There are many gloomy forecasts about the situation in Europe and its responses to the new American context.
Yet European citizens seem to be ahead of the curve. They stand in solidarity with Ukraine, are taken aback by Trump, and are determined to assert themselves.
While it is easy to point to the deficiencies of the European armies and thus play into Putin's hands, with Europe one should never despair. It has overcome the harshest criticisms and the most serious crises and, even as it is abused by the self-proclaimed Zeus of the moment, it will emerge stronger from this.
America, for its part, is in grave danger. By abolishing the institutions responsible for development programmes and the media that used to broadcast more reliable information within dictatorships, and by calling journalists and the justice system into question, Trump is subverting the US Constitution to the detriment of Congress, which until now has been a source of legality and legitimacy. Without a swift and strong response from the justice system and the American people, the United States is on the road to ‘democratorship’.
The democratic world, deprived of a leader, can now only rely on Europe.
That is why it will resist the current turmoil. It has no choice and from Canada to Japan it is already forming coalitions across a continent that the United Kingdom has spontaneously and naturally joined.
Therefore, it is pointless to continue to describe its weaknesses. Those who do so would do better to look at the deep-seated sources of its strengths
They would discover a real sense of resilience, forged in titanic conflicts from which it has emerged victorious, and a deep attachment to freedom, to the Freedom that will never give in to submission, not even when it comes from America.
Cassandra was never listened to and ultimately paid for it with her life. Let us not listen to her descendants, who are always pessimistic, and let us recognise that the feeling of belonging to Europe, which is now the guarantor of a model of society, is growing stronger, and let us mobilise to ensure that it succeeds.
