Donald Trump’s transactional pursuit of US primacy and strongly nationalistic outlook have prompted a reappraisal of relations with Europe among US foreign policy thinkers, while the uncertain standing of US security commitments has prompted similar processes in Europe.
Such debates have in fact extended beyond the narrow remit of the foreign policy establishment into the political arena. Politics has thus acquired renewed centrality in transatlantic exchanges, so much so that the future of the US-European alliance will be severely affected by how ideological imperatives will be reconciled with the hard realities of geopolitics and economic security.
The traditional view of the transatlantic relationship as a political-security community based on common values and shared interests remains alive in the United States, even if no longer dominant. Mainstream Democrats and Republicans continue to regard European states as critical to containing Russia and to US military projection into the Middle East and Africa, while Europe’s commercial and regulatory power matters in the geoeconomic rivalry with China. Most of them also value the transatlantic relationship as a liberal-democratic framework through which US global leadership gains more legitimacy.
Democrats à la Biden have tended to frame the alliance with Europe as part of a broader struggle between democracy and autocracy. Atlanticist Republicans, mostly out of fear of incurring in Trump’s ire, put greater emphasis on strategic competition with America’s rivals. They agree with Trump that the Europeans should shoulder a much greater defence burden but are opposed to a significant downsizing of US military presence in Europe. Mainstream conservatives are cooler than mainstream progressives on greater EU-level integration of defence capabilities and markets, but they both support stronger industrial defence ties across the Atlantic.
The mainstream assumption of Europe’s strategic value for the United States is being equally questioned by Trump and the ‘new right’ movement that has found in him the conduit to move from the fringes to the centre of the political stage.
Trump, who remains very much keen on American primacy, sees European dependencies on the United States in defence, finance, technology and energy as points of pressure that can be exploited. The Trump Administration has accordingly pressed Europeans to orient greater military spending towards purchasing US weapons and increase their imports of US liquefied natural gas (LNG), and imposed tariffs and demanded the repeal of EU laws regulating digital markets and content moderation on social media platforms. Trump has repeatedly questioned the US commitment to NATO, threatened Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland, and stopped direct military transfers to Ukraine. Such tactics have yielded mixed results: the Europeans have agreed not to adopt counter-tariffs and pledged grater imports of US LNG but otherwise have been able to diversify their defence procurement options, strike new trade deals and protect their digital regulations.
Still, Trump’s rhetoric has given legitimacy to the proposition that Europeans are a liability in the US conservative electorate, which is where the new right comes in. American national conservatives view Europe the cradle of a Western civilisation defined by history, Christianity and ethnic homogeneity. From their perspective, contemporary Europe has betrayed its inheritance by allowing immigration from foreign civilisations and pursuing the supranational and technocratic project of European integration. This is the ideological root of the US Administration’s pledge, included in the US National Security Strategy of 2025, to support “patriotic” forces, meaning anti-EU and nationalist forces.
These forces’ conception of the West does not translate into support for the institutions and strategic commitments traditionally associated with transatlanticism. This produces a striking transformation in the meaning of transatlantic relations, the significance of which becomes less strategic and more political. The nationalists’ objective is convergence in political battles fought primarily at home – over immigration, identity, “woke” culture and globalist or technocratic elites, as well as the EU. Networks of parties, politicians and think tanks on both sides of the Atlantic facilitate this crosspollination, providing ideas, platforms and mutual legitimisation.
”"Ideological convergence does not eliminate strategic needs.”
Yet ideological convergence does not eliminate strategic needs. Right-wing nationalist forces in Poland and the Baltic states view Russia very differently from their counterparts in France, Germany or Italy. Economic nationalism can similarly generate conflicts between governments supposedly united by the same ideological agenda.
The Trump Administration’s tariffs and challenge to Denmark over Greenland have exposed these tensions. American nationalists can rely on the enormous asymmetry of power between the United States and individual European countries. European nationalists enjoy no comparable advantage when their national interests collide with those of Washington or other European states. The result is the possibility of a transatlantic relationship that becomes increasingly politicised and destrategised: a coalition held together by ideological affinity even when its members disagree about strategic interests.
Europe’s mainstream forces have meanwhile responded to the Trump challenge through a combination of accommodation, greater intra-European cooperation and attempts to reduce structural dependencies through EU initiatives. None of these responses offers an easy solution. Accommodation preserves access to US security guarantees but exposes Europe to continued pressure from Washington. Greater EU integration could reduce structural vulnerabilities but faces significant political and institutional constraints. More flexible cooperation among groups of European countries can produce quicker results, particularly on defence and Ukraine, while remaining connected to NATO and the United States. These responses are beginning to change the old Atlanticist-Europeanist debate. Greater European capacity no longer necessarily implies detachment from the United States. It can instead be conceived as a way of preserving transatlantic cooperation while reducing excessive dependence on Washington.
Geopolitical pressures continue to provide powerful incentives to preserve the alliance. This could produce a reconstituted alliance in which Europe carries greater weight and enjoys greater autonomy even if the structural asymmetry with the United States persists. But geopolitics does not automatically trump ideology. A nationalist and confrontational United States or far-right governments in such countries as France or Germany could severely weaken European integration and pull the transatlantic relationship in a very different direction. Europe could become more fragmented and therefore more, rather than less, dependent on external powers – the Unites States included – and more prone to inter-European infighting. The central tension in transatlantic relations today revolves around this tension between geopolitics and ideology.
Riccardo Alcaro
Research Coordinator and Head of Global Competition and Geopolitical Risk
Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI)
Italy
