When, last March, the Tara Varma wrote an article entitled “Alliance of revisionists: a new era for the transatlantic relationship”, which was warmly received, if only because he coined the term “revisionist transatlanticism” to describe the complicity between the second term and the European Far Right.
Last week, the White House’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) seemed to confirm what Ms Varma, a fellow at the Center on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution in Washington, had argued a few months earlier.
Despite all this, she says speaking to “Vima” that she was surprised by “how focused on” it was the SEA that shows that “essentially the foundations of the transatlantic relationship no longer exist. The transatlantic relationship only applies to countries and partners willing to fully align with the Trump administration on its anti-immigrant, anti-climate, anti-gender agenda. And I think that’s pretty clear.”.
The SEA “It also says very clearly that Washington wants to interfere in political processes in Europe. To see them politically interfering in European processes, in a way similar to Russia, was something unexpected for me.” he tells us.
He believes that the SEA is both a real plan to be implemented, with the aim of weakening the European edifice, and an ideological text. “It should be taken very seriously. It’s really about the ideological reflection of what we’ve been seeing for the last eleven months.” he adds, citing the vice president’s speech as examples Jay Dee Vance at the Munich Security Conference last February, his intervention Elon Musk in favor of the far-right AfD in the German elections in the same month, the meeting of the US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem with Poland’s far-right presidential candidate a week before last May’s election. “SEA codified all this”.
Trying to identify the root causes of the revisionist transatlantic attitude and the reasons why revisionists on both sides of the Atlantic seem to dominate the foreground today he says that “We’ve seen these kinds of policies in Europe and the US being advocated as far back as the 1920s and 1930s, for 100 years. As we know, the Monroe Doctrine focused on the Western Hemisphere and trying to exclude Europe. There have always been intellectual and political exchanges between the extreme right on both sides. The Far Right in the US and the Far Right in Europe have as their main complaint that the liberal agenda was pushed too far after the end of World War II, they feel they did not have their “proper place” in the public debate, and they are claiming that place now. They show up with a lot of anger, resentment and complaints, which sometimes find a response in society. Many people, in many parts of Europe, rural as well as urban, feel that they have not benefited as much as they should from economic globalization, and so are more receptive to this kind of hate speech.”.
Mrs. Varma considers it fortunate that Mr Viktor Orban he is the only extreme rightist who has real power and that “So far, other European states have managed to keep the Far Right out of power. The question is: will we make it again?’ he wonders, expressing concern that the Marine Le Pen she may win France’s 2027 presidential election if she is allowed to run – we’ll find out when her appeal is heard next February.
“There is a sense that the international liberal ‘parenthesis’ was just that – a parenthesis in international relations – and that we are returning to much tougher relations between states and between leaders, and Trump is leading the way.” he says.
Real danger
Can the US president in collaboration with European far-right parties really deconstruct the EU? “I think so, they really can. Brexit served as a warning example and these parties, who initially wanted to leave the EU, now want to stay in the EU but transform it from within, change its role and its fundamental purpose. They do not want the EU to defend liberal democracies, open societies and collective security. They promote what they call a “Europe of Nations”, essentially a group of states, not at all oriented towards the defense of a common political agenda but with a much more specific agenda aimed at undermining the institutions of the EU.. In their eyes and in Trump’s eyes, Brussels is adopting “too many settings”they work “against member states”constitute one “European dictatorship”.
However, Mrs. Varma concludes more optimistically: “We must not be fatalistic. I don’t think it will last forever. But it is also an opportunity for Europe”.
