The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Trump Is Trying to Save Europe From Itself—and the EU Is Having None of It

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

The recently unveiled U.S. National Security Strategy has liberal heads turning over this one priority: "Promoting European Greatness." Europe’s problems cannot just be attributed to “insufficient military spending and economic stagnation.”  The continent is facing “civilizational erasure” should it continue to embrace practices and transnational bodies that “undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence,” the Trump administration writes. The U.S.’ attitude in this report was not “you, Europe, should have done this.” It’s more like, “we should be brothers,” argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words:” “You, Europe, is the foundation of the West. Greece. Rome. The Pope. The Renaissance. The Enlightenment. All of this majestic culture came from you. And we are an offshoot, an offspring of it. And we wanna partner with you. And we wanna be equals with you. So, please, can you just consider stopping the censorship, opening up discussion, and maybe reassessing your energy, your military, your immigration issues, and policies. And get back in the game with us in a 50/50 fashion.”  👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest short videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠  Also on Spotify: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9753340027  👉Want more VDH? Watch Victor’s weekly, hour-long podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” now! Subscribe to his YouTube channel, and enable notifications:  https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273?sub_confirmation=1 👉More exclusive content is available on Victor’s website: https://victorhanson.com 👉The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: ⁠https://secured.dailysignal.com/⁠  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Each administration at some point in its first or second year has a strategic strategy of what the United States economic, diplomatic, political, and military objectives will be in foreign affairs. Ours just came out, and one of the more controversial sections was simply saying that our partners, the founders of Western civilization, the Europeans are in dire trouble. And then the authors of the strategic assessment said they face civilizational erasure in this report, the United States attitude was not, you should have done this, you bad you, we don't like it. No, it was more, we should be brothers, we should be equal brothers, and we want to partner with you, and we want to be equals with you. But why are they angry at us?

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen. at some point in its first or second year has a strategic assessment, a strategic strategy of what the United States economic, diplomatic, political, and military objectives will be in foreign affairs. Ours just came out, and one of the more controversial sections, which I think otherwise was a pretty sound strategy, was simply saying that our partners, the founders of Western civilization, the Europeans are in dire trouble. And then the authors of the strategic assessment said they face civilizational erasure.

Where you can see what that did to the Europeans. Nothing is more humiliating or makes the European angrier than we upstart Americans who our founders came from Europe, and many of us did as well, to be lecturing the Europeans on what they're doing wrong. So they're very angry at us, but why are they angry at us? Because the assessment outlined why Europe's in trouble. It's radical green proposals. Their new Green Deal version is much more deleterious than ours. They have ample amounts of gas in the North Sea and oil. They have gas, natural gas in France and other places. And yet they're on this hell-bent, if I could use that term, on wind and solar that's costly and unreliable. The result is Europe is not competitive in the world economic market. And the EU has lost its place in world GDP rankings. It's gone way down. It used to be, along with the United States, the two preeminent economic powers in the world, but it's lost its share of world GDP by a substantial margin in just 20 years.

Its fertility rate is not as ours is 1.71, 1.75. That's very worrisome. Theirs is 1.39. There's is 1.39. They are shrinking and aging. And more importantly, their borders are open. They have 45 million people coming in from the Middle East predominantly. And unlike us, they don't have a history with the melting pot. There's no fluidity in classes as we have. So it's very hard for them to acculturate, assimilate, and integrate immigrants, when they come in illegally and from, let's be honest, mostly from the Middle East, so you

have the force multiplying of Islam. At least the people who come across the southern border legally and illegally have a shared Christian tradition. But Europe does not have that experience with illegal immigration. And they're disarmed. They had not been spending 2% since until Donald Trump jawbone them. They say they're going to get to 5%. But if you look at their budgetary expenditures and incomes, it seems almost impossible. And now they're facing a Russian juggernaut that is, you know, moving west and Ukraine toward them. And so all of this was calibrated by the United States.

But here's what I think got them very angry. The United States' attitude was not in this report, you should have done this, you bad you, we don't like it. No, it was more, we should be brothers. We should be equal brothers. Europe is the foundation of the West, Greece, Rome, the Pope, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment. All of this majestic culture came from you, and we are an offshoot, an offspring of it, and we want to partner with you, and we want to be equals with you.

So please, can you just consider stopping the censorship, opening up discussion, and maybe reassessing your energy, your military, your immigration issues and policies and get back in the game with us in a 50-50 fashion. They got very, very angry about this. But here's what makes us angry about their anger. Europe is sort of the proverbial one-eye jack, the card that you only see one-eye, and you flip over and maybe there's something quite different on the other side. what do I mean by that? There are 32 NATO nations in the alliance. Outside of the United States and Canada, 30 of them are in Europe. There are 27 European Union members. The European Union members and the European NATO members are like this. They're almost the same nation overwhelmingly in 90% of the cases belongs to the EU and NATO.

But here's the one I jack metaphor. NATO members say, yes, we want to prepare ourselves against Russia. Yes, we made the 2% investment of GDP and military expenditures. Yes, we want to go to 5%. Yes, we want the United States, by all costs to be our leader. We pay 16, 18% of our budget. We want to integrate more with you. And we're so happy that you're with us again.

and Donald Trump is daddy, flip the card over. Now we're talking, these same people now are not talking as NATO members in dire need of military assistance from the strongest military power in the history of civilization. They're talking as EU globalist and utopians. Don't lecture us. We can censor X. We can censor Facebook. We don't have a First Amendment.

we don't allow unfettered speech like you do. We don't have a second amendment like your rowdy cowboyism back there. Oh, by the way, we're much stronger on DEI even than you are. And as Ms. Merkel once said, Chancellor of Germany, yes, we can. We can do it. We can integrate millions of people who are from the Islamic world into our cultures. Don't lecture us about that. And oh, yes, we will rearm in our own fashion.

And as far as our foreign policy, we don't understand you, people. We feel that Israel is a settler colonial power, which it isn't, and we side with Hamas or Hezbollah, or we have a very different attitude about Iran. We have peaceful solutions. We are not Neanderthal. So how are we Americans supposed to deal with Europe when we see this morbidivism? and we see it because it's here in the United States. So all this report was basically saying,

if you look at the subtext, we have a problem with fertility, we have a problem with immigration, we have a problem with green tyranny, we have a problem with DEI, we have a problem with pacifism. But unlike you, we didn't say this, but we're dealing with it.

We have a counter-revolution. All we're asking of you is to consider the voices of dissent in your own country. continent. Maybe they're on the right track. Maybe like us, they have discovered that this system is toxic, that both us and America and you in Europe have experimented with it. We're both Westerners. And let's stop this DEI, open borders, pacifism, green energy, and get back in the global game because we have China, we have Iran, North Korea, and Russia as enemies, and we want to be partners so we're just offering you advice and please don't play this double game where in terms of

military assistance all of a sudden were saints here in america your nato face says but in terms of culture and sociology and politics uh we're satans we've cut on to that a long time ago thank you very much victor davis hanson for the daily signal signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.