March 19, 2025
Our village in southern France recently sponsored a bicycle race for the country’s best amateur riders. At the awards ceremony that followed, I bumped into our mayor and his brother. The mayor greeted me with a wry but sympathetic smile. “And the President?” He meant my president, not his. I shook my head. “I am speechless,” I replied. A few minutes later, his brother sought me out. “What is he thinking?” he pressed. “What is he trying to do?” I struggled again for words, as I nearly always do when asked to explain Trump to French friends and acquaintances. “It’s a new age,” I responded lamely. “Yes,” he agreed, “a new order.”
For most French observers, including those hardened by the lunges in U.S. foreign policy during Trump’s first administration, the brief period since the inauguration has been nothing short of astonishing. It all began with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s visit to Brussels, where he made clear that U.S. support for Ukraine and NATO was in jeopardy. The gloom deepened a few days later at a security conference in Munich where Vice President J.D. Vance scolded European Union leaders over their treatment of neo-fascist political parties. (This from an election denier and defender of the January 6 mutiny.) In a further signal to neo-fascists in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, Vance met with leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany party. Trump made his own, disturbing contribution to the gathering gloom by exonerating Vladimir Putin of aggression in Ukraine and by calling Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a dictator. Vance and Trump subsequently ambushed Zelensky in the Oval Office at the start of what was supposed to be the signing of an agreement between the two countries regarding Ukraine’s mineral resources. Vance demanded that Zelensky thank Trump for all he was doing for Ukraine in the war against Russia. Having been excluded from the peace negotiations in that war, Zelensky was not in the best of moods, and the minerals deal — a classic shakedown, and so Trumpian — fell apart. The coup de grace was delivered a few days later when the White House announced the suspension of military aid to Ukraine, an outcome that was almost certain from the start.
Every step in this remarkable narrative of surprise, reversal, and betrayal has generated big headlines in French newspapers and first-in-line reports on the morning and evening television and radio news. And in almost every treatment and conversation, there is a now predictable combination of elements, a bit like the stages of grief: shock and bewilderment followed by recognition that something fundamental in the world has forever changed followed by grave discussions about how France (and Europe generally) must change (and soon!), now that Trump has upended the global order. Gone is the wait-and-hope attitude that was possible during Trump’s first administration.
The dismay here is rooted in a keen and widely shared perception of history. On June 6 last year, our village celebrated the 80th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy. The morning’s commemoration began with a ceremony in front of city hall featuring political notables from the region, representatives of the nearby French Foreign Legion facility for wounded veterans, and a large military band. The music and speeches were followed by a parade to the village cemetery, where the sacrifices of local families during World War II were recalled and honored. The speakers never failed to mention the sacrifices of the American, Canadian, British, French, and African soldiers who landed on the beaches and liberated France from the German occupiers. The memory of the catastrophe of World War II (and of World War I, for that matter) remains firmly lodged in French political imagination and culture.
The shock in France and elsewhere in Europe caused by Trump’s attacks on NATO and the European Union, alongside his abrupt rapprochement with Vladimir Putin, can’t be fully appreciated outside this living memory of the catastrophe of two continental wars and the frayed but still intact appreciation of the institutions — military, political, economic, and cultural — that were put in place to prevent their recurrence. NATO and the European Union are far more than “contracts” or “deals” that might come and go with the fickle winds of short-term national self-interest. They are symbols of France’s (and Europe’s) determination that history will not be repeated.
Of course, French (and European) unease is heightened by the sensation of physical danger. It’s 1000 miles from Paris to the western border of Ukraine, about the distance from New York to Saint Louis. It’s a mere 500 miles from Berlin, about the same as the drive from Washinton to Columbus, Ohio. In the Oval Office encounter, Zelensky reminded Trump and Vance that there’s an ocean between the U.S. and Russia. Here, there are freeways.
Recognition is one thing, decisive collective action is another. There’s widespread consensus now in France that Europe must go it alone. But that will require an immediate and significant increase in the financial resources NATO members make available to their collective security and Ukraine. Finding the money won’t be easy. Owing to Emmanuel Macron’s ill-advised decision to call legislative elections last summer, France is in a full-blown political crisis. That crisis is tangled up with the country’s economic woes. The French budget is in serious deficit, putting pressure on every part of the financial system, including the expansive and expensive social security system. Germany is also struggling financially. In both countries, increases in defense spending can be achieved only by enormous reductions in other parts of the national budgets, which will, in turn, provoke more political division. One can almost hear Putin cackling.
So, what is Trump trying to do, exactly? What is the strategy, and what is the endgame?
Since Pete Hegseth fired the first salvo in Trump’s post-inaugural foreign policy blitzkrieg, Trump’s vision of the global political order has come into sharper focus. It’s a vision akin to Francis Ford Coppola’s portrayal of New York City in The Godfather. For Trump, the world is ruled by a small number of powerful and fundamentally adversarial families who share the spoils of power. There can be deals among these powerful families, but they are necessarily temporary and limited, almost designed to be broken. Conflict — economic, political, and military — is the underlying reality and rule. Since this is the nature of the game, the only choice is to be among the strong, indeed the strongest of the strong. Everything else — justice among nations, beliefs, values — is noise. Winning is all. Zero sum.
In this framework, the European Union (the largest trading block in the world, it’s worth recalling) or France is not a partner or ally with common interests and commitments, but just another competitor, a seeker after power and advantage, striving to make the best deals at the expense of the competition. History doesn’t matter in this scenario, and neither does ideology. It’s power and competition all the way down.
If this is the way things are, if the world is ruled by the strong and the smart in pursuit of their self-interest, if winning is all, it’s a bit easier to see how Trump might admire (and sometimes even encourage) competitors who seem to share his point of view. Vladimir Putin, for example. Or Victor Orban. Or Xi Jinping. He’s said flattering things about all three, even as they present threats and risks. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Putin hunts and rides horses shirtless and bareback. A man’s man. When Trump looks at Putin and Xi, it’s like looking in a mirror. He sees his double. Worthy adversaries. Tough guys. Deal makers.
A world reduced to the play of power and a few power players has its attractions. It’s simpler to begin with. Fewer complexities, fewer compromises, fewer untidy ends to tie up. As the circle of competition shrinks in complexity and size, the role and force of each player are magnified. Great power politics played out by mafia-style bosses is Trump’s natural abode because it offers yet another venue, perhaps the greatest of all, for self-aggrandizement. So, let’s not be bothered with Ukraine or former alliances. The world’s woes can be settled through long-distance phone calls between big bosses.
Trump’s identity as a power player on the international stage is of a piece with his quasi-religious strain of nationalism. This is not a nationalism rooted in principles or a deep sense of place. It’s rougher than that and far more abstract. The nationalism that Trump exudes and excites is essentially pugilistic, a delight in and celebration of military might. America is great because it is strong. Strong like the warriors of the epics — dominant, fearless, overwhelming, merciless. Hence, the fascination with military display. Recall that in his first go around Trump wanted tanks parading along Constitution Avenue on the 4th of July. He backed down not because of any concern about symbolism but because he was informed that the vehicles would destroy the roadbed. The heart of the nation for Trump is its military virtu — its ferocity, courage, and capacity to project physical power into the world. The power of the warrior writ large.
All of this coalesces in the imperial ambition that Trump began signaling just after the inauguration, the weird and seemingly out-of-nowhere remarks about Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal. The nation that understands its distinctive virtu, the nation that is unashamed of its strength and the celebration of its strength, can entertain all kinds of things. Traditional limits do not apply. International rules and restraints are for suckers. Since the world is defined ultimately by the competition among the strong, it is alright to take what one wants. The strong make deals, but they also take. Or threaten to take to make deals.
But what about the American people? Where are they in all of this? More than 77 million Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2024, roughly 3 million more than in 2020. Were these voters explicitly endorsing the basic elements of Trump’s foreign policy, including the abandonment of Ukraine, the turn against NATO and the European Union, and the sidling up to Vladimir Putin? Or were they thinking about other things? Or did they simply not care?
It’s hard to imagine that a majority of Trump’s most ardent supporters have specific and finely honed expectations in the realm of international relations, but many of them, perhaps even most, share Trump’s nationalist impulses and their martial spirit. For the hardcore, Make America Great Again means Make America Tough Again. Or take off the shackles, as Pete Hegseth’s book has it. As Trump pursues the implications of his martial understanding of American greatness, it’s fair to assume that a significant number of those who voted for him are thrilled by his badass swagger, his go-it-alone isolationism, and his disdain for traditional norms and constraints of behavior in the global arena. When the negative consequences of Trump’s peculiar understanding of the national interest begin to appear, perhaps there will be a backlash. But for now, Trump rides the swell of the angry nationalism that has been such a vital and central component of his political appeal.
In 1651, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes published Leviathan, his massive and revolutionary tome on “The Matter, Forme, and Power of the Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil.” The text was written in Paris, where Hobbes spent nearly a decade in political exile. The work included a remarkable frontispiece made by the Parisian printmaker Abraham Bosse under Hobbes’s direction. The image features a regal giant looming over a pastoral landscape of hills and valleys, farms and villages, and a walled city. The giant holds a sword in his right hand and a staff in his left. Beneath his hands, panels depicting symbols of military might — canons, muskets, a castle — and religious authority — a church, a miter, clergy —fall down the page. Most arrestingly, the giant’s body is composed of hundreds of small individual figures, the subjects of the commonwealth, their faces turned toward their leader, as if enthralled. Above the composition is a passage from Job: “There is no power on earth that can compare.” In Job, of course, the power refers to a mythical sea monster, in Hobbes to the awesome leader of the commonwealth.
Leviathan now rises up before us like some ghostly apparition from the distant past come back to haunt us. In his internal and external projections of power, Trump has conflated his person with the State. He is the commonwealth, or the federal government, as he recently reminded Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, in their tense exchange at the White House over transgendered athletes. And he apparently believes that the subjects of the State reside within his person, a part of his body. Whether directed inward or outward, toward the citizens that stand before him or toward the foreign powers that lie beyond the country’s borders, his personal power and the collective power are one.
I now know what I want to say to the mayor, to his brother, and my French friends and acquaintances. It’s this. I am ashamed, embarrassed, and angered by Trump’s abrupt turn away from our friends, by his abandonment of Ukraine, and by his embrace of international bullies and criminals like Putin. I also want to say that this agonizing and dramatic shift is not some kind of ruse, a negotiating tactic, or a feint. This is who Trump is — this is the man. He may not be entirely successful, but he will not change. Perhaps most distressing of all, millions of Americans identify in some manner with Trump’s imperial nationalism and are willing (and in some quarters eager) for him to succeed in isolating the United States and abandoning the web of international security and trade relationships that has taken many decades to construct.
The nervous and unprecedented conversation in France and Europe about protecting democratic states and commitments without the United States must now go forward, and quickly. France and Europe are indeed on their own. Trump will, of course, disappear, but Trumpism — this toxic brew of nationalism, authoritarianism, American exceptionalism, and isolationism — will not. And neither will the damage that is likely to occur over the remaining years of Trump’s rule. So allez la France, allez Europe. Many millions of Americans are with you, and they will find hope in your unity.