How Does an Entire Continent Fail?

This article originally appeared at The American Spectator on Feb. 25, 2025

The second Trump administration has hit the ground running, tackling the biggest problems faced by America and the world simultaneously. Some of the most vexing challenges facing humanity have their root in the European Union, which has created a spectacular failure for its member nations. Can President Trump and Vice President Vance force Europe to correct course before it slips away entirely?

We’re going to find out — because that’s exactly what the administration is pressuring them to do.

JD Vance Shocks Europe into Consciousness

In the speech heard ‘round the world, U.S. Vice President JD Vance addressed — and undressed — the Munich Security Conference on Valentine’s Day. Vance put the entire continent on notice with a single speech. There’s a new sheriff in town, he said, and business as usual is over. He spoke of the West’s “shared values” and how European nations have completely abandoned them. He correctly pointed out that the greatest problems faced by Europe were problems of their own making — something the attendees of the conference weren’t yet ready to grasp:

But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also 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.

Now, I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany, too.

Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years, we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values.

Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy, but when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard.

Telling the truth shocked the EU. How dare he violate international norms! (

RELATED: The Lies Are No Longer Uttered with Impunity: Vance’s Speech and Poland’s Crucial Election)

“We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them.” Who does he think he is?

Vance bemoaned what had become of the winners of the Cold War who had defeated global communism and the Soviet Union. He gave a laundry list of prosecutions by member nations of citizens for exercising their rights to free expression. Vance then pivoted to the other grave threat undermining Europe — mass migration from other parts of the globe that don’t share Western values, people who don’t wish to assimilate and uphold universal human rights. 

(RELATED: Letter to the Editor: A Report From Germany — Censorship and Hope, Vance’s Speech in Munich)

“No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants.” How dare he meddle in our elections! 

(RELATED: Stop the Steal in Romania: A Sinister Case)

Yes, how dare the Vice President of the United States give the Europeans the tough love they need, but don’t want?

The European Union is an Utter Failure

The venerable military historian Victor Davis Hanson has recently focused on the failures of the European Union. He notes their economic output used to slightly exceed that of the United States, but as it has grown, GDP has shrunk:

The more the European Union grew (from its 1997 six-member union to the current 27 members), the more, paradoxically, its aggregate GDP fell behind that of the U.S. — which now has 1.5 times the European gross domestic product.

The EU rose out of the European Commission (EC) in 1993 as a series of economic treaties. Within a year, socialists began winning elections to the European parliament.

It’s been downhill ever since.

Hanson, along with Trump, bemoans the moribund state of security in the continent, which increasingly relies on the U.S. to provide that service on their behalf. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) requires its signatories to contribute 2 percent of their GDP to the military defense of the continent from aggression. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the U.S., Poland, and the Baltic states have propped up the average contribution. Overall, NATO members average 2.73 percent of GDP as defense expenditures, while many nations hover under 1.5 percent.

Hanson also calls out the trade imbalances created by the EU — undermining the very goal of its creation. “Their contempt for the U.S. is unwise,” he writes, “given they still won’t meet their NATO obligations. They depend for their security on the U.S. military. They run massive trade deficits with the U.S. due to one-sided tariffs. They need American energy. They are shrinking in population, inert in economic growth.” That trade deficit, Hanson says, looks an awful lot like the trade deficit we run with China.

Remember back in 2018 when the Germans laughed at President Trump for having the gall to tell the U.N. General Assembly that they would regret being totally dependent on Russian energy?

The EU has engaged in a deliberate form of managed decline, overseeing immigration on a mass scale, hollowing out its economy with increasingly socialistic top-down control by bureaucrats, failing in its shared military security responsibilities, becoming dependent upon other parts of the world for their energy needs, and deliberately pushing its economy backward with radical environmental junk science.

All while making pseudo-moralistic demands on the United States to do more. Trump and Vance have decided they will, indeed, do more, by demanding that Europe take the proper level of responsibility for their own needs. For that, they’ve earned the derision of the elitist bureaucratic class that runs the EU.

What Is the U.S. Interest in Ukraine?

If folks thought Vance’s speech was an isolated incident, they weren’t really paying attention. He and Trump have pushed a consistent message, one in which policies must make basic sense. No greater example of this exists than the morass that Ukraine has become. 

(RELATED: Vance in Munich and Foreign Policy Realism for the Modern World)

Yes, Putin is a dictator who wants to run Russia like he ran the KGB. He has empire-expanding ambitions. He doesn’t make for a terribly nice neighbor.

But.

What is the goal, the endgame, the path to victory in Ukraine? Vance asked these very questions in a recent X post.

This is moralistic garbage, which is unfortunately the rhetorical currency of the globalists because they have nothing else to say.

For three years, President Trump and I have made two simple arguments: first, the war wouldn't have started if President Trump was in office;… https://t.co/xH33s6X5yf

— JD Vance (@JDVance) February 20, 2025

“We must pursue peace, and we must pursue it now,” he said in summary. “President Trump ran on this, he won on this, and he is right about this. It is lazy, ahistorical nonsense to attack as ‘appeasement’ every acknowledgment that America’s interest must account for the realities of the conflict.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered a similar speech in Brussels to the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG) that the Trump administration aims to stop the war and achieve a secure, peaceful resolution. “We will only end this devastating war — and establish a durable peace — by coupling allied strength with a realistic assessment of the battlefield,” Hegseth said. “We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. But we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.” Hegseth emphasized diplomacy as a solution and reiterated that the U.S. would not consider NATO membership for Ukraine.

The administration is unified in its messaging that the solution to Ukraine must be European nations taking on the responsibility of defending their own homelands and deterring global adversaries from invasion. Hegseth specifically lauded Poland as a “model for the continent” for spending upwards of 5 percent of its GDP on defense.

We Can Choose to Repeat History — or Forge a Secure Future

Europe’s history of tolerance for all manners of immoral human behavior has a limitless supply of examples of failure. These include the immorality of socialism, oppression, and failure to protect the rights and interests of its citizens. The worst of these impulses, appeasing global adversaries, has a dark history — one in which the worst crimes of humanity dominated the continent.

The aim of the U.S. is clear: We must discourage a repeat of that horrifying history. Both for our interests and for the interests of all humanity.

Europe once reflected the best, most advanced cultures humanity has ever known. For the past several decades, it has deliberately undermined its own best intentions, choosing managed decline over economic, military, scientific, and artistic advancement. As Sec. Hegseth said in Brussels, “Our transatlantic alliance has endured for decades. And we fully expect that it will be sustained for generations to come. But this won’t just happen. It will require our European allies to step into the arena and take ownership of conventional security on the continent.” Europe can pull itself out of its decline, so long as it chooses to become responsible stewards of Western culture once again.

The Trump administration can help Europe do so by applying the necessary pressure to act in its own interests.

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Jeff Reynolds is the senior editor for Restoration News