The European Perspective on the Future Role of the United States

▪️ The rise of European skepticism regarding the viability of the strategic partnership with Washington and the renewed prominence of the concept of European “strategic autonomy.”
▪️ The erosion of trust within NATO as a result of increasing American unilateralism and the reordering of security priorities.
▪️ Accumulated trade disputes between the two sides, exacerbated by tariffs and reciprocal threats.
▪️ A widening ideological and value-based gap between Europe and the United States on sensitive domestic policy issues.
▪️ The growing body of European literature arguing for the end of the U.S.-led liberal international order and the emergence of multipolarity.
▪️ A decline in positive European perceptions of the United States from 47% in 2024 to approximately 29% today.
▪️ Emmanuel Todd’s The Defeat of the West (2025) offers an in-depth reading of transformations within Western societies and elites and anticipates a structural American decline.
▪️ Quantitative indicators of this decline include a reduced share of global industrial output, widening trade deficits, rising inequality, and increasing dependence on immigrant talent.

By virtue of my academic specialization and my sustained engagement-both professionally and intellectually-with Western futures studies, I have, for several years, observed the emergence of a growing European skepticism regarding the “utility” and limits of the transatlantic strategic partnership with the United States. Political phenomena, however, do not emerge fully formed; rather, they evolve and adapt within their changing environments. From this standpoint, the early contours of a European unease toward the United States can be traced back to the Gaullist era in France. At that time, Charles de Gaulle called for a “Europe of nations,” withdrew France from NATO’s integrated military command, opposed Britain’s entry into the European Common Market due to suspicions about its alignment with Washington, condemned the Vietnam War, recognized the People’s Republic of China, and halted arms sales to Israel following the 1967 war, among other positions.

De Gaulle appeared to articulate what might be described as a latent European collective consciousness: the notion that Europe-historically rooted from ancient Greece to the French Revolution-constitutes the civilizational origin, whereas the United States represents, in essence, a European offshoot.

Although the Cold War constrained this Gaullist inclination, several European political currents continued to move in the same direction, maintaining a cautious stance toward what they perceived as American overreach. A number of developments, in fact, progressively reinforced this sense of caution:

1. American pressure in the commercial and economic sphere (from the 1980s to 2025). This was manifested in the escalation of long-standing disputes between Europe and the United States, beginning with conflicts over agricultural products in the 1980s and culminating in broad reciprocal tariff threats initiated during Trump’s return to the White House at the beginning of last year. These threats targeted European steel, aluminum, and automotive industries, prompting the European Union to adopt a more confrontational posture and respond in kind.
2. The accumulation of American hegemonic tendencies in shaping defense and security strategy, particularly during the Trump administrations (2016–2020 and 2024–2026). Disagreements deepened as the United States increasingly prioritized its strategic interests over those of its NATO partners and sought to renegotiate security arrangements-evident, for example, in the Greenland issue. There was also a perceived American inclination to accommodate certain Russian strategic interests in Ukraine at the expense of European security concerns-especially those of Germany and France. This contributed to an erosion of trust and pushed Europe toward contemplating a form of “strategic autonomy.” Consequently, a growing European consensus emerged that continental security could no longer depend entirely on the United States, necessitating a rapid shift toward a “war economy” and increased domestic defense spending-developments whose early signs are already visible.
3. Even prior to the Trump era, the failure of trade negotiations between Europe and the United States (2013–2016) revealed structural economic divergences between the two sides, particularly through the inability to conclude the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
4. Ideological and cultural divisions also introduced additional fissures in the transatlantic relationship. Issues associated with domestic policy-such as gun control, capital punishment, and digital surveillance-have widened the gap between the two sides and contributed to an expanding European skepticism toward American democratic practice.
5. European political and intellectual literature has increasingly embraced the notion of the end of the liberal international order. Many European elites and think tanks argue that the U.S.-led liberal international system has effectively come to an end, giving way to a world governed by great-power politics and multipolarity, in which China-often perceived as pursuing a comparatively restrained or “peace-oriented” rise-represents a defining feature.
6. A distinctly tactical dimension of American behavior has also shaped the broader European outlook, reflected in what may be described as “American pragmatic predominance.” Expectations increasingly suggest that U.S. foreign policy will become more utilitarian, prioritizing short-term gains over long-term alliances and shared democratic values.

All these indicators have led to a successive shift in the orientations of European societies and elites toward the United States. The proportion of positive perceptions of America declined from 47% in 2024 to approximately 29% at present. In this context, the 2025 book by the French thinker and sociologist Emmanuel Todd, The Defeat of the West, offers a profound analytical framework that encapsulates many of the aforementioned dynamics and interprets the evolving attitudes of European publics and elites toward the United States.

Published by the French National Institute for Demographic Studies in 2025, the book opens with a discussion of ten “shocks” that awakened the European strategic consciousness. The first was the realization that a Europe long convinced of its stability suddenly found itself confronting a U.S.–Russian confrontation unfolding on its own territory-Ukraine. The fifth shock concerned the internal European fracture over how to address the Ukrainian crisis. Todd proceeds to examine additional surprises, including the United States’ inability to significantly expand munitions production to compensate for Ukrainian battlefield needs, and the growing international isolation of the West. He ultimately advances a provocative thesis: the “inevitable defeat of the West,” arguing that Western decline is fundamentally self-inflicted.

According to Todd, Western elites failed to grasp what the American scholar John Mearsheimer described as the “anthropological and historical depth of the world order.” The traditional WASP elite (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) no longer constitutes a cohesive or governing force, a development that, in his view, signals an inevitable structural weakening of the United States-particularly as it has not historically functioned as a nation-state in the classical Westphalian sense. Todd links this transformation to the analytical foundations laid by C. Wright Mills in his theory of the military-industrial complex.

In the book’s tenth chapter, titled “The Washington Clique,” Todd highlights changes in the composition of American elites, arguing that the erosion of Protestant dominance has coincided with a decline in racial exclusivity and the widening space for subnational cultural identities. This shift has facilitated the rise of elites of Asian and African descent and a gradual decline in Jewish influence within universities, local administrations, and the film industry-although their presence remains proportionally higher than their demographic weight.

Todd further contends that Gaza served as a strategic diversion for the United States from the visibility of its setbacks in Ukraine. Yet, in his assessment, the broader international community did not align with Washington’s stance on Gaza, and the United States failed to secure a decisive outcome in Ukraine.

Across successive chapters, Todd issues a series of warnings: from Chapter Five, “European Suicide with American Support,” to Chapter Six, “Britain Toward a Zero Nation,” and Chapter Eight, “America’s True Nature: Nihilistic Oligarchy,” culminating in Chapter Ten, “The Washington Clique.” In his post-conclusion, he advances what he terms “American Nihilism: Gaza as Evidence.”

Todd also presents quantitative indicators of American decline (pp. 217–230), with a particular emphasis on economic performance. It suffices here to highlight the following illustrative indicators:

1. The United States’ share of global industrial output has declined from 44.8% to 16.8%, now amounting to only about 57% of China’s total share in global industrial production.
2. After once being a major exporter of agricultural products, the United States now records agricultural exports that are roughly equivalent to its imports.
3. A decline in average life expectancy within American society.
4. A 60% increase in the trade deficit since 2000.
5. Employment in the defense sector has fallen from approximately 3.2 million in the 1980s to around 1.1 million.
6. Growing reliance on foreign expertise: immigrants now constitute about 39% of the workforce in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) sectors. Moreover, the share of doctoral degree holders in science and engineering from U.S. universities includes roughly 66% Iranians, 39% Indians, and 35% Chinese, among others.
7. Continued deterioration in the U.S. Gini Index: wealth inequality has widened significantly, placing the United States at the forefront among industrialized countries in terms of inequitable wealth distribution.

What do these developments signify? The Epstein scandals, in this reading, constitute compelling evidence of a broader moral decline carrying deeper political implications beyond mere personal or instinctive misconduct. They may be interpreted as reflecting a form of elite escapism in the face of a perceived civilizational sunset. From this perspective, the Arab world, perhaps, ought to turn eastward-not because it is necessarily superior, but because it may be the lesser of two unfavorable alternatives.