Image by Christian Lue.

The “Make America Great Again” project is no longer confined to U.S. domestic politics; it is expanding into Europe—not through direct military intervention, but via cultural, political, and economic penetration. Washington is determined to reconstruct Europe’s prevailing liberal order—not by collision, but by the soft re-engineering of policies and political currents—so that the continent becomes part of US’s project rather than an equal partner.

Europe today faces a cluster of crises: the rise (and normalization) of far-right parties; a gnawing decline of trust in Brussels-based institutions among segments of the electorate; and structural weaknesses in coordinating foreign, energy, and security policies among member states. These very conditions have created a unique opening for the Trump project to inject nationalist and anti-liberal ideas into the heart of European politics. What is taking shape is a vision in which Europe is redefined not as a partner, but as subordinate to Washington’s preferences.

Elimination, Conversion, Submission: Three gears of influence

Elimination means sidelining moderate currents by tilting the political marketplace toward hard-right and anti-liberal actors. The 2024 European Parliament election marked a structural inflection: hard-right forces gained unprecedented leverage after group reorganization, with the new 720-seat chamber reflecting a rebalanced right bloc in which the Patriots for Europe emerged as a major pole and the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) group crystallized around Germany’s AfD.

This is not abstract Brussels numerology—it registers in........

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