Europe's 'Trump shock' is opportunity to forge 'new West,' Timothy Garton Ash says

A so-called "Trump shock" has plunged Europe into its deepest crisis since 1945, but also presents an opportunity for the continent to forge a "new West," British historian and commentator Timothy Garton Ash has said in an interview with the Kyiv Independent.

The first months of Trump's presidency dispelled any illusions in European capitals that the long-held transatlantic partnership would hold firm no matter who sits in the White House.

Washington has signaled reduced military presence in Europe and slashed funding for vital programs promoting democracy and human rights across the continent, putting the U.S.'s role as the leader of the free world in doubt.

Amid perhaps the greatest challenge to Europe's security, Trump also seems to be washing his hands of the Russia-Ukraine war without even attempting to exert additional pressure on Moscow or boost Kyiv's fighting chance.

The "Trump shock" is only accumulating the security challenges facing Europe in what may be its deepest crisis since World War II, Ash told the Kyiv Independent during an interview in Lviv on May 16.

Yet, therein also lies an opportunity for European leaders to forge a "new West" that would preserve what's left of the liberal world order amid rising authoritarianism and populism, he adds.

Reflecting on world events since his last interview with the Kyiv Independent in May 2024, Ash admits that the U.S. may never be what it was. But, drawing on his background as a historian, he notes that history is full of examples of swings between surging authoritarianism, and a successful liberal fight-back.

Editor's note: The interview has been edited for clarity.

The Kyiv Independent: Last time we talked, you said that we are at the beginning of a new era, and our first steps are going to shape what this new era looks like. One year later, Donald Trump has been elected U.S. president, he jump started major changes in the global security order, Russia's war against Ukraine continues, and populism is rising across Europe. How would you evaluate these first steps of the new era?

Timothy Garton Ash: The triple shock: the Putin shock, what I call the Xi Jinping shock, and now the Trump shock means that we are in the deepest crisis Europe has been in for a very long time, in some respects, since 1945.

But it also means that we all know that in Europe.

Last Friday (May 9), while Xi Jinping and President Lula (of Brazil) and (Prime Minister) Robert Fico of Slovakia were sitting with Vladimir Putin on Red Square, EU foreign ministers were sitting in the Lviv City Hall just up the road to show their solidarity with Ukraine.

And then (French) President Emmanuel Macron, (German) Chancellor Friedrich Mertz, (U.K.) Prime Minister Starmer and (Polish Prime Minister Donald) Tusk were in Kyiv.

So the crisis has become deeper, but the possibility that Europe might seize the opportunity of the crisis is also more apparent.

The Kyiv Independent: Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has cast itself as a leader of the free world. Would you say that it is now abandoning this role? And if so, why now?

Timothy Garton Ash: Excellent question. I think there's no doubt at all that Donald Trump is not the leader of the free world, whatever that means, and that the West as a geopolitical actor does not exist today in the way we've assumed it existed for the last 80 years. And that is a result of two different things: America and Trump.

There's a long-term trend of the United States becoming less committed to and less engaged in Europe, which started already after the end of the Cold War. It was happening under the Democrats and under the Republicans. It's turning either to what (Barack) Obama called nation-building at home, or the pivot to Asia.

Then you have the Trump factor, which is this extreme narcissistic bully who obviously has a special relationship with Vladimir Putin and who is abandoning the notion of the United States as a defender of the liberal international order and basically positioning the United States as one transactional great power amongst many.

What does that mean? It means we have a really urgent challenge for the four years of Trump, but we also have a long-term challenge because the United States will never again be what it was before.

The Kyiv Independent: If the U.S. abandons this role and the era of the U.S.-led unipolar world ends, how will the new global security order look?

Timothy Garton Ash: First of all, we never really had a unipolar world. Even the U.S.-led liberal international order was only a large part of the world. It worked because the United States was what the Princeton scholar John Ikenberry calls a "Liberal Leviathan."

The Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO was always a U.S. general. We had the U.S. nuclear guarantee for our security in Europe. We certainly had a U.S. security order in Europe, in significant parts of Asia and in Oceania, Australia, New Zealand.

That's what's now in question. So I believe that if we are to preserve what's left of the liberal international order, which is not a great deal, it's up to us as Europeans, but also other liberal democratic partners.

Suddenly, Canada becomes much more important to us. Australia becomes important to us. Japan becomes important to us. In other words, there's a whole new constellation of liberal international order — if you like, a new West.

The Kyiv Independent: What is Europe's role in the era of weakening transatlantic relations, of rising authoritarianism around the world?

Timothy Garton Ash: First of all, our role is to defend ourselves and to look after what we've achieved in Europe over the last 80 years. That means defending ourselves against external enemies or challenges. Obviously, Vladimir Putin's Russia in the first place, but also China in a different way, and other powers.

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Secondly, it would be to try and preserve at least some elements of what we call the liberal international order — for example, a free trading world, an international economic order. The EU is a regulatory superpower. Can we preserve some of those shared regulations around the world?

The Kyiv Independent: How would you evaluate Europe's response so far to these new shocks, specifically to the shock of the Trump administration?

Timothy Garton Ash: I think the political will at the top is now there. The question is capability. Just in purely military terms, there's a short list of things that only the United States can provide — the intelligence, the Patriot interceptor missiles, the strategic enablers.

Beyond that, the political will may be there at the top in Europe, but can our leaders continue to persuade their publics through a whole series of national elections that this is the course we should stick to? We have Viktor Orban as the veto player in Hungary. We have Robert Fico in Slovakia.

Very soon, we will probably have a nationalist president of Romania (The interview took place on May 16, before far-right George Simion was defeated in the Romanian presidential election by pro-EU Nicusor Dan).

According to the current opinion polls, Mr. (Andrej) Babis will probably come back (to power) in the Czech Republic. So suddenly, you've got a whole group of countries that want a very different Ukraine policy and Russia policy.

The Kyiv Independent: How can Europe avoid sliding into populism? How can the continent avoid falling into the same trap as the U.S.?

Timothy Garton Ash: I would say the forces of integration and disintegration in Europe are quite finely balanced at the moment.

We have to be tough on populism and tough on the causes of populism. We have to fight the nationalist populist and make a convincing case to our public for a different approach.

But we also have to understand why they continue to get large numbers of votes. For example, the sense that large parts of our societies have been both economically and culturally neglected in the name of liberalism.

And we need to show that we care, we're actually doing something for them economically, that culturally we don't just care about specific minorities in the name of multiculturalism, but we actually care about everyone in our societies.

It's pretty tough to do those two things at the same time, and also build up our defense spending and our support for Ukraine.

The Kyiv Independent: In your book, Homelands, you talk about different definitions of Europe. You say that some European nations that went through dictatorships see Europe as a sort of community of democratic, liberal ideals that they seek to return to. And that's certainly true for Ukraine, as we've seen during the EuroMaidan Revolution. But if Europe and the West are indeed moving away from these ideals, how will that impact Ukraine's path toward democracy?

Timothy Garton Ash: There's always been an anti-liberal Europe, as well as a liberal Europe throughout European history. And it's always been a great mistake to believe that the liberal Europe has prevailed once and for all. By the way, there are also liberal and anti-liberal forces in Ukraine, let's make no mistake about that.

The two things are intimately connected. It's very difficult to imagine Ukraine making a successful transition to a prosperous, sovereign, democratic European future if Europe is disintegrating next door. It's quite difficult to imagine a successful, liberal, democratic, integrated Europe if Ukraine is disintegrating next door.

Both because of the security and migration challenges, but also because we have, in a way, staked our European reputation now on Ukraine. European integration and Ukrainian integration, or European disintegration and Ukrainian disintegration.

But this won't be decided in the next few months. I would say, let's talk again towards the end of the 2020s, and we'll see which tendencies have prevailed.

The Kyiv Independent: Since we are obviously heading toward even more challenging times, can history give us hope or teach us lessons about how democracy can persevere under these challenges?

Timothy Garton Ash: It's going to give us both hope and warnings.

The warning is that just when everybody takes things for granted, they start going wrong. The analogy there would be Europe before 1914. In a way, Europe — certainly before 2014, but arguably up to 2022 — was assuming that it would just be more peaceful summers.

The hope is that we already have examples of successful liberal fightback. The Polish (2023 parliamentary) election is a classic example of a (country) which had nearly gone in the direction of Hungary and an electoral-authoritarian, non-liberal regime, and then it came back.

The larger lesson is that you have these wave movements in history. We had what I would call a liberal democratic revolution across Europe and much of the world from the early 1970s to the 2000s. Now we have an anti-liberal counter-revolution. But with time, people start discovering that that doesn't deliver either.

In fact, it delivers even less. And if you look at the enormous demonstrations in Serbia, large demonstrations in Hungary in support of an opposition candidate, and in Turkey after the imprisonment of Mr. (Ekrem) Imamoglu, you see that the fightback also comes from the countries that have gone authoritarian.

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Note from the author:

Hi, this is Martin Fornusek. I hope you enjoyed this interview.

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