It is not by speeches and majority resolutions that the great questions of the time are decided – that was the big mistake of 1848 and 1849 – but by iron and blood.
– Otto von Bismarck (1862)
History may not repeat. History may not rhyme. Yet there are undoubtedly parallels between epochs. While identifying the proper parallels is possible, the exercise is fraught with errors by those dabbling in historical analogies. Many errors are the result of partisan disingenuity, who posit analogies not motivated by pursuit of truth, but in pursuit of advantage. Yet even for the minority, who honestly seek some framework, however inchoate and porous, by which to understand the times, existential complexities make the task exceedingly difficult.
We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.
Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, is doing his level best to mimic Bismarck. But neither Miller nor his master have anywhere near the same level of Bismarck’s genius. Indeed, neither Miller nor Trump are even at the level of that buffoon, Kaiser Wilhelm II (1888–1918) who dismissed Bismarck in 1890.
Bismarck, at least, recognized the limits of Prussian power and navigated and enhanced Germany’s position within Europe in light of those limits. The Trump administration vastly overestimates America’s relative power.
The Bismarckian Route to European Ruin
In the first half century of the Pax Europa (1815–1914) after the Napoleonic Wars, the European powers maintained the peace among themselves through a mix of hard and soft power, power adorned with moral authority, requiring the abidance of common rules of engagement (a.k.a. international law). But under Bismarck’s Realpolitik and its diminished concern for rule of law, moral authority, and the use of soft power, there was a proliferation of flashpoints, international crises, and small conflicts in the decades preceding WW1, any of which could have resulted in a greater conflagration.
I have for some time had forebodings that this post Pax Americana era resembles late 19th and early 20th century Europe, except now at a global level. Those forebodings recall the disastrous culmination of that era, the First World War.
In this age of WMDs, what shall ensue?
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After Caesar Augustus consolidated power and pacified the Roman polity after decades of internecine civil war which ended the Republic, the Caesars governed ostensibly as a First Among Equals (Primus inter pares). Except for short spasms of mad emperors and the ensuing chaos in 69 CE, a Pax Romana prevailed for over two centuries.
But within a few decades after Septimius Severus (193–211 CE), who disdained the trappings of governing with moral authority, and converted the Roman Principate into a military autocracy, Rome suffered under the Crisis of the Third Century (235–284 CE), wherein no less than two dozen warlords donned the purple within 50 years, few of whom died peacefully.
These turn of events are not coincidental. Disregard for the rule of law and in governing without moral authority, it breeds anarchy and societal disintegration within and greater expense of troops and treasure outside.
Trumpian Power Politics
Before the resurrection of America First, the Pax Americana located America within NATO as the First Among Equals. This was also true with regard to almost all international agencies established under American superintendence after WW2. Herein, while American benefitted most, its allies also benefited and therefore consented freely with this arrangement.
Be it true that as Europe recovered economically by the mid-1970s, it should have begun to pull its own weight in its own defense. Peoples, unwilling to defend themselves are undeserving of their national survival and sovereign autonomy.
Nevertheless, while the Europeans and Canadians have benefitted, even taken advantage of American magnanimity, America still net benefited, just in retaining, for instance, reserved currency status, which has granted America enormous privileges. Moreover, the more that these allies contribute to their own defense, the more that they will clamor and have right to clamor in voicing how that shared defense was achieved.
But long acclimatized to these longstanding advantages, MAGA Americans ungratefully neglect them in their cost/benefit calculus vis-à-vis foreign allies, believing that these advantages would remain despite America going it alone.
Better as Freeloading Allies Than as Potential Rivals and Adversaries
With Europe in shambles following World War II, and the Soviet Union threatening to swallow the whole of Western Europe (with strong showings for Communist parties in French and Italian elections), enlightened self-interest engendered the Marshall Plan (1948), which sent $13.3B of foreign aid to Western Europe over 4 years, (equivalent to over $140B in 2025). The purpose was not merely to thwart the sentiment of Western Europeans away from Communism. the funds also provided a market for American manufacturing goods.
But with the end of the Cold War, and Russian power a shadow of the then perceived Soviet threat from an American standpoint, a myopic and mercenary understanding of American self-interest clamors for an extensive curtailment of commitments from the European theatre, (unless Europeans agree to be governed under America’s more corporatist ethos). That curtailment is part of global retrenchment as imperial overreach is depleting American resources, as well as corrupting the American soul.
But in withdrawing from and in showing hostility towards the European Union, even sophomoric attempts to undermine its viability, the Trump administration are probably doing the Europeans a favor. For the progenitors of the European project not only aspired to prevent another devastating war in the European theatre, but also provide an entity to act as bulwark against American predation and domineering. The latter purpose was largely unsaid.
While the cultures of America and continental Europe have much in common, say in comparison to the Chinese, Indian, or Muslim sphere, there remain substantive differences. Many of the early immigrants to America were religious dissenters and political exiles (i.e. Germans after 1848).
One major difference is that America is atomistic, continental Europe more communitarian: a difference which J.D. Vance’s Exceptionalist arrogance gave testimony in his infamous speech at the Munich Security Conference (February 14, 2025).
The population of the European Union exceeds America’s by over 100 million. While its nominal GDP is only 70% of the U.S., the respective economies are almost equal in size on a Purchasing Power Parity basis. The Euro has also become a reserve currency, although incapable of replacing the USD on its own. Europe is potentially a major geopolitical actor in its own right in an increasingly chaotic multipolar world. The issue is not that of inability but that of will.
My own fantasy is that the Europeans and Chinese come to some currency accord, supplanting the dollar as THE reserve currency, necessary because of decades of American irresponsibility and weaponization. Operating along the lines of the Roman Republic’s dual consulship, both sides of the EuroYuan would have to agree to any major policy decisions.
The increasing unreliability and insane stupidity of recent American administrations may finally drag the European ruling elite towards strategic independence from the U.S. For while a modest degree of denigration and humiliation might not spur the European policy makers, who are not exactly notable for courage and boldness, serious threat and sustained denigration just might arouse Europeans from their state of comfortable indolence. Again, arrogant American overreach will prove ultimately counterproductive to their own enlightened interest.