The new US National Security Strategy has confirmed a shift, one visible for a long time to many of us. No longer does America see Europe as an equal partner - it now sees us as another civilisation that it can manipulate according to its wishes. To respond to this challenge, Europeans must go beyond simply defending integration.
The question that we are now facing is a far more fundamental, existential one. Europeans have to clarify the kind of federation that they are trying to build. Our federalism cannot be one that is morally neutral, without any clear principles. By failing to define what federalism in a European context means, it is at risk of devolving into exactly the same kind of illiberal regime that we now see inside Washington.
The Trump administration and the EU
For those of us in Europe that have not remained wilfully blind, the US National Security Strategy is just further evidence of reality under the Trump administration. America’s interpretation of ‘Western civilisation’ has become fundamentally incompatible with Europe’s. Now, it is hellbent to undermine the EU at every turn, not seeing a United States of Europe as a noble goal, but European disunity as being in its own national interest.
For the Trump administration, the EU represents a model of governance, values, and principles that it resents and actively seeks to erode and reshape in its own image. Deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, expressed this with a clarity unseen in the theatrics of figures such as JD Vance and Elon Musk:
"The US has long failed to address the glaring inconsistency between its relations with NATO and the EU. There are almost all the same countries in both organisations. When these countries wear their NATO hats, they insist that Transatlantic cooperation is the cornerstone of our mutual security. But when these countries wear their EU hats, they pursue all sorts of agendas that are often utterly averse to US interests and security - including censorship, economic suicide, climate fanaticism, open borders, disdain for national sovereignty, promotion of multilateral governance and taxation, and support for communist Cuba.”
Landau continues:
“This inconsistency cannot continue. Either the great nations of Europe are our partners in protecting the Western civilization that we inherited from them or they are not. But we cannot pretend that we are partners,while those nations allow the EU’s unelected, undemocratic, and unrepresentative bureaucracy in Brussels to pursue policies of civilisational suicide.”
A clash of fundamental values
The latest attack on us by the US is unsurprising. In an equally unsurprising Streisand Effect, amplified by Elon Musk’s regular diatribes on X, it has galvanised pro-European forces, emboldening the calls for a roadmap towards a truly federal Europe from organisations like the Union of European Federalists and the Young European Federalists.
However, Landau’s statement invites deeper introspection on our part. A closer reading reveals something essential: most of the issues the far-right Trump administration identify as threats are not related to institutional federalism. Instead, they relate to values - to the type of society that the US believes Europe should become. In theory, institutional federalism could be entirely compatible with those illiberal values.
Imagine a federal Europe with US-style “free speech”, a deregulated arena where billionaires and extremists dictate the boundaries of public discourse. A federal Europe that dismisses climate change, with a fossil-fuel dependent, pollution-heavy economy, piling the consequences on future generations and less economically developed regions. A federal Europe with inhumane border policies, a fortress where lethal force is used and extrajudicial deportations and racial profiling mirror US agencies under the Trump administration like ICE.
This would be a federal Europe ultimately governed by religious fanaticism, where racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry are mainstreamed and legitimised by politics. Nothing about institutional federalism automatically prevents any of the above. A federal Europe could be built on those foundations - but that is not the kind of Europe that any of us are fighting so hard to create.
Federalism is not just an engineering project
Often, the advocacy around forming a federal Europe focuses on the efficiency of its institutions, the optimisation of its economy, and its capacity to manage crises. These are important arguments for federalism, but as a case it remains incomplete. Federalism is a framework, not a guarantee. A big tent, not a political ideology. The values that animate it must therefore be as non-negotiable as the institutions.
Landau’s list of grievances unintentionally highlights the red lines that must define the Europe we are fighting for. A federal Europe must exclude public discourse that promotes neo-fascism and neo-Nazism. “Free speech” is not carte blanche for platforms like Elon Musk’s X to spread their vile hatred and bigotry. A federal Europe must make billionaires accountable to democracy and the rule of law, not placing any individual or corporation above regulation when it cries “censorship!” when it is rightfully sanctioned. A federal Europe must fight climate change responsibly and equitably, welcoming debates based on science while refusing climate denialism and radical individualism. A federal Europe must treat migration with humanity, not undermining the rule of law with its own ICE and dumping asylum seekers offshore like garbage. A federal Europe must reject bigotry in all of its forms as being utterly incompatible with it.
People often vote with their pockets, but they can be won by shared values and a common vision of society. “Federal Europe” is an empty container unless we properly outline what cannot be compromised in the pursuit of integration. Economic efficiency and institutional reform are central to the federal project, but they must advance together with human dignity, democratic accountability, and fundamental rights. A federal Europe is only worth building if all of these pillars stand side-by-side as its foundation.
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