Europe Needs to Reignite Patriotism to Counter Decline and Challenge Putin

While Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland, may not astonish Europe’s leaders as Donald Trump does, he too has a stern warning for them.

“Listen to this,” he remarked last month: “500 million Europeans pleading with 300 million Americans for defense against 140 million Russians.”

“If you can count, rely on yourself,” Tusk added. “Not in isolation, but with an acute awareness of your capabilities. Today, Europe has no shortage of economic power or people, but we lack the conviction that we are a global force.”

Choosing decline is a decision — and for the past 30 years, Europe’s political class has opted for this path.

Poland, similar to Ukraine, has always been cognizant of the threat posed by Russia.

Yet Western European leaders cannot claim to be blindsided by Vladimir Putin’s outright invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

He had already annexed Crimea eight years prior and established pro-Russian separatist militias in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.

Russian operatives have also targeted dissidents in the UK, most notably poisoning Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 and attempting the same with Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018.

Yet, throughout these events, Western Europe remained dormant.

Islamist terrorism barely roused the continent’s slumbering leaders, who continued to view citizens advocating for immigration restrictions as the primary threat.

Europe’s decision to decline wasn’t merely due to voters preferring to allocate funds towards welfare systems rather than military defense.

Throughout the two World Wars and the extended Cold War, Europe’s democratic regimes earned the public backing they required to continue their struggle or prepare for future threats.

What shifted after the Berlin Wall fell wasn’t the populace of Europe, but the caliber of its leaders.

From London to Brussels to Berlin, and from Madrid to Paris to Stockholm, the continent’s elites adopted a philosophy that American political theorist James Burnham termed “the ideology of Western suicide.”

They embraced a progressive liberalism that vilified the traditional foundations of a nation’s strength — its historical faith, patriotic pride, and industrial capabilities.

Green parties and environmental advocates prioritized combatting climate change over military preparedness.

Patriotism was conflated with xenophobia and the most extreme forms of nationalism — a sentiment Europe certainly has had its share of in history.

Nevertheless, patriotism, and nationalism at its best, were the driving forces for those nations and resistance movements that opposed the Nazis during World War II and stood against Communist “internationalism” — in actuality Communist imperialism — during the Cold War.

Secularism, on the other hand, trained Europe’s leaders to adopt materialistic viewpoints: They might reference “values,” but the worth of a pipeline deal with Russia was the real concern for German leaders, in particular.

Indeed, energy policy is revealing: Germany and others, with the notable exception of France, have forsaken clean and efficient nuclear power, which environmentalists oppose.

Reduced nuclear energy means an increase in energy reliance on other sources — such as Russian natural gas.

Liberal environmentalists favor renewable energy from solar and wind rather than any fossil fuels, but the unreliability and costs associated with these renewables often force Europeans who invest in them to revert to fossil fuels during harsh winters, with Russia, unbothered by concerns over “dirty” energy, ready to fill the void.

All of this culminates in a feeble Europe with diminished energy supplies for industry — including defense sectors — and an increasing dependency on fuel from a belligerent neighbor.

European elites have not only been penny-pinchers regarding military expenditure, they’ve viewed the mere existence of their countries’ armed forces with disdain.

During Ursula von der Leyen’s tenure as Germany’s defense minister a decade ago, German troops were forced to use broomsticks as substitutes for heavy weaponry in NATO exercises — simply due to an inadequate supply of actual equipment.

Germany isn’t a poor nation: Its armed forces resorted to using broomsticks because leaders did not prioritize keeping them adequately armed and prepared for real engagement.

Today, von der Leyen serves as president of the European Commission, advocating for Europe to rearm.

However, as British historian David Starkey has pointed out, her calls for rearmament contradict her record.

Europe has spent 30 years on historical pause; now it scrambles to catch up for lost time.

Yet many of the same individuals responsible for the continent’s previous frailty continue to lead the nations today.

When citizens demand change, as was evident when Germans provided the hard-right Alternative für Deutschland with a historic 20% in last month’s election, established parties on the left and center-right form coalition governments that exclude these unwelcome change agents.

Donald Tusk is right: Europe’s frailty is entirely self-imposed.

Now, the pivotal question is whether the leaders accountable for three decades of decline can truly change course — or if Europe requires its own figures akin to Donald Trump to instigate this shift.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review and editor-at-large of The American Conservative.