United States - Europe: from allies to enemies?
If on April 12th Viktor Orbán loses the elections, as the polls predict, Hungary will join the European countries where the far-right has peaked, like Marine Le Pen in the French municipal elections, or like in Italy, where Giorgia Meloni failed in a key call in the referendum on justice. The possible defeat of Orbán and the triumph of the liberal right of Péter Magyar would add to the siege of indications and suspicions that hangs over the Hungarian prime minister, accused of having leaked confidential information from the European Union to Vladimir Putin, as well as placing all sorts of obstacles to European support for Ukraine.
Orbán shares the fondness for espionage and intrigues in favor of Moscow with the also far-rightist –although he calls himself a social democrat– Robert Fico, head of the government of Slovakia. A tandem, that of Orbán-Fico, which has functioned as the hard core of the far-right Trojan horse within the EU, and where great cracks are now beginning to be detected. A set of sequences that Donald Trump does not like at all because they do not fit his predictions made about Europe at two crucial moments in 2025.
First, in February, at the Munich Security Conference, where Vice President J.D. Vance proclaimed the decline of Europe and its democracy, as well as the need for the far-right to seize power. That is why Vance did not hesitate to meet with the neo-Nazis of Alternative for Germany. Later, in November, the anti-European episode would be repeated when the new US National Security Strategy was made public, which insisted on placing the EU on the path of perdition and on damaging freedom by repressing the opposition. That is, the far-right admirers of Trump, some also devotees of Putin.
It does not seem, therefore, that the curses cast by Trumpism are coming true. The EU said the first no
to the US in Davos, at the beginning of the year, when some top EU leaders – despite having accepted the tariffs a few weeks earlier – made it very clear that Greenland is off-limits. The first forceful refusal that the American president had to face. And does Donald Trump wonder that, after more than a year of falsehoods, insults, humiliations, and threats, Europe maintains another no, even stronger, to his demand to get involved in the war, sending military units to the Strait of Hormuz?
The decline of the US
Intense is the loneliness that begins to surround Donald Trump, and which makes his rhetorical juggling acts become something akin to grotesque parodies. It is clear that Trump's arrival in power is not a renaissance, but a decline of the USA. A decline in which the ruling elite will feel increasingly isolated. And meanwhile, it seems that Europe is beginning to unashamedly dispense with the reflections, between fearful and sweetened, of the head of NATO, Mark Rutte, who is struggling to make it seem as if the USA is still an ally of Europe, when reality tells us that it is not even a trustworthy partner.
The one who seems to have it clearest is Paul de Grauwe, an academic at the London School of Economics, when he says with forcefulness: “It is evident that the United States is currently Europe's number one enemy. They want to destroy us and spread irrational hatred among us.” The citizens of the European Union who have realized this are, possibly, many of those who with their vote have begun to put a stop to the French and Italian far-right. And also those who on April 12 will vote against Viktor Orbán.