In his new work, “Who controls who?”, the historian dissects the new global power dynamics.
“You see a ‘transatlantic schism,’ a ‘change of era’ that you say you became aware of in February 2025, especially while attending J.D. Vance’s speech, the American vice president, in Munich, very scathing against European democracy…How would you describe this schism?”
The transatlantic relationship is multifaceted. Political, commercial, military, cultural… This complexity means that we cannot really talk about a rupture, but rather a schism in terms of values, ideology. There was first a strategy of admiration from a number of European economic or political actors between the re-election of Donald Trump in November 2024 and the early months of his new administration beginning in early 2025. This almost admiring phase was short-lived: the reversal began as early as April 2025, just three months after Donald Trump’s inauguration, with the start of his trade war.
This distancing will continue to intensify, with the twelve-day war in Iran, the fact that Donald Trump adopts a Putin-esque reading of the war in Ukraine, the Greenland issue showing how little he thinks of his European allies, the capture of Maduro in Venezuela, a military success but a completely unilateral and outside the law decision, the campaign launched in Iran on February 28th…
“Some analysts think we are too fixated on Donald Trump, forgetting that he embodies what many Americans think about Europeans…”
The Americans are not monolithic, but the fact is that Donald Trump was elected and re-elected. Americans know very well who they re-elected in 2024. This vote reflects a deep change in the trajectory of the United States. Not so much towards isolationism, but towards unilateralism. American authorities tell us: “We are self-sufficient in terms of energy, we have two oceanic facades, we have the world’s first economy, the first manufacturing economy. So, we have the possibility to change the rules of the system.” Regarding the relationship with Europeans, Trump bluntly affirms what several American presidents have been thinking for twenty years: you Europeans do not think enough for your defense and security. He points out a fundamental contradiction: how is it that 500 million relatively prosperous Europeans still rely on 380 million Americans to face 140 million aging Russians?
Donald Trump has been opening multiple fronts for a year, but for what political successes?
His main success, at this stage, is to saturate our media agenda. The paradox is that we are in a moment of transatlantic schism in terms of ideology, maybe even in theological terms – Donald Trump and J.D. Vance openly attacking the Pope -, but of strong media convergence. European and American public spaces are closer than ever. The Epstein case is a striking example of this. Donald Trump continues to dominate this media space, which has become less globalized than the “transatlantic” one.
“How do you explain his activism on the international stage when he promised during the campaign to end all foreign wars?”
He gives the impression that he is convinced that he can, with his presumed genius, make peace, even through war. There is another factor, more structural: the extraordinarily powerful American military. It gives him the ability, for example, to eliminate the supreme leader on the first day of an operation in Iran. Such a tool gives American presidents, not just Trump, the feeling that the use of force allows them to reshape the international scene at will. However, this does not happen as he imagined, as he does not find a political translation to his military victories.
Military gains without a sustainable political solution, isn’t that also the problem of Benjamin Netanyahu, in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran…?
Read the rest of the article on the Sud Ouest website.
