“We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.” Thus, in his inaugural address of January 20 1961, did President John F Kennedy declare the aims of his administration. It was the height of the cold war. For the inhabitants of a divided Europe, the speech was electrifying. In retrospect, this vaunting ambition led to the over-reach of the Vietnam war. But it was also an indication of an ennobling idea — that of a superpower with a moral purpose. Despite all the failures, people continued to believe in its purpose: in contrast to the Nazis and communists, the US believed in freedom and democracy.
For no people has this commitment been more significant than Europeans. Ultimately, it led to the collapse of the Soviet empire, the liberation of central and eastern Europe and a new era of unification, peace and prosperity. As so often in history, hopes have been disappointed. They have been disappointed by the rise of xenophobic and anti-democratic forces inside Europe, by the resurgence of an authoritarian, revanchist and bellicose Russia, and by the seething hostility to the core ideas of contemporary Europe from the second administration of Donald Trump.
The new National Security Strategy of the United States of America has many strange features. But the strangest, and for Europeans the most disturbing, is that they alone are now seen as the only ideological enemies of the US. In the rest of the document, interests are seen as merely material rather than ideological. Threats to democracy and freedom now come only from their opponents within the US and its closest allies.