Europe’s nationalist demons are back, and they now have a mighty ally across the Atlantic, and it bodes ill
The US National Security Strategy marks a break with American postwar tradition, being semantically neutral toward adversaries like Russia and China, but vitriolic toward democratic mainstream politicians in Old Europe.
The strategy paper proclaims that the US goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory by cultivating resistance and aiding the growing influence of patriotic European parties, effectively putting Old Europe on notice that the US will meddle in its domestic politics.
As I re-read the frightening section on Europe in the new National Security Strategy of the United States, I couldn’t help but recall, with a rueful chuckle, a book titled The Postnational Constellation, by one of Europe’s most influential contemporary philosophers, Juergen Habermas.
Published in German in 1998, that text now sounds like the echo of utopian shibboleths favored by the postwar elites of what an American defense secretary once derided as “Old Europe” (in this context, the six founding members of what later became the European Union).
That post-national vision is now dead or dying, and America, Europe’s erstwhile protector and benefactor, is offering burial services.
The former European enemies were to join in an “ever closer union,” on the way to becoming the United States of Europe.
Germans were among the keenest post-nationalists. To feel good about themselves, they celebrated their subnational identities (as Bavarians, say) or their supranational belonging (as Europeans) but de-emphasized national pride, except in soccer.
When the European Economic Community (the EU’s forerunner) was born, President Dwight Eisenhower, celebrated “one of the finest days in the history of the free world, perhaps even more so than winning the war.”
“New Europe” consisted of countries that emerged only recently from a seemingly endless succession of empires (Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Prussian, Tsarist, Nazi, Soviet) and wanted to build, rather than transcend, the ethnically based nation state. The most extreme product of this yearning today is Hungary under Viktor Orban.
The document marks a stunning break with American postwar tradition, proclaims that “our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory” by “cultivating resistance” and aiding “the growing influence of patriotic European parties.”
Europe’s nationalist demons are back, and they now have a mighty ally across the Atlantic. We have entered a new era, and it bodes ill.
Andreas Kluth Bloomberg December 15, 2025
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-12-15/the-us-is-all-in-for-european-nationalism
Hökmark, PM Nilsson och EU om USA:s nya säkerhetsstrategi
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/12/hokmark-pm-nilsson-och-eu-om-usas-nya.html
Annika Ström Melin har läst en bok av Jürgen Habermas med titeln ”Om Europas författning”. Det skrev hon om häromdagen
https://www.nejtillemu.com/melinmening.htm#0212habermas
där hon förklarade att Habermas tror att medborgarnas protester bottnar i känslan av att något döljs för dem.
Det behöver man väl inte vara berömd tysk filosof för att förstå.
- Förr fanns det ledare som hade en riktning och en uttalad vilja med Europa. Men vart är dagens politiker på väg, frågade hon.
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2012/02/nej-annika-strom-melin-dom-har-aldrig.html
The Postnational Constellation is a 2001 collection of political essays by Jürgen Habermas in which he develops the idea that globalization has pushed politics beyond the classical nation‑state framework.
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