Opinion Sur
My title is a paraphrase, uttered with tongue in cheek, of a well-known injunction to French citizens by Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis De Sade, in a satirical pamphlet about the nascent republic. He titled It “Français : Encore un effort si vous voulez être Républicains. » It was a call to seize the moment. That was 1795 in Paris. Now it is 2025 in all of Europe and about its place in the world.
The United States of America is too young to proclaim victory in the current geopolitical sweepstakes. The slogan “Make America Great Again” has a fatal flaw in the last word, because it harks back upon a past that did not exist.[1] But Europe can draw on a very long past of good and bad that does in fact exist, and it can choose the best gems of its long and checkered history. “Make Europe Great Again” is a slogan that makes sense to me. So why not MEGA? Because the acronym has been hijacked by MAGA in an attempt that would surprise even George Orwell as an exercise in Newspeak. This so-called MEGA proposes to disengage several European countries from the EU, in other words, it is an attempt to weaken Europe.[2] Instead I shall stick to my own version of MEGA in straight speech. Some would add LAB (Leave America Behind), but that’s for the Chinese to try.
In the recent “strategic” document produced by the Trump administration berating Europe for its sins and expressing a contempt that is a screen placed upon resentment, many nasty things are said that are, however, true[3]. They are sprinkled like a vinegary dressing on a wilted salad of absurdities.
Europe is tired and complacent, it does not have the will to fight for its own values, it substitutes overregulation for grand strategy, it produces too little that can compete in a world of dog-eat-dog (called multipolar instead of multilateral), and is frightened of losing the American defense umbrella just as it begins to rain and hail.
The American strident document (it does not mention either Russia or China but insults Europe instead) should have, nevertheless, a salutary effect. It shakes complacency and debunks half-truths. But it does not propose remedies that are in the best interest of Europe, and flatter only the short vision of American defense, when in fact they only accelerate America’s muscular decline. There is a better remedy for such boastful myopia which consists of a courageous turn around. Those versed in Continental philosophy may call it dialectic.
-1-
First, what the “anti-woke” gang in the White House considers a “decadent” culture in Europe is one of the pillars of European strength. Considering the humanities, scientific achievements, and concerns for universal rights, European culture is alive and well, and not just “the world of yesterday,” to use the melancholy phrase by Stefan Zweig[4]. European culture deserves to be proclaimed loud and clear, urbi et orbi. I bet it will find enthusiasts around the globe.
In 1939, when Nazism cast a shadow of death upon European society and culture, many of the most talented persons migrated to America, where they established centers of light and learning like the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton or The New School for Social Research. On that occasion, a scholar wrote this:
”Is it not a curious fact that in a world steeped in irrational hatreds which threaten civilization itself, men and women -old and young- detach themselves wholly or partly from the angry current of daily life to devote themselves to the cultivation of beauty, to the extension of knowledge, to the cure of disease, to the amelioration of suffering, just as though fanatics were not simultaneously engaged in spreading pain, ugliness, and suffering?”[5] Those men and women brought the best of hope in art and knowledge to America.
In these uncertain times, perhaps the US will have to return the favor that Hitler unwittingly bestowed, with Europe as the receptacle and a renewed center of light and learning. In short, a reverse migration of talent is about to happen. I should welcome a strong reaction to the pathetic reactionaries of today. The unabashed assertion of European values will elicit the assent of intelligent people on all sides of the political spectrum. The real clash of civilizations is between human (not artificial) intelligence and militant stupidity.
-2-
Second, Europe has an immigration problem that rings real in contrast to the exaggerated problem it has become in the United States, whose porous borders for decades favored cheap and unprotected labor to cover jobs that no American-born citizens deigned to take. It was good for business but stupid overall.
For some time now, Europeans make fewer babies than their economies need, so they opened the gates carelessly to an influx of people –legal or illegal, refugees or not—from as near as Northern Africa and as far as Central Asia, many bearing cultures that clash with European traditions, and making demands while refusing to integrate. Such people are burdens not assets. The fact that the far right capitalizes on this point and feeds on moral panics is no reason to ignore or dismiss the challenge.
When she opened the gates to one million immigrants from the Middle East, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “we can manage this.” Well, she didn’t. Seeking to fill gaps among the classes laborieuses, Europeans imported new classes dangereuses[6]. The question then remains: How to welcome immigrants that will contribute to and enrich European societies? It is a relatively novel task for a continent that in the past was a land of emigrants: people who could not make ends meet but were valiant enough to pack up and leave in chase of opportunities. They contributed to the flourishing of the Americas, from New York to Buenos Aires. Diversity redefined identity in a positive way. Today, a new European immigration policy, both stern and selective, could be managed in ways far superior and more rational than the current American ham-fisted approach.
-3-
Third, on infrastructure and defense, Europe today could well take a page or two from some earlier American experiences. The case for the latter has been well argued by the banker Felix Rohatyn, the “savior” of New York City in its hour of need in the 1970s. Felix Rohatyn was a strong advocate for large-scale public infrastructure projects[7], which he believed were essential for national economic prosperity, job creation, and international competitiveness. He argued that every great American president had championed such “bold endeavors,” citing historical examples like the Erie Canal, the transcontinental railroad, the Hoover Dam, the GI Bill, and the Interstate Highway System as transformative projects that bound the nation together and created greater prosperity. The Interstate Highway System, designed and realized during the presidency of a general who led the Allied forces in WWII, was intimately linked to the need to unite the nation in providing rapid linkage for the deployment of soldiers and armaments.
European leaders could well justify major investments as a smart “response” to the American prodding on spending larger sums for their own defense. Today China, the peer competitor to the West, calls its own such investment the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It is an astute strategic move.
The US is prodding European nations to increase their military budgets. More money for defense? Yes, but what kind of budgets should they be? More money to buy American weapons at the expense of tottering welfare systems, or more funds to strengthen the pillars of development? Great infrastructural projects, if properly designed, would tighten unity, and hence help overcome problems of collective action and win popular support.
Europe should not apologize to American bullies for the reluctance of its young population to be drafted to fight at old-fashioned fronts. The reluctance is not a sign of decadence but of high civilization. And besides, modern warfare is hybrid, largely asymmetrical, electronic, and automated[8]. It does not and should not depend much, as in Russia and Ukraine, on human cannon fodder. It follows the ancient maxim of general Sun Tzu: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”; it’s the highest form of skill to win by outthinking, outmaneuvering, and using intelligence, diplomacy, and strategy to break the enemy’s resistance or make battle unnecessary, achieving victory before conflict erupts through superior planning, understanding, and favorable circumstances, not brute force.
The proposal here presented is in essence Bismarckian, not pacifist, and therefore it should find acceptance among the right as well as the left. In other words, it follows the school of geopolitical realism. Russia should take notice, and America too.
[1] I find it amusing to observe how much the new American right idealizes America’s past and overstates the problems of the present. The reason seems to be a mixture of historical ignorance, lack of thinking in context, and anxiety about being displaced by rapid social and technological change. On the underlying dynamic, see Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
[2] See “The Heritage Foundation goes from MAGA to MEGA”, https://www.politico.eu/article/the-heritage-foundation-goes-from-maga-to-mega-make-europe-great-again-donald-trump-us-influence/
[3] See https://ecfr.eu/article/reading-trumps-national-security-strategy-europe-through-a-distorted-lens/
[4] Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday. An Autobiography, with an Introduction by Harry Zohn. Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Press, 1964 (first English edition, 1943). It is very much worth re-reading but taking out the sting of cultural despair.
[5] Abraham Flexner, “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge,” Harpers, Issue 179, June-November 1939.
[6] The terms were coined by Louis Chevalier (1958) in reference to stratification and criminality in Europe in the 19th century. Louis Chevalier, Classes laborieuses et classes dangereuses à Paris au XIXe siècle (Working Classes and Dangerous Classes in 19th-Century Paris). The book analyzed the Parisian working poor, linking their precarious living conditions (poverty, crime, madness, prostitution) to broader demographic and social anxieties, challenging historical views by showing how the poor were perceived as a threat to bourgeois society.
[7] Felix Rohatyn, Bold Endeavors. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011.
[8] These features await an updated edition of the classic book by Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation of War, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991, or a new book along a similar line.
