We Aren’t Europeans, and They Aren’t Americans
Much of the recent opposition to a potential U.S. acquisition of Greenland has centered on the premise that the United States and Europe naturally form a cohesive bloc. Of course, Americans and Europeans are united by many things, such as religion and cultural roots. At the same time, there is enough that separates American culture and our way of life from what prevails in Europe that it would be folly to view the United States either as an extension or part of Europe.
The current transatlantic view considers the United States and Western Europe as essentially the same in their interests and part of a unified entity, often called the “Collective West.” This perspective has sometimes caused Europeans and Americans to act in the interests of a hypothetical geopolitical West rather than focusing on their true national interests.
This situation, deleterious as it is to America’s geopolitical position, also damages both our own identity and Europe’s. Many historical conservatives recognized this; most notably the early 20th-century American journalist Garet Garrett. Analyzing American history and its departures from the history of the Old World, Garrett concluded that America is fundamentally a different society and civilization from Europe, and that our well-being and the preservation of our way of life depend on recognizing that “our destiny is unique, parallel to nothing.”
Garrett saw this separation from Europe as the cause of American greatness, as through it, “We came to be the most powerful people in the earth and made certain great contributions to the thought and life of the world.”
Garrett highlighted three fruits of our separation from Europe, which enabled us to attain national greatness and create an identity on our own terms. The first of these was our unique system of free government, of which Garrett wrote:
It was our own. We did not send it abroad. Yet it was as if we had released the winds of freedom, dangerously, and what we had done was written in foreign tongues on many banners we never saw or heard of.
Complimenting free government was the historic support by the United States for the “idea of neutrality,” for which we were even willing to fight (as we did in 1798 against France and 1812 against Britain, when both attempted to drag us into their rivalry). This principle of neutrality allowed us to remain aloof and safe from the petty rivalries of the Old World.
Lastly, Garrett noted that we created prosperity through “our own economic philosophy, not out of Europe’s books but out of our own experience and from our own ways of thinking.” Our economy, built under the principle “that wages are paid not out of profits, but out of production; which means that wages and profits may rise together, led us both to the kind of prosperity that allowed us to avoid the class conflicts that deeply scarred European society in the 20th century.
Garrett and other members of the “Old Right” foresaw that deepening American involvement in Europe would dilute these principles that made America great, threatening American liberty and prosperity. And these predictions indeed came true. Our principles have been diluted as we have become more entangled in Europe’s affairs.
Consider, as evidence, the state-backed “Censorship Industrial Complex” revealed in the Twitter Files. The United States has moved towards the type of censorship found in Europe, and away from our principles of free government.
Moreover, we have long since abandoned our principles of neutrality abroad, with American politics increasingly revolving around taking sides in various foreign conflicts and importing the prejudices of the Old World into our republic. The growing popularity of explicitly socialist politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani highlights the fact that not even the economic principles upon which our country was built have remained intact, with a growing number of voters seeking to import the statist welfare policies that have led to European stagnation.
None of this should be construed as casting shade on Europe’s various cultures, ideals, or people. Indeed, many of the greatest European thinkers of the last century recognized the separation between American and European civilization, without wishing ill on either. Garet Garrett cited the work of Hilaire Belloc, the renowned Anglo-French Catholic author, in favor of this separation. Belloc, in his book The Contrast, wrote that while the United States is a part of Christendom, it cannot be viewed as
merely an enlargement of our European culture, still less a mere branch of it; they [the United States] create a division of that culture into two—themselves and the rest. The line of cleavage does not lie between them and any other subgroup, such as France or England or Italy; it lies between them and all Europe.
Additionally, Belloc wrote that viewing the United States as part of Europe could prove fatal to both civilizations and would result in both “receiv[ing] wounds which may prove mortal.”
Belloc also noted that whenever the United States is drawn into European affairs, it is done not at the behest of the interests of the United States, nor even of the interests of Europe, but “in order to help one competing European unit against another.” Indeed, we can see this principle in action in the current Ukraine conflict, which is essentially a proxy-conflict between two European factions, the German-dominated EU and Russia, in which the United States has somehow been left holding the bag for the EU.
Thus, the question for conservatives on either side of the Atlantic becomes, to quote Garrett, “When shall we learn again that Europe is Europe, America is America, and these are two worlds?”
Relearning this fact is necessary for the survival of both the United States and Europe. The EU, through its reliance on the United States, has adopted a progressive infantilism, which, along with its adoption of American progressive pieties around immigration, has led to the importation of millions of people from incompatible cultures, widespread social leftism, and bloated welfare states. Accordingly, many of Europe’s cultures and indigenous peoples are set to disappear into oblivion within our lifetimes.
The current relationship between the United States and Europe is also deeply unhealthy. We have, for reasons unrelated to our national interest, been driven into enmity with Russia, the largest European power, and this enmity has significantly increased the difficulty of deterring our main global geopolitical rival, China. Additionally, this conflict has left U.S. domestic politics and business affairs open to the influence of our notional allies in Europe, who seek to steer the American republic in directions other than those willed by the American people.
In the near term, recognizing the differences between our two civilizations is necessary to resolve the current situation in Greenland amicably. American strategic needs, especially those concerning air defense, and economic ones, such as arctic shipping, would be well served through the peaceful acquisition of Greenland, while the island is of little significance to Europe’s needs. At the same time, the U.S. exerts an unhealthy influence on the European continent, using hard and soft power to advance progressive ideological projects. An amicable divorce between the United States and Europe, in which the U.S. purchases Greenland (as suggested by President Trump) while Western Europe has its sovereignty and dignity restored, would be beneficial for all involved.
The post-Cold War paradigm, which respects neither American nor European sovereignty, has ultimately failed both sides, as the current Greenland dispute makes clear. A healthier relationship requires both sides to clearly articulate their interests and reach agreements that benefit both parties. However, progressing to this healthier relationship first requires that we abandon the false unity between Europe and assert our unique and independent identities.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/we-arent-europeans-and-they-arent-americans