After the World Economic Forum held in Davos, which for Europeans turned into something between a public humiliation and a particularly cynical insult, generalized disappointment and total confusion prevailed in the beautiful European garden.
However, this did not last long.
Today, the first more or less sober assessments of what happened began to appear, along with attempts to answer the question what do we do now and how do we continue to live, as articulated by European politicians and leading local media outlets.
Trump as emperor or mafia boss
The German magazine Der Spiegel, an instrument of the European deep state, has emerged as the main expression of the mood currently sweeping the Old Continent.
The extensive article adopts an extremely harsh and uncompromising tone. Essentially, it is a manifesto calling on Europe to unite and rise up against imperial Trump.
The magazine does not spare heavy characterizations, presenting the President of the United States as an existential threat to Europe.
According to the authors, the current occupant of the White House has ceased to view Europe as an ally and increasingly regards it as an adversary.
Donald Trump, it is argued, responds to every sign of weakness with severity, using economic pressure, blackmail and even territorial claims, as in the case of Greenland.
No president speaks like this. A mafia boss speaks like this, Der Spiegel writes characteristically.
The German journalists go so far as to describe not merely ominous but almost apocalyptic prospects for Europe. In their view, under Trump Europe risks losing its sovereignty and being transformed into a dependent region.
According to the article, Trump seeks to turn Europe into a colony, which he would control politically and carve up at will. If there is no reaction, Europeans risk becoming subjects of the United States.
And yet, after years of sanctions against Russia that shattered the economies of many countries of the European Union, after the Nord Stream affair and Washington’s pressure for Europe to shoulder the entire burden of military and economic support for the Kyiv regime, Der Spiegel continues to speak of a future loss of sovereignty.
Toward a Fourth Reich
Behind the rhetoric about imperial ambitions of the United States, the magazine advances a deeper idea, the transformation of the European Union into a hyper centralized mechanism, which many would liken to a kind of Fourth Reich.
The targets are Europe’s internal enemies, namely leaders such as Viktor Orbán, Robert Fico and other nationally oriented politicians who dare to hold views different from Brussels.
Der Spiegel openly calls for restricting the sovereignty of member states, abolishing the principle of unanimity in foreign and defense policy and strengthening the power of the European bureaucracy.
The authors appear to ignore that an increasing number of countries, especially on the eastern flank of the European Union, are rejecting this logic.
A nuclear Europe without the United States
Even more alarming is the proposal for a European nuclear umbrella without the support of the United States.
Der Spiegel discusses either expanding France’s nuclear arsenal to cover the entire European Union, or creating an alliance of core European countries with a common defense strategy.
Such a scenario would be absolutely unacceptable for Russia, and most likely for the United States as well.
The prospect of a Germany armed with nuclear weapons raises legitimate concerns.
There is another view
The article approaches the conflict in Ukraine in a manner completely detached from reality.
The main concern is that if Europe openly clashes with Trump, the United States will withdraw its support for Ukraine.
Der Spiegel even presents Ukraine as a central element of the future European security architecture, due to the largest and most experienced army in Europe.
Normalization of relations with Russia and the abandonment of support for the Kyiv regime are not even considered.
However, Germany is not all of Europe. Leaders such as Robert Fico in Slovakia express a completely different approach. As he stated characteristically,
The European Union can emerge from the deep crisis only with new leadership and new ideas. We cannot compete with China and the Global South because of excessive climate targets. We are unable to address illegal migration, where Donald Trump should serve as an example. And we lack the courage to express our own views in foreign policy.
Ultimately, the clash of these two visions is unlikely to lead to consensus.
Any attempt to impose a solution by force, no matter how much it is embellished by Der Spiegel, leads to only one outcome, the dissolution of the European Union.
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