‘The US is another planet where internal enemies matter more than external ones’
"We must accept that the US’s unique geography and history means that it has always been more concerned with its civil conflict," says James Hawes.
Europeans need to understand the US – and fast. Too many of us still think that Washington’s instinct is to defend the West, and hence that Trumpism is a passing aberration. It surely can’t be normal for Americans to hate one another so much that more than half the nation voted for a leader who gabbles about annexing countries instead of opting to be ruled by liberals. But Trumpism is an extreme reset back to the US’s default position;: largely indifferent toward Europe, driven by the belief that there are far more urgent matters at home to take care of. Europeans find this hard to grasp because their entire history has made it clear that the biggest threats to their lives and freedoms comes from militarised neighbours.
To understand why things look different across the Atlantic, let’s channel John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the US and the great-grandaddy of isolationism. Imagine that what he called “this Western World” is a different planet altogether: “planet USA”. On this planet, which was originally inhabited by a small number of easy-to-evict residents, lies everything that progress requires. M, most important of which is a complete lack of dangerous neighbours. With wealth for the taking and no one to threaten the settlers, the only real battle to be fought is among the planet’s people. Despite engaging victoriously in many major battles, the US’s civil war – the war that cost the most American lives – continues to define its politics.
During the Cold War era it seemed possible that communism could forcibly unite the world under an ideologically hostile regime. As a result, the US supported all non-communist countries. In 1990 a clique of so-called neo-conservatives in Washington hit upon a breathtaking new plan: they would beam down to any troubled land on Earth and terraform it into a simulacrum of “planet USA”. As Germany’s ex-foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, told me last year, “I was once a revolutionary myself, so I knew straight away that these weren’t conservatives – they were revolutionaries.” This revolution, like so many others, didn’t go well. As a result, Americans voted to concentrate on a far older and more existential issue: the battle for their nation’s character.
If you’re on “planet USA”, why would you worry about what Russia does in its terrestrial backyard? Russia is eager for mutually profitable deals and has a defence budget smaller than that of the UK and Germany combined. Vladimir Putin is not going to take away Republicans’ guns, raise taxes on the rich or destroy law and order with “wokeness”. Only the planet’s own, treacherous “libtards” can do that. Conversely, victory for a free Ukraine won’t save DEI programmes, women’s rights or Medicare. For that, the US Democrats must beat the screaming Magas at home.
Engaging with the rest of Earth is back to being merely an option for “planet USA”. Civil war, declared or not, is what really matters. That said, we earthlings should heed another of John Quincy’s insights: America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” it does this at home. The US isn’t planning to save us from our own monsters (again). We have to learn to look after ourselves.
Hawes is the author of several books, including ‘The Shortest History of Germany’.
