What is the European Dream?
The first thing to understand about the US imperialist turn is that the goal is not to dismantle the European Union, but to turn it into a dependent colony from which to extract profits, a "neither with you nor without you" similar to the relationship that Spain has with Catalonia. Because we often see the European Union as the most egalitarian project in history, a political construction designed to have the best green, labour, privacy regulations, etc. But, in its institutional design, Europe is also a set of institutions that protect the market from the democratic parliaments of each nation. As with the Catalan case, the worst nightmare for the United States would be a sovereign Europe that decided on the wealth generated in its territory or on its own geopolitics. The new American dream is not that Europe disappears, but that a legal web remains that traps Europeans in a savage competition for crumbs; a European market without European democracy.
As economic historian Quinn Slobodian points out, we often think of the rich and powerful as wanting “less state,” but the reality is that markets don’t work without an extremely strict set of laws to protect them; there are no markets in the jungle. Just think of the bailout of the banks and what the EU did to opposing parties, or how an independent European Central Bank prioritizes controlling inflation over wage growth. The story of neoliberalism is not one of the disappearance of the state, but of the creation of transnational institutions that subjugate nation states. When we hear JD Vance and Elon Musk applauding the AfD, it’s because they say they will do what Meloni or Orbán did when they came to power: loosen social laws while tightening the economic tyranny of the current EU.
The American gamble is risky. According to the assumptions of the liberal order we now consider dead, cooperation should yield more results than domination. From the consolidation of the dollar as a global currency to military tutelage through NATO, the United States has reaped many benefits that could disappear if Europe makes good on the so-far rhetorical calls to spend more on defense, reindustrialize, or revive domestic demand to become less dependent on exports. And conversely: if the Americans have their way, their attack will make perfect sense. What is at stake in the coming years is the possibility of a new world without Europe's legacy as a counterweight.
Because the big problem is that Europe has been seen too much as an economic project and not as a civilization with its own mission. Here it is worth being unabashedly Eurocentric and not paying attention to certain theories of deconstruction that, despite claiming to be left-wing, have been more useful to economic power than to citizens. Because the European Union does not need more power or more resources, but a political vision that channels them. The construction of a cohesive federation, like any nation, depends on a credible myth that makes you feel part of the same emotional community with ties of solidarity. Despite the relative decline, the European Union still has enough capital to become an independent block.
Since the ideals of Europe and the United States as the continuation of the same world have been discussed many times, I find a division that the philosopher and journalist Bruno Maçaes makes in his book especially useful in order to rethink ourselves. History has begun. According to Maçaes, Europeans think about resolving the contradictions of reality, while Americans think about escaping from reality. When modern society began to make Western man feel trapped in the complexity of politics and technology, Europeans invented socialism, which is the idea of changing reality by cooperating, while Americans radicalized capitalism, which is the promise of solving problems by competing. The European tradition sees itself as the heir of classical modernity, with a focus on stable institutions, the rule of law and a rational vision of politics and society, while the only philosophical current born in America is postmodernism, which is the ability to reinvent oneself through pop culture, social networks and spectacle politics. Today, Americans rely everything on the magical power of technology, while Europeans have lost confidence in institutions.
The American dream may be so dynamic that it erases the European legacy and reduces us to a colony. But if we can criticize the Americans, it is because we have a European tradition that remembers the contradictions of unbridled power, and that has more than enough tools to propose a better alternative. Mixed up for decades with the United States, we have lost our own point of view. Now that pressure makes everything clearer, we should take advantage of it to enhance what differentiates us from the United States, rather than playing its game and its rules.