After the big promises, but no results from the China trip, don’t expect U.S. President Donald Trump to go back to Europe and mend his ties with his allies. As Alexander Bobrov, head of diplomatic studies at Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN) and author of the book “The Grand Strategy of Russia,” argues, Trump is playing a game that has no endgame plan. It is about his mentality and his doctrine in everything, all the time.
In fact, Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) document, released last December, had shown the world that the U.S. would only seek aggressive rhetoric and brute force in order to secure exclusive American interests in the Western Hemisphere and to contain China. Regional U.S. vassals would carry the responsibility for the strategic security in Europe and the Middle East.
Europeans panicked, and as often happens in severe panic disorders, they quickly reached the fourth stage – severely debilitating anxiety that profoundly and constantly disrupted their daily lives. Like humans, states also find themselves unable to carry out simple daily security tasks due to the fact that they had transferred their basic defense capabilities to the Good Old United States 77 years ago. Some have no armies. Some have no navies. France has an aircraft carrier that has difficulty carrying itself, let alone warplanes.
When Trump assured Europeans at the Davos Forum that he would leave the U.S. bases intact – although he wanted sovereignty over the areas where the bases are located – Europeans wondered what harm could come from leaving a few yards of land to the U.S., especially if it meant shifting security responsibilities to American allies and investing the money saved into lucrative industries in America.
Some Europeans, like Hungary’s former Prime Minister Viktor Orban, allowed Trump to design, choreograph and direct all their security apparatus. Others, like Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz, saw an opportunity to recreate a Weimar-like military, the Reichswehr, which Hitler had used as a model for his Wehrmacht. And some, like French President Emmanuel Macron, believed they should reclaim the European leadership that was their national birthright.
The Trump effect has been tested in Hungary so far, and the national elections clearly showed that Orban’s U.S.-designed game against the European Union is not espoused by the people. The Hungarian people never fully comprehended whether Orban liked the country inside or outside of the EU.
But one thing was certain: they elected Peter Magyar as Hungary’s new leader, and he is a partisan of Europe. He wants his country to be in the EU because he believes that Hungary belongs to Europe. Magyar is not going to repeat Orban’s U.S.-designed game against EU, but it is my interpretation from his speeches and preliminary meetings with Hungarian and other European leaders that Magyar does not – let me put it nicely – like Ursula von der Leyen, a German politician who has served as president of the European Commission since 2019 and seemingly won’t leave until a night janitor drags her body from the office.
Orban hated von der Leyen with every fiber of his being. But one should not make the mistake of thinking that Europe was von der Leyen. Europe is Europe, and Ursula von der Leyen is merely a candidate for a pair of wings – I mean politically. Her policies are not the cause of the EU’s problems, but rather their effects.
“Europe has become a war project,” says Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist, academic and author who has served as secretary-general of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025. Jeffrey Sachs, an American economist and public policy analyst who currently serves as director of the Center for Sustainable Development, says that the project can be stopped.
Varoufakis and Sachs agreed in their joint discussion hosted by Mehran Khalili after the Munich Security Conference that Europeans should separate rhetoric from reality. There is “strategic autonomy” taking shape; simply, old dependencies are being reinforced. Still, they said Europe has room to maneuver. Maneuver towards what? That should depend on reality, not on one’s whims, including Trump’s China fiasco, the once-in-a-decade presidential visit which produced nothing, and the “endless” Iran war, which violates not only U.S. laws but also international law. The Europeans, after playing the ever-faithful lapdog of America, cannot limit themselves to whispering their opposition to the U.S. now becoming Israel’s (read: Zionism's) lapdog. They have existential questions to be answered.
Von der Leyen, Merz, Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer have so far turned their other cheek whenever Trump and his Israeli ally slapped them. Not anymore, says Magyar. He seems to be going to save his country from the Trumposity! (A new word, invented by the good people at WhereItzAt, meaning “the doctrine of belligerence and bombast as deterrence.”) He won the election for the Hungarian people; now he is going to do it for the whole of Europe: He’ll teach them how to reject the yoke of America.
Magyar’s "liberal conservatism" will address the problems of Europe. In other words, he’ll teach European leaders that they can help themselves to save from that rudderless alliance.
For instance, Austria-Hungary once again taught Europeans that they could form unions among themselves. Magyar says he will deepen ties with neighboring states, especially Austria, building on strong economic links and a shared history rooted in the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the late nineteenth century. “We used to share a country, and Austria is a key economic partner of Hungary,” Magyar said after his victory.
Europeans can work on their U.S.-choreographed EU and its real union for historical, cultural and economic reasons. In politics, as in physics, politics won’t condone a vacuum. Former European Commission Vice President Josep Borrell said the EU in its current form is not able to respond to today's fast-moving geopolitical realities. He argued that the bloc has become increasingly irrelevant in international affairs due to outdated decision-making structures.
Well, Hungary has more than Franz Liszt and goulash. Once they created the first multi-national constitutional dual empire consisting of two sovereign states. They taught Europeans to create (and maintain) unions 160 years ago. They can do it again.
