Why Europe does not understand the U.S.
What appears to be a transatlantic rift is, in fact, a return to America’s original hemispheric identity.
In a nutshell
- The transatlantic split reflects America’s hemispheric identity
- The U.S. views itself as Western, but not European
- This divergence is likely to deepen in the current geopolitical climate
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The United States and Israel’s war against Iran confirmed that the geopolitical rift between America and Europe is deeper than many may realize. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez refused American requests to use bases in the country, to which U.S. President Donald Trump responded by threatening to cut off trade. Britain’s initial reluctance to support American strikes on Iran led to a diplomatic crisis. President Trump referred to the United Kingdom as a “once great ally” and remarked that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was “no Winston Churchill.”
What many European analysts fail to realize is that while the U.S. may be largely European in its origins, it is a product of the broader Western Hemisphere’s rejection of the Old Continent that began in the 18th century. The modern nations of the Americas are undisputedly products of European colonization and institutional inheritances from England, France, Spain and Portugal; however, the Western Hemisphere that the U.S. dominates is conscientiously not European.
The U.S. declared independence against monarchy in 1776, and virtually all of Spanish America and Brazil obtained independence from their European empires by 1825. Within 50 years, all of the Americas broke with Europe, except Canada, which obtained constitutional independence in 1982 after a decade-long process. The rest of the Western Hemisphere broke from Europe violently, and through revolution. The context of “American” independence beyond just the U.S. shows that today’s pivot toward Latin America and the Pacific is less a retreat than a return to a distinct, pre-World War hemispheric outlook.
On Virginia Avenue in Washington, D.C., stands the Pan American Union building built in 1943, which is the headquarters for the Organization of American States. Nearby are memorial statues gifted by Latin American countries of leaders from the Western Hemisphere’s revolutionary past, like Simon Bolivar and Benito Juarez.
While these statues are memorials, they reflect a deeper hemispheric identity that is distinctly shaped by a resistance to Europe rather than a quest to be part of it. The Monroe Doctrine, declared in 1823, two years before the mass exodus of Spain from the hemisphere, arguably serves as the first coherent element of American foreign policy. Delivered as a speech to Congress, James Monroe, the fifth U.S. president, set out a distinctly hemispheric policy aimed at preventing European powers from encroaching on revolutionary gains across the Americas.
In 1898, American intervention in Cuba against Spain was framed not only as enforcing the Monroe Doctrine but also as an act of hemispheric solidarity between the U.S. and Cuba. European powers at the time were divided in their reactions; many observers began viewing the U.S. as a threat.
Unlike the ethno-national identities that shaped modern Europe, America’s cultural identity is more fluid and diverse. For example, decades before Napoleon dismantled the ghetto system that segregated Jews in modern Europe, American Jews were actively engaged in political life.
American demographics reinforce this point. While the country’s origins lie in Europe, its identity has evolved into something distinct rather than explicitly European. It was President Theodore Roosevelt who, in 1915, rejected the idea of “hyphenated Americans,” arguing that being American was something one became. Hispanics, now the second-largest demographic group in the U.S., reflect a similarly hemispheric identity, shaped by the blending of European settlers and indigenous peoples of the Americas. Taken together, the country’s two largest demographic groups may carry European influences, but they ultimately represent something that extends beyond any strictly European definition.
The U.S. and Europe are growing apart
If slow-moving geopolitical and cultural shifts are any guide, the U.S. and Europe will continue to drift apart. The first driver is geopolitical: a reorientation of U.S. foreign policy toward the Indo-Pacific region and a renewed focus on hemispheric defense. The second is cultural, reflecting long-term immigration trends that are reshaping the country’s identity.
When the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began, the prospect of another U.S.-led war in Europe struck many Americans as unlikely. Threat perceptions have since diverged sharply. In the U.S., China is widely seen as the primary challenger, with a significant share of Americans identifying Beijing as the country’s top adversary. In Europe, by contrast, Russia is viewed as the foremost threat, with some surveys indicating greater concern about the U.S. than about China.
Geography helps explain this divergence. The U.S. is as much a Pacific power as an Atlantic one. While NATO remains its central alliance, Washington’s security commitments extend across Asia and beyond, including partners such as Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, India and Israel, many of which operate in more acute threat environments than most European states.
It would be easy to attribute this diverging threat perception to the tumult of the Trump era; however, this shift in American interests to the Indo-Pacific region and a returned interest to hemispheric neighbors in Latin America are not sudden. As early as 2001, the George W. Bush administration began focusing on strengthening ties with India as a way to counterbalance China.
American foreign policy shifted away from Europe and toward the Indian Ocean region in the early 2000s. The policy shift that began under President Bush has deepened under the Trump administration. The 2023 announcement of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), and the “Quad” partnership between India, the U.S., Japan and Australia, are both efforts to block Chinese attempts to expand its influence in Eurasia.
While Europe is a part of Eurasia, it is not the focus of American foreign policy. Regardless of what happens in Ukraine, Europe is unlikely to supplant American focus on the Indian Ocean region any time soon.
Washington’s shift away from Europe exposed a misalignment in foreign policy, particularly regarding Greenland. When President Trump expressed an interest in acquiring Greenland in 2019, it was not a sudden departure from American policy. In 1867, when France was fighting in Mexico, the U.S. sought to acquire Greenland from Denmark. The U.S. tried to acquire Greenland again in 1910, and again in 1946.
In response to rhetoric from President Trump, France, Germany, Norway and Sweden deployed troops to Greenland to signal their ability to defend the island. The move coincided with European efforts to secure a U.S.-backed “ceasefire monitoring and verification mechanism” in Ukraine aimed at ending Russia’s war. Europe thus showcased defensive capacity in Greenland even as Berlin acknowledged limits in supporting Ukraine. Taken together, these moves reflect shifting European threat perceptions of both the U.S. and Russia.
While the U.S. and Europe diverge in how they assess geopolitical threats and interests, internal dynamics also point to a widening intra-Western rift, particularly in the realm of immigration. Immigrants to the U.S. come predominantly from Latin America with Mexico the leading country of origin, followed by South Asia.
The majority of immigrants to the U.S., around 70 percent, are Christian. Catholicism features prominently among them and, while it differs from the country’s largely Protestant founding, it does not pose the same integration challenges seen in Europe. Catholicism is also integral to the Americas’ hemispheric identity, dating back to its arrival in 1492.
Christianity as a whole has shown signs of stabilization in the U.S., with some growth among younger cohorts, while the religiously unaffiliated are also expanding. Overall, the U.S. remains more religious than Europe, with higher rates of weekly attendance across all states than in countries such as France, Austria or the Netherlands.
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While the U.S. is more religious and more actively Christian than Europe, its immigration patterns do not raise the same “civilizational” questions now unfolding across the continent. Europe is grappling with aging populations alongside integration challenges that are more acute in both scale and perception.
Across the Atlantic, Germany stands not only as Europe’s economic core but also as host to one of the largest shares of immigrants from outside the European Union, many from the Middle East. These inflows have brought debates over cultural norms, including gender roles and antisemitism, that differ from those prevalent in Europe just a few decades ago. Whether grounded in reality or amplified in public discourse, concerns about the growing visibility of Islamist ideologies have become a wedge factor in how some American analysts interpret transatlantic divergence.
At the same time, Europe’s security focus remains shaped by Russia to its east, while instability across the Sahel – including risks tied to terrorism, human trafficking and state fragility – presents challenges that spill across the Mediterranean and are largely Europe’s to manage.
Scenarios
More likely: The U.S. and Europe drift further apart
The most likely scenario over the next few years is that the U.S. and Europe will continue to drift apart. This will likely be driven by external geopolitical interests that take America’s defense focus to the Indo-Pacific region, which notably includes the Arabian Sea, and to its own hemisphere. This trend will be reinforced by demographic integration between the U.S. and Latin America, with both regions sharing a common political tradition in their intentional break with their European origins.
Contrary to the notion that these tensions are a product of the Trump era, America’s focus on the Indo-Pacific region and a renewed interest in its own hemisphere is a reversion to a norm that pre-dated World War II. The rivalry between China and the U.S., along with changes in supply chains between the U.S. and Latin America, are factors that are unlikely to change in the near future. Of course, this does not mean a complete severing of Euro-American ties or isolationism on the part of the U.S.; rather, it indicates that European security will not hold the prominence in American foreign policy that it did in the past.
Less likely: A return to Cold War-era solidarity
A significant American recommitment to Europe is less likely, but possible. Should Russia fully conquer Ukraine and NATO’s eastern flank lose Ukraine as a buffer territory, European members of NATO are more likely to invoke Article 5 of the treaty and trigger a renewed American buildup on the continent.
However, two key factors make a decisive Russian battlefield breakthrough unlikely. First, Russia faces persistent manpower constraints, drawing on foreign fighters, convicts and other auxiliary sources to sustain its campaign. Second, any major conventional confrontation in Europe would likely risk escalation into a nuclear standoff, deterring such a conflict from fully materializing.
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