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2025/02/26
In his speech, U.S. Vice President Vance spoke of a break between the U.S and the old continent, arguing that the values that Europe and the European Union have claimed to uphold are no longer in tune with that of the U.S. This was taken by most as an offense and an unacceptable lecturing by the senior partner, with some taking a more sober outlook of taking it as a reasonable criticism, highlighting that Europe in its hubris has gone too far. It downsized its military, let in millions of migrants disguised as refugees, abusing the antiquated humanitarian law, while it punishes free speech and suppresses democracy.
Few attempted to retort these claims by re-enforcing European states' status as economically and politically free nations, with free and fair elections, while emphasizing that the limits on speech and the democratic standards that ensure secure and predictable political transition are things that safeguard European democracy, not hinder it.
But this approach is faulty.
Here is why.
"(We) believe that it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values—values shared with the United States of America."
A very apt observation by JD Vance. But myopic. Yes, it is true that the Europeans appear to have abandoned their values in favor of a whole plethora of strange and exotic beliefs. It is not just the immigration that is fuelling this impression but decades, almost a century long lethargy induced after the two bloodiest world wars in history.
What exactly are the values that JD Vance is talking about?
Well, he goes on to claim that it involves Romanian courts nullifying the elections results because a candidate with confirmed ties to Moscow has won the elections.
He goes on about how this is unacceptable since the Cold War is won and we must accept that if we are on the same team, we must not do something like that.
So how do we respond to this?
Very simple. The constitutional measures erected since the 1945 and 1989 exist to prevent European countries from sliding into totalitarism - something Americans have very little experience in.
Furthermore. If the voice of the people is a concern, remember the first elections in Czechoslovakia following the end of the World War II. Soon after the Communist party took the majority in the national parliament, the Soviet troops staged a coup and destroyed the democracy. That was followed by a large outflow of refugees into Western nations - also serving as a catalyst to the current refugee humanitarian law that rules Europe. So should we blindly accept outcomes of democratic elections, no matter what? Of course not. Democracy has a purpose - to uphold and safeguard the nation. In his wisdom, Turkey's founder, Atatürk, made the army the guardian of the nation, not the "will of the people". Look what happens when that principle is abandoned.
The last time Americans had a totalitarian president was Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose portraits decorated everything from real life government offices to film stages - something that seems too farcical and improbable to happen today. But there was a more sinister example in President Lincoln, whose wartime measures during civil war, including violent conscription of men and the destruction imposed upon the slaveowning South, are all but an echo from the past.
A far worse and more violent destruction is not an echo of the past here in Europe. It's the reality we live in. We see the destruction every day, and we see lives wrecked by it. For the last decade we saw a large influx of Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan refugees on one hand. And since 2022 we saw a large influx of Ukrainians coming over to save their lives from what can be deemed a new Holocaust - a systematic destruction of the Ukrainian national identity, statehood and even their religion.
Europe is accomodating to these people not because Europeans are so generous, but because it is the law and the duty of individual European states and the European Union in particular, which was made law because the last time Europe had unchecked "democracy", it resulted in a war that subjugated half of the continent to Communist tyranny (whose threat never went away) and the other half became dependent on the U.S. - which included importing the very values and ideas that JD Vance is now criticizing!
So yes, maybe Europe should go back to its values - the values that Americans seem to be more accomodating nowadays. Values like strong militaristic autocracies. Maybe small European states like Lithuania or even the forementioned Romania, no longer able to rely on American protection due to "values" being not in right place, should obtain their own nukes.
After all, if a country faces an existential threat without being able to protect itself in a prolonged conventional war of attrition, then its only deterrent is to make the aggressor suffer unacceptable losses.
Nuking Moscow and its dozen million people is such deterrent. Taking out just five or six cities in Russia is all one needs: the "capital cities" of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the industrial heartlands in south Urals, the Siberian towns of Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk, as well as Khabarovsk and Vladivstok.
Meanwhile, JD Vance is correct, there are enemies in within. In the Czech Republic, the leader of the opposition "populist" ANO party is openly defying Trump's people's call to begin re-armament of the nation, while the newly elected CDU leader Merz in Germany is now facing the AfD, which, despite its alleged flirtations with "neo-nazism" shares the left's and the Greens' agenda of preventing the nation's re-armament while hooking up to the natural gas from Russia no matter what. How odd.
One could swear these guys sound like they are playing in favor of the other team.
In a situation where Europe is flooded - on one hand - with refugees from Africa and Syria, ravaged by Russia's PMCs and military bombardment, and by Russian-sponsored "far-right" (or how I call it - "faux right"), perhaps the curtails of the "freedom" to subvert our continent are not sufficient.
Perhaps we should rethink if the values that Americans want us to share with them are detrimental to Europe's security. Just like they were detrimental since the Cold War, where the stupid ideas rejected by the US political elites were implanted from the insane minds of the American Left into the schools and campuses that taught Europe's current leaders, preaching disarmament, taxpayer-funded humanitarianism and pacifism on one hand, and free market Capitalism preached by the hedge fund oligarchs on the other. As a result we have slashed defense budgets and mass migration - the ideal combination that disrupts and subverts Europe.
So yes, the threat from within exists. But Europe's laws and measures are insufficient to fight it. Perhaps, we should take a page out of the book autocrats that befriend Trump and his advisors are playing? Countries like Azerbaijan, Turkey, UAE, Singapore and Qatar aren't facing the same criticism, then maybe they are doing something right? A food for thought.
"If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with."
Yes, you are one hundred percent correct, JD Vance. Democracy in Romania is very fragile. Do you know why?
30 years ago, Romania was run by ex-Communists officials who had no choice but to embrace free market, free elections and deregulation or face going down into the same abyss that Yugoslavia just faced, right over the border.
In Europe democracy sometimes leads to atrocity. When Bosnian Muslims decided to declare independence, it turns out their Serb Orthodox neighbours weren't as enthusiastic about it. What happens in a democracy when you don't like the election results? That's right, you kill the opposing voter. Hence you got the Srebrenica genocide.
If democracy worked in most of Europe without foreign support, it would have been successful for thousands of years, but no universal suffrage democracy existed in Europe until the 20th century. And even such examples as Switzerland, often hailed as one of Europe's oldest democracies, didn't have female suffrage until 1970s. Moreover, take its neighbour and arguably the richest country per capita in Europe - Liechtenstein. Not only did not let women vote until 1981, its constitutional system is absolute monarchy in all but name.
The sad reality is, democracy made Europe weak. If Moscow-led Communism turned Europe into vassal states of the Russians, the Americans were generous enough to let Europe stay free and go along the course they choose as long as it is not Communism, even if that involved flirting with Moscow.
And if we go back to Romania. Even if its democracy is weak. What's not weak, is the willingness of Romanians to kill a tyrant - round him and his wife up, and shoot point blank. How many Americans can do that much?
Today, almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all-time high. It’s a similar number, by the way, in the United States—also an all-time high. The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone. And, of course, it’s gotten much higher since. And we know the situation, it didn’t materialize in a vacuum. It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent, and others across the world, over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city. And, of course, I can’t bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims who had a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and will remain with them. But why did this happen in the first place?
Here I have to concede to JD Vance once again and confirm that he is absolutely right here. But how did this happen in the first place?
The refugee laws that take away sovereignty of governments over humanitarian migrants (refugees and asylum seekers) were a part of the deal that had to be made after the World War II because of how much devastation the whole continent had to go through.
These laws stem from the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951. European states uphold the laws that they enact, even if they are part of treaties signed almost a century ago. Unlike countries like Egypt, which refuses to take up refugees from Syria, European judicial systems were exemplary in upholding the humanitarian law. And that is the problem.
Yet I don't see the same criticism launched at Egypt, let alone countries like Qatar or the Saudi Arabia, which are not part to such treaties.
The only way to answer JD Vance's criticism resolutely is to say "OK, fine!" and unilateraly exit the treaty system, which should also involve leaving the European Union, whose Treaty upholds the convention's rules.
But leaving the EU alone will not solve it - Britain is a proof of that. Indeed, one can argue that the refugee and migration problem only gotten worse since the country left the Union.
Hence, though the criticism is right, addressing it will involve undermining the very nature of the international law that makes Europe what it is.
If that's what the Trump administration wants, then why not indulge it? Just remember that things that you wish for might just happen, and you won't like the result. The same "faux right" populists that are being inspired by Trump's 2024 victory now can very quickly change their rhetoric come next U.S. elections.
Look at the other side of the globe, where Japan refused to re-arm for decades, despite having a capacity not only for conventional re-armament but for nuclear weapons.
There is no guarantee that once they realize the U.S. protectorate status is gone, they might not engage into a jingoistic rage, blaming the Americans for Japan's political and social ills.
For those with a short memory, that's what the real "far right" has done in Europe since the 1990s, including blaming the United States (and rightfully so) for imposing the hate speech laws as a part of the denazification drive in Germany, which was spilled over to other countries, including neutral Switzerland and Austria.
Lastly, any dreams or delusions to turn Europe into a "melting pot" was, again, an American import, driven by intellectuals inspired by the United States' assumed success in assimilating newcomers. Even the very idea of forming a united European superstate is an attempt to emulate America. So, if the United States are keen on urging Europe to dismantle the American worldview, then I only welcome that. But don't be surprised if the outcomes fall short of your expectations.
If the Trump administration and the American people do not like Europe at its current state, then wait till they see Europe built upon the foundations that they do not share with the United States. Perhaps it won't be an absolutist monarchy, serfdom and religious fanaticism. It surely won't attract migrants and refugees either. But don't expect it to be friendly to the Americans - not one single bit.
Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t.
Here Vance addresses the "Firewall" that was set up by mainstream parties in Germany to counter the influence of the pro-Russian AfD party. And he is correct.
Democracy rests on that principle. But Europe is not about a democracy. Europe is a homeland to European peoples concerned with their survival, not moronic principles of flawed backwards philosophers from the Enlightenment era. Perhaps if democracy disappears tomorrow, being the defining feature of America, then the United States will disappear with it. But if democracy disappears in Europe tomorrow, Europe and its nations will continue to exist.
This is something Americans will never understand but Europeans do.
Even PM Thatcher, a staunch critic of the left-leaning European elites, said it very well:
The European nations are not and can never be like this (i.e. like America). They are the product of history and not of philosophy.
Though she was bashing the European Union (and rightfully so!) in her criticism, her words are coated in a new meaning when we see Americans try to critcizie our countries.
Indeed, Europe, having a plethora of small and diverse states, with their own languages and distinct populations, will never be united by democratic values, especially if they are used to subvert European nations' very nationhood. Why? Because if it happens and leads to a disaster, then those very values will remain discredited for eternity.
That is why the criticism, though valid, should be doubled towards the United States. The post-war Europe was a creation of Yalta, where the United States and weakened and bloodied Soviet Union split the continent in two. Likewise, the post-1989 Europe was a consensus between Reagan-Bush and Gorbachev, with the latter failing to preserve and transform the Soviet Union due to Russia's own ineptitude.
Thus, if there is any conclusion a European can make from this, it is that the United States has continuously thrown Europe under the bus, kept it down and subjugated to one power or another. Hence, to really become independent, European countries must not mimic the United States, mainly due to conflicting messages that we keep getting from it, but instead, we must have our own path to survival, including not just nuclear armament (and we do have the means AND the resources for it), but once the ICBMs are deployed, they do not just target Moscow, but Washington as well.
Sounds scary? Yes. But that's the reality. The reality that Americans chose for Europe to make for this world.