal systems
characterized by dual sovereignty (i.e., governmental sovereignty being split
or divided between the federal and state levels, or subsystems) should have
democracy at both levels, rather than just at the state level. This is
true of the E.U. grace á the European Parliament, even though its powers
could stand to be augmented and those of the European Council lessened so as to
enhance the democratic legitimacy of the E.U. even more.
Aside from the erroneous
perspective that the E.U. is itself a reduction in European democracy, Trump’s
claim that European migration policies had been “transforming the continent and
creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political
opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and
self-confidence” also warrants critique.[3]
Does the administration mean to claim that migration policies have been causing
birthrates to drop? The application of reason alone can easily dispel such a claim.
The same goes for self-confidence, though there may be more to the claim that
mass migration dilutes national identities if enough of the new arrivals refuse
to integrate culturally. Furthermore, such a dilution is qualitatively
different than any from a new-found sense of identifying as Europeans, which,
although coming along slowly, is facilitated by the very existence of the
European Union. That is to say, even if cultural diversity within a member
state is not desirable, identifying increasingly as European rather than merely
by member state has the advantage of making war within at least Western Europe
less likely in the future. Additionally, identifying culturally as a European
can aid indirectly in efforts to enhance the E.U.’s foreign policy and defense competencies,
given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Surely Europeans in some of the E.U.’s eastern
states would not lament feeling more European and less exclusively of their
respective states if that meant that the united action of the E.U. would be
more likely to be augmented to include defense without state veto-power standing
in the way at the federal level. In short, criticism of migration and the E.U.
should not be conflated.
As for free speech, in 2025 it
came under threat arguably more as anti-genocide protesters were being arrested
as if they were promoting violence rather than protesting against Israel ironically
for having been so violent, and with impunity internationally. That the Trump
administration had been enabling Israel’s genocide and perhaps holocaust explains
why the report ignores the arrests, especially in Germany and Britain, of
human-rights protestors while complaining as if Orban has been made into a
scapegoat in the European Union even though he has serially violated E.U. law.
His support of Russia and criticism of Ukraine, no doubt related to Hungary’s
reliance on Russian energy, may have something to do with the report’s “finding”
that free speech in Europe has been compromised by forces on the political left
rather than the pro-Zionist right. Recently, I encountered such denialism in a
coffee shop from a native South African man, whose daughter attends Columbia
University. The man insisted that all of the images of destruction in Gaza have
been created by AI, and that in actuality, the residents there have been eating
well. Regardless of our political disagreement regarding enabling a genocide, I
was stunned that his perspective was so divorced from even credible media
reports. A European reading Trump’s National Security report might have the
same reaction, especially concerning migration causing a drop in birthrates. Such
denialism, from ideology, with even credible, mainstream journalism being relegated
as illusionary, may be the real sign of a civilizational decline.
Given the impotence of the
United Nations to combat the militaristic aggressiveness of Israel and Russia,
the collective action that is possible by means of the E.U. can be
regarded as a good thing, even though the member-states, or “nations,” would need
to give over more governmental sovereignty. Due to the existence of the European
Parliament, a democratic legislative chamber, a transfer of additional
governmental sovereignty from the states to the Union would not mean that
Europe is less democratic. In fact, adding the Parliament to state legislatures
means more democracy, with democracy being able to exercise more of a
check on itself (i.e., the Parliament on the state legislatures). Of course, no political union is perfect, or
ever can be, and the Parliament could stand to be given more authority in the
making of law, so to strengthen the democratic institution at the federal level.
Were the Trump administration really for democracy in Europe, the report would include
this proposal rather than go with the erroneous claim that democracy only
exists, or should only exist, at the state level. Moreover, were the
Trump administration to avoid making political category mistakes, the report would
compare the E.U. with the U.S., and thus be able to make helpful proposals to
strengthen both unions of states. Even though Europeans may bristle at
this axis of comparison, my motive in writing is to make such proposals for the
good both of Europeans and Americans, for we are more alike in what we value
than we sometimes realize.
1. Andrew Naughtie, “Trump
Administration Warns Europe of ‘Civilisational Decline’ in New National
Security Strategy,” Euronews.com, 5 December 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
