The Sources of American Conduct: MAGA Ideology and the EU
- Essential points of consensus within Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideology are rapidly coming into focus.
- According to MAGA, Democrats and moderate Republicans have tried to hamstring America’s greatness because they loyally serve a “globalist” conspiracy against American supremacy
- On the MAGA view, supranational organisations such as the UN, ICC and EU are external hubs of the globalist plot. Democrats are cast as domestic infiltrators in the service of this foreign globalist enemy
- This pattern of projection, in which every political sin attributed to the Democratic Party is also attributed to the EU because both are assumed to play on the same anti-American team, explains MAGA’s hostile attitude towards the EU
Something is amiss in the transatlantic world
Every week since January 2025, it seems, new ruptures sunder the ties that once bound American and European allies so closely together. Every new upset leaves European policymakers dismayed, confused, and stunned. The present confusion about the recent U-turn in American foreign policy centres on one single question – or rather, a desperate exclamation: Why? Why would the United States put the existing European security architecture in jeopardy with such reckless abandon?
It is still too early to tell which drivers prevail in the policymaking of Trump-II. Washington’s foreign policy decisions so far follow the “duck/ rabbit” illusion pattern, in which the same image can be seen to represent radically different figures. Either Washington’s decisions are seen as instances of Trump’s zero-sum economic logic, or as omens of grander, ideologically driven ambitions. Tariffs, for example, can be viewed as a strictly economic instrument to get a “fairer deal” for the United States, or as the first phase in a destructive confrontation with America’s perceived enemies. Likewise, Trump-II’s shift on European security can be interpreted as a strategy of conservation, saving American dollars for issues the electorate cares more about, or as a dark announcement of geopolitical realignment. The same basic uncertainty applies to the rest of Trump-II’s behaviour on the world stage. Will the administration obey an economic logic or will it subordinate any such logic to imperatives of a different kind?
