Every week—in fact, every day—brings further news of U.S. President Donald Trump's relentless quest for unprecedented presidential power.
His deployment of the National Guard to Washington, DC is a powerful example of his willingness to use the U.S. military for domestic policing purposes. His repeated acts of legal retribution against critics and those who do not cede to his demands, including prominent media organizations, politicians, and law firms, make clear his determination to suppress dissent wherever it appears. His wrestling away of budgetary powers constitutionally assigned to U.S. Congress and attacks on the independence of agencies like the Federal Reserve reflect his resolve to debilitate checks on his power coming from any other part of the government.
Trump and his team are engaged in what democracy specialists call executive aggrandizement: an overweening elected leader relentlessly amassing overwhelming amounts of political power, asphyxiating democratic norms and institutions. In Trump's case, this process combines three main thrusts—asserting total presidential control over all parts of the executive branch, sidelining or cowing the other main branches of government, and constraining societal opposition.
As my colleague McKenzie Carrier and I explore in a recent paper, America's democratic erosion bears significant resemblance to what has occurred in several other backsliding countries, like Hungary and India, and, previously, Brazil and Poland. The strength of some U.S. institutions, especially the judiciary, civil society, and free press, is providing some checks on Trump's ambitions. But the startling speed and multilayered nature of Trump’s actions—in contrast to the incremental, piece by piece nature of backsliding in most other troubled democracies—is distinctive and deeply troubling.
Democratic erosion in the United States also has deep ramifications for Europe. Three major implications already stand out: relating to Europe’s own position as a supporter of democracy globally, to the trajectory and resilience of democracy within Europe, and to how Europe relates to America’s foreign policy overall.
First, for the foreseeable future, the United States will not be a partner for Europe in supporting democracy internationally. In simple terms, a country that is retreating from democracy at home is not positioned to support it abroad. And indeed, in its first seven months, the Trump administration has pulled back sharply from the traditional U.S. role as a global democracy supporter—abruptly ending almost all democracy assistance, dismantling significant parts of its diplomatic capacity relating to democracy, and disbanding global broadcasting, which was once a linchpin of U.S. democracy support around the world.
Europe now faces a profound choice in this domain. Faced with the U.S. withdrawal on democracy globally, it can conclude that it too should narrow its understanding of its own foreign policy interests and focus primarily on near-term economic and security concerns, at the cost of turning a blind eye to the widespread democratic backsliding occurring in many places. Or it can reembrace its longtime view that a more democratic world is a more hospitable world for Europe, recognize that this is a moment of greater need and opportunity for democracy support, and act accordingly.
Second, after decades of supporting liberal democratic forces in Europe and beyond, the U.S. government is now, under Trump, seeking to bolster illiberal right-wing parties or politicians across Europe, including so far, in France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the United Kingdom. Its intrusions have included accusations of censorship leveled against European governments by the U.S. Vice President JD Vance and other high-level American officials, as well as pressure by Trump against European efforts to moderate social media platforms.
Europe needs to adjust quickly to the fact that the new U.S. interventionism in European domestic politics is a feature, not a bug, of a politically reshaped America. European political actors must move quickly beyond their surprise at such actions and converge soon around a common stance of principled objection, while considering what further steps they can employ both in terms of their own communication strategies and legal and regulatory responses.
Third, several structural characteristics of U.S. democratic erosion have foreign policy implications that will affect Europe. The U.S. political system has been transformed into a hyper-presidential one, with few constraints on the president from within the executive branch or from other branches of government. This has reduced foreign policy to a direct expression of Trump's most personal ideas and instincts—whether about the value of trade, the utility of certain allies, or the desirability of territorial expansion.
There has been a significant reduction in state institutional capacity, driven by the belief that the “deep state” is intrinsically a constraint on the Trump agenda. The diminishment of diplomatic capacity—the White House National Security staff, for example, has shrunk by 60 percent this year—means that the United States will be less present in many parts of the foreign policy domain than it used to be. This will be especially true in areas relating to global governance, whether it is global health, migration, sustainable development, global environmental change, or peacekeeping.
And there has been a harsh downgrading of the role of expertise, out of resistance to expert knowledge that cuts against favored ideological tenets. This downgrading means that policy will be increasingly shaped by ideology conviction, with diminishing regard for factual reality—something already becoming evident in the administration’s punishment of intelligence officials who present empirical assessments that run contrary to the political views of senior Trump officials.
These many different implications of U.S. democratic backsliding for Europe represent a daunting, even foreboding, new reality for a continent already ill at ease about its place in an increasingly conflictive and illiberal world. Yet within each challenge lie opportunities for Europe to step up in meaningful ways—to reenergize its own sense of global purpose, to fill new gaps and find new partners, and above all, to appreciate anew the value of European unity over division.
