Europe can no longer assume the United States’ commitment to a liberal international order. What survived the end of the Cold War as a bipartisan consensus is unraveling, not solely because of Donald Trump, but because the Republican Party has largely abandoned liberalism itself. A party increasingly hostile to liberal democracy at home should not surprise us by turning against it abroad.
It is misleading to speak of the “vision thing” with Trump, as if the chaotic events unfolding around him (and us) are part of a plan. Yet focusing on Trump’s departures from the conservatism of, say, Ronald Reagan, risks missing the transformation underway, especially given his party’s unwillingness to buck him. The president’s tariffs, his berating of democratic allies, his penchant for authoritarianism at home, admiration for strongmen abroad, and even his half-baked pursuit of Greenland are best understood as signs of a seismic shift within the Republican Party.
The achievements of Trump’s presidency, as Bill Scher observes in these pages, are likely to be ephemeral, especially in international affairs. And, he notes, the liberal rules-based international order quieted Trump’s bluster over seizing Greenland by force. It was a victory for market stability and interdependence within the Atlantic alliance. But Trump’s disdain for the liberal international order has found a home in the party that will likely persist after he is gone.
Republican voters are shifting significantly, with more viewing NATO unfavorably, Russia favorably, and opposing support for Ukraine. These changes are especially pronounced among Congress and elites. Positions once championed by figures such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio—support for NATO, free trade, and the rules-based international order—are no longer central, to say the least. Notably, Rubio’s alignment with Trump, including downplaying democracy in Venezuela after Nicolas Maduro’s removal and accepting the bullying of allies, appears to have boosted his popularity among young Republicans.
If trends continue, the Republican Party is likely to be defined by JD Vance’s views. In a recent interview, the vice president speculated that Britain and France might be on the verge of becoming enemies of the U.S. because of their non-European immigration. If Vance does not carry the Republican banner in 2028, it could be someone even more America First, like Tucker Carlson. But even if it is Rubio or someone of his ilk, it will be the transfigured Rubio whose views have grown much closer to Vance’s.
Vance’s worldview reflects the emerging GOP. Younger and newer Republicans, as a Manhattan Institute survey found, are much more likely to be antisemitic and racist than older Republicans. After a visit to Capitol Hill, Rod Dreher, the conservative writer, worried that young Republicans were increasingly extreme. Dreher’s estimate that 30-40 percent of young Republican staffers are Nick Fuentes enthusiasts need not be accurate to raise concerns. Consider where this anxiety comes from: Dreher moved to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary to bask in the warm comfort of an illiberal political order because it was culturally conservative and committed to a Christian national identity. And he wonders why young conservatives are growing so sympathetic to ethnic nationalism? Even Mike Pence, among the few Republicans who lean to the older orthodoxy, has made the pilgrimage to Budapest, where he spoke about demographic decline and paid homage to Orbán’s family policy.
This shift may be a return to the norm. In the early 20th century, conservatives were sympathetic to ethno-nationalism, including Christian nationalism, and admired right-leaning authoritarian governments abroad. As Jacob Heilbrunn puts it in America Last, this “illiberal imagination” has “persisted for over a century on the Right.” In Orban, conservatives see a defender of Christianity and Western civilization against a cosmopolitan liberalism with “globalist” over “nationalist” commitments. Orban’s call for “illiberal democracy,” grounded in national cultural identity, resonates with conservative critiques of liberal America. Heilbrunn illuminates how this long-dormant strand of conservative thought returned to the mainstream. In the Washington Monthly, Heilbrunn illustrates how it never truly went away, starting with William F. Buckley, whose foray into politics was as an advocate for Charles Lindbergh’s isolationist “America First” and, subsequently, as a defender of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s illiberal anti-Communist campaign at home, while being deeply sympathetic to Francisco Franco’s authoritarian Spain abroad. Buckley defended Jim Crow—writing “Why the South Must Prevail”—and not for refined reasons of constitutional law, but because he thought the white South had a superior culture.
During the Cold War, these strands of conservative thought were eclipsed primarily because they were subsumed within an anti-Communist coalition that supported an American-led liberal international order. (Yes, this order was always imperfect.) But championing liberalism abroad aided liberalism at home. America has long been becoming a liberal democracy, as it battled illiberal segregation at home, a process hastened by World War II and the Cold War. (America could not win the hearts and minds of the many post-colonial nations while it was repelling Blacks seeking the right to vote with firehoses.) These exogenous events compelled it to live up to its purported ideals, particularly regarding race. National Conservatives (NatCons), Christian nationalists, and other various strands of conservative thought have returned to an insistence that American identity is religious and ethnic, blood and soil, and not based on shared ideals. The American consensus on a post-war liberal international order may be the anomaly, with the conservative return to illiberalism abroad the historical norm.
That America is no longer a reliable partner was the clear-eyed perspective of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who declared an unmistakable rupture in the global order in his much-acclaimed speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month. Soon after the address, Canada announced that it would effectively eliminate tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. This tilt to Beijing would have been unthinkable before Trump bullied America’s neighbor.
While the Democratic Party steadfastly supports the rules-based international order, America’s commitment to it is contingent on the vicissitudes of elections. When Wisconsin goes blue, Europe can depend on America; when Wisconsin goes red, good luck. Understandably, Europe cannot entrust its future to a handful of swing-state voters. Given America’s political landscape, why would Europe trust us?
