U.S. Voters Choose Their Way Forward, As Europe Retreats Into a Nightmare

On September 18, I penned an op-ed for AMAC Newsline predicting imminent political sinkholes in Europe. Almost immediately, those sinkholes did occur. Now, as Americans head to the polls for midterm elections that could substantially alter the political and cultural direction of the country, Europe is also entering what appears to be a period of great upheaval.

Riots that started in France have expanded into Italy, Spain, and Belgium. Controversial Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called a snap election for November 29 amidst the unrest and backlash over a second deadly train crash in the country this year. Over the weekend, rioting also spread to Germany and the Netherlands, while protestors have clashed with police in Great Britain.

Meanwhile, in perhaps the most dramatic development to date, Poland is mired in a severe constitutional and political crisis following an attempted coup. The power struggle is between Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s left-wing, pro-E.U. government and conservative President Karol Nawrocki, an ally of the opposition Law and Justice party.

The two sides are fighting over who legitimately controls key state institutions, most importantly Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal – analogous to the Supreme Court’s constitutional-review role in the United States. The conservative president of this body was suspended after allegedly blocking judges chosen by the current parliament, prompting street protests, police intervention, and accusations from the right that Tusk’s government is carrying out an unconstitutional takeover.

Many Americans are perhaps surprised by this development in a country which, after Lech Wałęsa, the Solidarity Movement, and Pope John Paul II, became widely regarded as a stable and modern democratic nation. But Tusk came from service in the E.U. and supported E.U. ambitions to impose E.U. rules over Polish ones.

The Polish constitutional court leadership and majority, and most of the Polish people, however, are more conservative, as is the ceremonial head of state president. These forces have been in conflict for some time, but only now has the pro-E.U. side made a brash and a dramatic move to try to settle the issue.

Eventually, this dispute will be settled — perhaps by the resignation of the prime minister or perhaps with new court members. In any event, it is only one of the most recent political sinkholes to appear in Europe. It won’t be the last.

All of these developments are ongoing as unease and tensions rise across a continent whose nations once colonized and dominated much of the rest of the world.

The natural question becomes: How did Europe arrive at this moment?

What is happening now should be understood as a consequence of what occurred after World War II, when most European nations banded together to create a common economic community. With help from the United States, the war-devastated continent began to restore itself as an industrial and commercial center.

That economic cooperation, however, rapidly transformed into a political union which aimed to supersede the sovereignty of each member nation. The growing power of the European Union (E.U.) government in Brussels at the expense of national governments produced a euroskeptic backlash, leading the United Kingdom to quit the E.U. outright. Sentiments similar to those which produced “Brexit” are now spreading throughout the region.

Tensions increased as leftist E.U. bureaucrats came into conflict with local institutions and the E.U. opened its borders to large numbers of refugees and immigrants from former colonies in the Middle East and North Africa – many of whom did not assimilate to European culture and values.

This development was especially pronounced in Germany, where a well-meaning German post-war chancellor who, with misplaced guilt from her nation’s earlier role in World War II, opened her country to a flood of refugees who eventually became a major component of continental unrest and instability.

At the same time, post-World War II European governments routinely chose social welfare and socialist systems, enabled in large part by U.S. aid that included relieving Europe from spending money on defense. After the more orthodox Marxist communist regime in the U.S.S.R. finally collapsed, the Scandinavian “model” social welfare systems began running out of money. This has led to one economic crisis after another, as seen in the local economies of Italy, Greece, Spain, France, Germany, and the “Benelux” countries.

European voters, fed up with economic stagnation and chaotic migration policies, are now replacing longstanding leftist governments with more conservative leaders. But the increased need to pay for their own defense (caused by the ending of postwar military security provided by the U.S.), the long-term unsustainable social welfare programs, the economic and psychological cost of unassimilated immigrants, and a costly war in Ukraine have turned the continent into a social and cultural battlefield.

As a result of this domestic turmoil, Europe and its leaders have largely abdicated the continent’s historic influence in global affairs.

Europe failed when asked by the U.S. to play a role in the current crisis in the Middle East, compromised by its energy dependence on Iran. With the ironic major exception of Germany, most of the continent has also turned against the Jewish state of Israel in its existential struggle following the October 7, 2023, attacks from jihadist terrorists in Gaza.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has reasserted America’s leading role in the defense of the world’s sovereign democracies, the free market system, and the global cause of liberty and human rights.

The principles of most of these ideals were born in Europe. Perhaps if the continent were to return to them, it might awake from its current nightmare.