What We’ve Called “The West” Is Hereby Dead And Buried

-Analysis-

HAMBURG — More than a decade ago, at the height of the NSA scandal that revealed U.S. espionage of its allies, then German Chancellor Angela Merkel uttered a now-famous sentence: “Spying among friends — that’s just not done.”

Her statement, however, was based on nostalgia-driven misconceptions — where images of Cadillacs, Elvis and Michael Jordan meet memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Where Germany and Europe and the United States can be seen as true friends.

At the time, Barack Obama was in the White House, and he and Merkel shared a warm rapport. But that didn’t stop his intelligence agencies from eavesdropping on her.

Even back then, the transatlantic relationship was, to put it frankly, what it had always been since the fall of the Berlin Wall: an alliance based on shared interests, that materialized in institutions like NATO.

Munich’s painful shift

This week marks the end of the West as we know it. The transatlantic relationship has undergone yet another painful shift. Europe and the United States are no longer allies in the true sense. What once was an alliance has become a loose partnership — one that sometimes works, and sometimes doesn’t. Right now, it mostly doesn’t.

At the Munich Security Conference, European leaders were all grappling with this stark realization.

An alliance is something that’s held together by more than just pragmatism: it relies on shared values, for example. It used to mean, for instance, countering the Soviet Union, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, or standing together when one NATO member is under attack, as European troops did when they fought and died alongside Americans in Afghanistan after 9/11.

One for all, all for one.

Trump’s transformation: from alliance to imperialism

Not much remains of those shared values since Donald Trump’s return to the White House. One of his first acts in office was to declare his intention to coerce NATO ally Denmark into handing over Greenland — using armed force, if necessary. He suggested Canada should simply become the 51st U.S. state. He told the Baltic states outright that they could not count on American protection in case of a Russia attack.

This is the power-drunk language of imperialism. If anything, NATO may soon need to invoke a new form of collective defense: protection against an aggressor from within its own ranks.

At the Munich Security Conference this weekend, Trump’s Vice President JD Vance delivered a strikingly candid speech. According to Vance, the greatest threat to democracy does not come from Russia, with its tanks and missiles that kill hundreds of Ukrainians daily. Nor does it come from China, or from Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, or Islamist terrorists ramming vehicles into crowds. No, according to Vance, the biggest threat comes from within — from Europe’s supposed restrictions on free speech and its so-called disregard for the will of the people.

There is some rich and twisted irony to that statement, coming from a vice president representing a country that, after World War II, worked tirelessly on undermining leftist movements across Southern Europe; that helped overthrow and even assassinate leaders in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East; that supported dictators and torturers in Chile, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Not to mention Vance’s own refusal to acknowledge Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Freedom of speech and the will of the people, it seems, only matter when they align with one’s own worldview.

Imperial worldview

In Munich, Vance even likened the current state of Europe to that of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. For younger readers: The Soviet Union was America’s sworn enemy for decades — until Washington forced Moscow to its knees and won the battle of ideologies. Now, from Washington’s perspective, every European capital looks like Moscow once did.

In the president’s imperial worldview, there are provinces and vassal states.

Still, it would be a mistake to read too much into Vance’s words. Hyperventilating politicians are rarely worth it. His open support for Germany’s far-right AfD party, including a meeting with its leader, Alice Weidel, is no more brash than, say, the tacit endorsements many European politicians have made for Kamala Harris. And anyway in Washington, Vance holds little real power; same goes for Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, both of whom also attended Munich and struggled to answer substantive questions.

The real significance of Vance’s speech was not in its details but in its bluntness: The “shared values” he referenced at the beginning of his remarks are largely nonexistent — at least for now. Donald Trump, Vance’s boss, struts like an emperor here to redraw the world map to his fancy, claiming Greenland, renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”. In the president’s imperial worldview, there are provinces and vassal states. But no allies, let alone friends.

Looming trade war?

The hard days for Europe are yet to come. Vance’s speech could be read as a prologue to an impending battle over regulations on global tech giants like Meta, Amazon, and X — corporations that have rapidly gained Trump’s favor after bending the knee very publicly, and that have long complained about European restrictions. Soon, the first round of a trade war will begin.

Europe and the U.S. are going their separate ways.

That will be the moment when Europe must prove whether it can play hardball. Consider, for example, coldly calculated agreements with China, or revisiting whether the U.S. should retain unchecked access to the Rhein-Main or the Stuttgart military bases in Germany, from which it directs drone operations in the Middle East and military missions in Africa.

In a world increasingly shaped not by the rule of law but by who’s the strongest, the issue is not about anti-Americanism: it’s about Europe’s own survival.

Europe and the U.S. are going their separate ways. Maybe not forever, maybe not everywhere — but at key junctures like this, their paths are diverging. It doesn’t have to be a final farewell. But for now, it’s time to say: Goodbye, America.