Why Maga came for Europe

Trump’s new right sees the continent as both ancestral home and ideological battleground.

From the vice-president down, US officials have cast themselves as being on a mission to save western civilisation from the continent they see as its cradle. 


Mass migration, curbs on speech and the surrender of national sovereignty, they argue, threaten not only the transatlantic relationship but the very idea of Europe.

“We don’t save the west if Europe doesn’t get its act together,” said Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think-tank that helped to draw up the agenda for Donald Trump’s second term. 

“I’ve been worried for a long time, for the better part of two decades, that Europe was committing civilisational suicide.” 

“The civilisation that we’re defending is 3,500 years old,” he added, tracing it back through Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London and Philadelphia. 

Maga’s stark new theory of the Atlantic alliance was set out by the US vice-president at the Munich Security Conference last year. Vance said the greatest threat to Europe came not from Russia or China but from “within” — its alleged divergence from the US on values such as freedom of speech.

Financial Times 17 August 2026

https://www.ft.com/content/c5e27ffb-cfb1-421b-8121-a402cf2d84ac?syn-25a6b1a6=1


Johan Hakelius om EU och ”det demokratiska överskottet” – irritationen över väljare som står i vägen för EU:s nödvändiga och oundvikliga utveckling.

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/08/johan-hakelius-om-eu-och-det.html


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