London is a fraught place from which to watch an American revolution.
There is an amusing local story, that King George III spent many hours poring over military plans in a basement near Buckingham Palace, scheming how best to supress troublesome revolutionaries. That basement, the rumour goes, was located in what is now Chatham House: my new professional home after leaving Washington and life as a US diplomat last year.
Throughout America’s War of Independence, Great Britain’s leaders dumped blood and treasure into securing their rebellious colonies, intent on overcoming their scrappy but capable countrymen: revolutionaries who sought religious liberty and freedom to dissent. Revolutionaries who opposed unjust taxation and exploitative trade relations. Revolutionaries who rejected the status quo.
King George’s basement plotting was for naught, and a new nation was born. Today, 250 years later, leaders in Britain – and across Europe – once again watch with trepidation as new political currents take root across the Atlantic.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but in the US its echoes carry a similar spirit of revolt. This movement is not directed at an outside power, but rather at the current system’s ability to address Americans’ biggest worries: the availability and affordability of healthcare above all, followed by issues including the economy, inflation, federal spending and the deficit, and income and wealth distribution.
While many Americans agree on the diagnosis, there’s sharp division on the remedies. Some call for reining in expansive US military commitments abroad and redirecting war spending to focus on investments at home. Others hope to dismantle the billionaire class and promote greater economic justice. Some seek a consolidation of executive power to unleash the authority of the presidency. These are live debates heading into the November midterms, and they cut across party lines.
Europe’s view
European leaders, observing this storm, wonder what will remain when the tempest subsides. They recognize these winds blowing across the US for what they are: not a short-lived gust but a sustained gale. They know that irrespective of who next presides over the Congress or sits behind the White House’s Resolute Desk, the US is fundamentally altering its role in the world. Plans must be made to account for a more inwardly focused US, one that is less embedded in alliances and less aligned on values.
This is not a new American story. As the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence, the new United States began an awesome project of stitching together a vision for its role in the world – no small feat given the composition of its often-divided citizenry.
President George Washington warned against alliances and entanglements, worried that permanent structures would weigh the new nation down with others’ burdens. His successors largely stayed the course. It took Pearl Harbor to drag a reluctant President Roosevelt into war in Europe.
The post-Second World War structure was a new, American-crafted design, launching the most powerful set of interlocking alliances the world had ever seen. US troops ensured the security of partners on bases across six continents, paid for with ballooning federal deficits. Liberalized trade brought cheap goods but closed factories in the US. New immigrants made America an engine of innovation but fuelled a nativist backlash. President Trump did not spark such fears, but he stoked them.
As Americans begin the process to select Trump’s successor, competing visions for the US’s future will emerge. Candidates will debate the true nature of the threat from China, how much time to spend on Russia, the contours of a fairer trade regime, the rules of the road for emerging technology, and the future of alliances.
Whoever wins, Europe is right to anticipate a different relationship with the US. Today’s era, of a Washington that prioritizes American manufacturing and higher trade barriers, is here to stay. A period of greater burden-sharing with partners and a more limited global US defence role will outlast Trump. So too will the president’s transactionalism, and narrower conceptions of national interest.
For those of us who still believe in the value of alliances, it’s not all doom and gloom. These alliances will endure in newer forms. The scope will be narrower, but the US still needs Europe when it comes to global financial markets, emerging technology cooperation, intelligence sharing, select military cooperation, and alignment on China.
Europe needs the US too – maybe a bit too much, as its leaders have painfully learned. But Europe is now making key investments in NATO spending, an independent defence industrial base delinked from US defence trade, greater sovereign AI capabilities, and space and satellite infrastructure. Fear of US dependency has accelerated these investments, but in the long run, they can be converted into sources of transatlantic strength.
I recently hosted a former US official in conversation with diplomats in London. Like me, this person was pessimistic about the prospects for a restoration of trust with Europe post-Trump. But, the visitor observed, many loveless marriages survive because one spouse keeps cutting the grass and the other keeps cooking dinner. ‘What are these tasks?’ another wondered: that is, what bonds might keep the US–Europe marriage intact?
In my view, it goes something like this: the US provides Europe with a nuclear umbrella, integration in US capital markets and preferential access to American technology. Europe grants the US access to its capital, offers secure supply chains for key technology inputs and extends the reach of its sanctions.
As Europe takes on fuller ownership of its own neighbourhood, especially across its eastern flank, the US will be freed up to look east. The shared language of democracy and universal values are no longer centred. But the US and Europe remain bound together, joyless yet committed.
The multitude
King George III marched over to Parliament in October 1775 to detail his war plans against the ‘unhappy and deluded Multitude’ in America. He promised to ‘receive the Misled with Tenderness and Mercy’ once they realized the error of their ways.
The revolutionaries may have been unhappy as British cannons tore into their defences, but they were certainly not deluded. The multitude went on to build a nation that has reshaped history, underwriting an era of security and prosperity for many, though not all.