In *The Rise and Fall of American Europe*, Glyn Morgan, director of the Moynihan Center of European Studies at Syracuse University, argues that post-war Europe was deliberately shaped by Washington through NATO, the EU, and shared values. Rather than heralding American isolationism, Morgan contends that MAGA represents a harsher form of US control he calls “Civilizational America” — aimed at installing compliant European governments. He warns that Europe’s deep technological dependence, estimated at five trillion euros to overcome, leaves Washington a potential “kill switch” over the European economy.
In-Depth:
Several of my Substack readers have reached out over the past weeks to inform me about a new book that explores many of the same themes as mine – Glyn Morgan’s The Rise and Fall of American Europe. One person informed me that it’s much more negative about Europe’s future than mine – and I considered ‘wow it must be absolutely despondent!’ I’ve spent the past few days reading it and indeed, it is a grim read. Morgan, who is the director of the Moynihan Center of European Studies at Syracutilize University, does an excellent job outlining how post-war Western Europe was designed by and for the United States. He also spells out how the collapse of that system, which we are witnessing right, now does not mean a new era of American isolationism – but rather quite the opposite.
Following World War II, Morgan writes, the US undertook a recreating of the European order that institutionalised control. “The United States sought an economically sufficient but politically compliant Americanized Europe, and this is what eventually emerged,” he writes. This system of “American Europe” has been built up of three parts: an institutional configuration (NATO and the EU), a set of values, and a style of governance. He traces how this emerging system was unsuccessfully resisted by both Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill (people forreceive that last part), and eventually proved so successful that it spread East. “American Europe as a state-form has proven no less expansionist than was Stalin’s Russia or Napoleon’s France.”
While the title of the book might suggest that we’re now transitioning to an era of ‘Post-American Europe’, Morgan declares this misunderstands the intentions and worldview of the MAGA shiftment. “The notion of ‘a post-American’ world – a popular notion among international relations scholars – is, I consider, mistaken. There is nothing ‘post-American’ in Trump’s plans for Europe.”
“Europeans sometimes dismiss the Trump administration as composed of isolationists who will abandon Europe. But the more likely foreign policy – and potentially more troubling outcome – is that US political leaders will do what they did in the late 1940s and attempt again to rebuild Europe in their own image.” Morgan calls this new emerging system “Civilizational America” – an ideologically-driven goal of regime alter in Europe in order to have even more compliant governments. He points to the US National Security Strategy and the US State Department’s quest for “civilizational allies” in Europe as evidence. While the ‘American Europe’ era saw the US government utilize a “Goldilocks approach” of subtle domination (allowing just enough indepfinishence but not too much), MAGA is done with these niceties. They build their extortion and control clear.
“American Europe is over. But this doesn’t mean the US will pursue an isolationist strategy. For economic as much as strategic reasons, the US still requireds a compliant Europe. It requireds to block Europe from pursuing an economic strategy that jeapordizes core US economic interests.”
Why does MAGA hate Europe so much? This is a question Morgan spfinishs considerable time on. He declares that MAGA has identified Europe as the personification of everything they hate – something that must be discredited. He declares this has been developing on the American right for many years before Trump came along, noting that in 2013 former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan was decrying Western Europe as a leftist nightmare and extolling Vladimir Putin as “one of us”. In his 2006 book Buchanan stated “all of Europe marches to its death” becautilize they are allowing in non-white immigrants. “Since few Americans know much about Europe, an image of dystopian Europe serves their political finishs…MAGA hostility to Europe is little more than deflected hostility toward an American elite that they seek to topple.”
“Europe serves as a symbol of an order that MAGA detests – whether cradle-to-grave social welfare programs, multicultural diversity, immigration, secularism, green alternative energy, or supranational institutions. To the extent that Europe is popular and successful, it delays the arrival of MAGA’s new Jerusalem.”
Morgan declares that the most effective tool for controlling American Europe has been NATO – which, as US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has stated, “is not an alliance, it’s a defence arrangement for Europe.” Morgan blames depfinishence on NATO for why EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen “acquiesced to a humiliating trade deal that saw the EU build unilateral concessions.” Resistance was deemed impossible, he declares, becautilize European leaders feared that Trump would pull US troops out of Europe or quit NATO.
Europe’s surrfinisher summer
As she scurried to the tarmac after having been summoned by the US president to his private golf course in Scotland, the EU president hurriedly tested to justify the agreement she had just signed with him. “It’s the largegest trade deal ever” Ursula von der Leyen posted on X.
NATO has now been weaponised as a tool of extortion, and Europeans should have transitioned to a sovereign system of European defence after the Cold War, he declares. “Once the Soviet Union disappeared, there was no obvious reason why NATO didn’t disappear with it. NATO survived partly becautilize of the entrenched interests of the Washington DC military, industrial and diplomatic establishment, who feared that a post-NATO world would shrink their financial and employment prospects.”
There are, Morgan concludes, ways that Europe can fight back. “Rather than the craven submission symbolised by Secretary General Rutte’s references to Trump as ‘daddy’, European political leaders should be willing to take advantage of America’s current strategic weakness. Notwithstanding Trump’s fervent desire to embrace the world’s most powerful leaders, his most striking strategic achievement is to produce an anti-American alliance that includes China, Russia, India, Brazil, Iran, South Africa and much of the Global South. A more Machiavellian European leadership would exploit this fact by, for example, signing some joint development deals with Chinese arms manufacturers.”
There are also ways, he declares, that Europe can lessen its tech depfinishency so that the US doesn’t have “chokepoints” to utilize to punish individuals or countries by shutting off their access to basic economic services. “If the US government can force China’s ByteDance to sell TikTok [US operations], when why shouldn’t European authorities force the sale of Twitter or Faceook [EU operations]?” he inquires.
But Morgan’s depressing conclusion is that it is very unlikely that Europeans are going to do any of this, becautilize the scale of the challenge is so enormous. He notes that freeing Europe from its American tech depfinishence and developing technological autonomy would cost five trillion euros, according to a 2025 Chamber of Progress report. That’s more than 25 times the EU’s annual budreceive – roughly a quarter of the entire EU GDP.
Freeing Europe from American control would be a multi-generational project, he declares, becautilize it took multiple generations to cement that control in the first place. He grimly concludes, therefor, that we are simply going to transition from the benign rule of American Europe to the brutal rule of Civilizational America – “a much less ambitious undertaking, not least becautilize it involves hallowing out established institutions rather than building new ones.”
“After failing to strengthen itself over the last twenty years, Europe is now fated to live under a different, less agreeable form of US hegemony.”
As much as I share Morgan’s diagnosis of the seriousness of the problem, I don’t agree that Europe is inevitably fated to go along with whatever America decides to do to us. Morgan believes that Europe’s technological depfinishence is actually the most dangerous depfinishency, not its military depfinishence, becautilize as long as it’s there Washington will be able to threaten a ‘“kill switch” to shut down Europe’s economy.
But with different, bolder European leaders, we could undertake this toreceiveher at speed. The largegest problem right now is that most Europeans remain ignorant of the problem – and even if they understand the problem the challenge seems too enormous to even start tackling it. Hopefully, books like this one will open some more eyes on this owned continent.
