Happy birthday America, the ally Europe admires—questioningly

Would it be possible, an envious Europe sometimes wonders, for it to have its own version of Silicon Valley—but without the messianic robber barons who confuse money with moral authority? Could a way be found to transplant to the east side of the Atlantic the indomitable frontier spirit that drives America, sans its cowboy individualism and hostility to government? Might Europeans one day be able to build up military capabilities to match the awesome might of their western partner, while sidestepping its irrepressible habit of getting bogged down in bloody misadventures in far-flung corners of Asia?

As Europe ponders the 250th birthday of its prodigal child, it is racked by questions. What was the secret that made a success out of this unpromising venture, a republic founded by the old world’s religious oddballs, then populated by its destitute farmers and the refugees from its wars? It would be absurd not to look for lessons from such a winning historical experiment. And yet. Plenty, especially on the European left, treat America as a cautionary tale, a land of savage inequalities where police are unfailingly brutal and racial fault-lines unbridgeable. If you can’t beat ’em, such Europeans think, sneer at ’em. Yes, America succeeds, they grudgingly concede, but at a cost we would never impose on ourselves.

In some cases they have a point: the American variant of capitalism has plenty of rough edges. In others they are off-base; there is no reason why importing America’s good qualities must entail importing its bad ones. The urge to dismiss the place is often prompted by a reluctance to admit that Europe must change. Instead, Europeans should treat America as their great foil—a country to look to not defensively, but in search of inspiration.

At the moment, the comparison Europeans find least flattering to themselves is economic. No matter what lens one employs, America is thriving while Europe, poorer to start with, merely splutters along. To sceptical Europeans, Americans’ surging incomes depend on their indifference to inequality, their willingness to linger at the office rather than see their families or to throw the planet to the dogs for an extra dollop of GDP. That take is crudely dismissive of American habits Europeans would do well to study. There is nothing hard-wired in the psyches of the French or Poles that prevents them from adopting America’s tolerance for entrepreneurial failure and subsequent reinvention. Nor is it intemperately Trumpian to suggest that Europe should consider building industries first, then regulating them. At least the European Union shows signs of wanting to learn. The 400-page Draghi report released in 2024 reads like a well-versed lament for Europe’s failure to emulate its American cousins (though it would preserve a bigger welfare state). Alas, it is largely unimplemented.

The EU’s biggest but incomplete asset, its single market, has obvious lessons to draw from America. Oh to possess, from Dublin to Dubrovnik, the sort of free movement of goods and services that stretches from Philadelphia to Phoenix! European federalists might dream still more American dreams, such as issuing the bulk of the EU’s debt at the federal level—something Europe may one day have to do more, not least given the needs to spend lots more money for defence. The path the EU will travel towards a more integrated union will be different from America’s, and hopefully eschew civil war along the way (insert Brexit joke here). But all the talk of „Hamiltonian moments” in Brussels circles exists precisely because its transatlantic ally offers a blueprint of sorts.

Beyond economics, America offers an even more exalted goal for Europeans: to have a single polity, one demos, of the sort that exists across the pond. America has done what it can to help its old-world peer along the journey to continental union. It was instrumental to the birth of what was to become the EU; indeed Jean Monnet, one of the bloc’s founding fathers, spent so much time in Washington that Charles de Gaulle suspected him of being an American agent. In part it did so for selfish reasons. All that internecine fighting in Europe left the door open to communists, and had twice required America to intervene. Without nudging by America in later years, the EU might not have accepted the central and eastern European countries that are now vital members.

A more perfect envy

Alas, such moments of goodwill between continents seem like a distant memory in Europe these days. Even those who have long admired America struggle with its current direction. Donald Trump, and particularly his vice-president, J.D. Vance, have an intense dislike of the EU. Bafflingly, they paint Europe as a migrant-infested hellhole barely worth defending. The continent is thus collectively holding its breath ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7th-8th, praying the American president shows up in a good mood. But even as the impetuous Mr Trump has been wrong about the tone and the method of his haranguing of Europe—and behaved atrociously in his Potemkin bid to seize Greenland in January—he has prompted a useful rethink among his allies about the need to spend more on their own defence. (Russia’s Vladimir Putin also deserves some credit.)

Just 11% of Europeans now think of America as an ally, according to a poll carried out for the European Council on Foreign Relations. That is in part a Trump effect; the figure was twice as high in 2024. And thus, as America celebrates its big birthday, the idea of seeking inspiration from across the Atlantic is a hard sell. It need not be. Europe does not have to turn itself into America to learn from its best ideals. Every nation has its path not taken; Europe has the unusual misfortune of watching its alternate self thrive just across the ocean. It need not turn itself into America. But it should surely ask itself why over ten generations of striving, in so many ways, the new world has left the old continent behind.

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