While Europe Reminisces About the Good Old Days, It’s Being Destroyed From Within

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.

Jack Fowler: I’m gonna bring up this Wall Street Journal, first of two major articles, are the United States and Europe divorcing or separating? And if so, is it a good thing or is it a bad thing?  

So, this is written by a trio of people and it’s titled “There Is No Going Back: The Inside Story of Europe’s Rupture with the USA.” 

I’ve written too many things here, Victor, but in its 250th year, has America, protector of Europe, now become a threat? In the months to come—this is after certain things happened, you know, when Donald Trump came into office again with Greenland and all sorts of things going on at that point—in the months to come, the January crisis meeting would be remembered by Europe’s most powerful figures as the moment that countries bound together by blood and a sense of shared destiny since the aftermath of World War II began to explore separate paths. Nobody has filed divorce papers, and important players on both sides are working hard to keep a loveless marriage going. 

Untangling the ties between Europe and the U.S. would be a massive undertaking. Then there’s stuff in here about Canada. But, interesting article, Victor. Is there a divorce happening? And is it a good thing? And is it a hostile divorce?  

Victor Davis Hanson: Well, the subtext of all that is there’s about two or three realities that explain this estrangement. 

No. 1, for 500 years, Europe was the fountainhead of Western civilization. It was since the Greeks, but I’m talking about the period, oh, 1500 into the 20th century. Major wars were fought there, Thirty Years’ War, Seven Years’ War, the Napoleonic Wars, the revolutions. That was where things happened. The capital, the financial capital of the world was London, and the cultural capital and scientific capital of the world was Paris. 

And by the late 19th century, with the unification of Germany, the industrial capital of the world for a while, it had overtaken Britain. And then this United States comes up, and it has a completely different way of doing things. Its constitution is different, its attitude is different, and it welcomes mostly from Europe what Europeans would call the rejects. 

These were the poor people, the people who had no land, the people who had no titles, and they expected us to fail. But it was actually a Darwinian process where the most bold, the most rugged, the most adventurous, the most gambling type of people from the English-speaking parts of Europe, from Germany, from Ireland, you name it, Italy, they all came over here, and from that period, from the Civil War to World War I, they just took over the world. 

And in World War II, we were the powerhouse. We had a GDP by 1944 that was larger than Germany, Italy, Japan, Soviet Union, Britain, all put together. We had a fleet that was bigger than all the warships in the world. And that changed everything for them. They had committed suicide twice in 1914 to 1918, and they repeated it in ’39. 

And in both cases, they got angry because we saved them, and they made a convincing argument. They said, “But we lost more people, and we fought from 1914 to April of 1917. You wouldn’t help us. And we fought from ’39 all the way to ’42, and you weren’t there.” 

And then we said, “It wasn’t our fight, but when we did get in, we were the difference why you won.” 

So, there was that tension.  

And in the Cold War, they’d said, “Yes, you have two oceans. You’re 7,000 miles away from the Soviet Union, so when they’re gonna overrun Europe, we can’t defend ourselves.” So, we said, “OK, we’ll keep troops there.” At one point, 375,000. So, they have lost that prestige and that power, but they still want to act as if they have it. 

So, Britain keeps talking about, “Well, we’re gonna do our part for the opening up the Strait [of Hormuz].” Well, what are you gonna do? Send the U.S. the HMS Dragon, one ship? You had one frigate that could sail or steam, and you couldn’t even get it to Cyprus for three weeks. And what’s the combined carrier force of the entire 450 million people in the EU? 

It’s about three carriers, and most of them are in repair. It’s not 10 or 11 fleet carriers with whole fleet auxiliary ships like the United States Navy, which is now having to rebuild, get even bigger.  

So, there’s such an imbalance in economy. The EU was supposed to overtake us in 20 years, we were told in 2001. 

It’s 10 trillion smaller as far as GDP, 20 trillion to 31. Things didn’t work out. And then they adopted this utopian, arrogant, narcissistic agenda of green energy, shut down coal, shut down nuclear, shut down natural gas. They ruined the German economy, which anchored all of Europe. They opened their borders. 

The single biggest villain, she’s gonna be the Europe’s version of Anthony Fauci, was Angela Merkel. She destroyed Europe. She said, yes, we can. We’re gonna open the borders. She demonized the Eastern Europeans who said we’re not gonna do it. And they flooded Europe with honest, unassimilated illegal aliens, 16% of the population in countries like Germany. 

And then, in addition to that, they went socialist, and in addition to that, they went pacifist. And then, the world caught up with them, and they thought, “Well, we can buy natural gas from Russia, and we’ll tame Russia with Nord Stream pipelines.” No, you won’t. You’ll make yourself dependent upon an ex-communist thuggery, thuggocracy. 

Well, we don’t need to be armed because the dull-witted, brutal United States will always come over when we philosophers tell it where to go. Go to Chad, help us in the Falklands, go to the Balkans, go to Libya, bring all those big jets and all that firepower, and then we’ll kind of sit in the back and have our cappuccino and tell you where to bomb and do all this. 

And Trump came along and said, “Can’t afford it anymore. I’m sorry. What have you done?” So, all they had to do, it was not very hard to do.  

They did have a $20 trillion GDP. All they had to do was about 10 years ago just make 2%. 2% of their GDP of each country in defense. And when Trump came in office in 2017, I think they only had six of the 31 NATO countries were doing it. 

No. 2, all they had to do was keep quiet when the United States was acting unilaterally in their interest. I’m not saying and just keep quiet and just don’t even join the U.S. if you don’t want to but let them use your airspace and joint bases that we paid for in many cases.  

So, Spain, France, U.K., Germany, Italy, all you had to do was just say, “This was a United States mission. We support the idea that we want a nuclear-free Iran, and we support Donald Trump trying, finally dealing with the problem. And to the extent that we are obligated to a NATO power, we, in our own way, and we’re not gonna disclose how, we will aid our [ally].” 

That’s all I had to say one time. 

They couldn’t do that. All they did was, “We are not going to let them use Diego Garcia.” 

“Well, we’re gonna top that. We’re not gonna let you use our big base in Spain.” 

“Well, we can top that. You can’t land in Sicily like you’d like to.” 

“Well, we can top that. I’m Macron, France. Well, you can’t fly over our airspace.” 

And, “This isn’t our war,” in Germany. Remember [Chancellor Friedrich] Merz? So, they went out of their way to antagonize Trump and the United States. And then, that’s where the situation is. It’s a country that used to rule the waves of the world, of continents. The Dutch, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the French, the British, they ran the world. 

And now it is being overrun by illegal aliens. It’s being destroyed by socialism and green ideology, and it’s getting weaker and weaker and weaker. And it’s getting more arrogant and more arrogant and more arrogant about this lost power and influence they used to enjoy.  

And they know the medicine. They know the medicine. They have 450 million people. They’re very bright people. In some ways, they’re better educated than we are. And all they have to do is make about eight reforms, and they could get back on their feet and be a full equal partner with the United States, and they won’t do it.  

The medicine is worse than the disease for them. 

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