The Trump–Meloni Dust-Up Was Pure ‘Euroslopulism’
As the Ukraine war rages on, European elites look as unserious as ever.
Trump has left an unusually large amount of drama in his wake after last week’s G7 conference in Europe. The festivities seem to have culminated in a dust-up between the president and Italy’s prime minister—and one-time Trump fangirl—Giorgia Meloni. The origins of the spat are still a bit mysterious, but it appears Meloni was trying to play the “outraged girlboss” with Trump in the hope that he would recommit to Europe’s failing war in Ukraine. Trump responded by going to the Italian media and saying that Meloni was “begging” him to take a photo with him and that he “felt bad” for her. Meloni then had a very public and very histrionic meltdown in a video she appears to have self-recorded for her X account.
While Americans might be inclined toward a hot-tempered Italian woman, they would be mistaken. In fact, there has been a very longstanding attempt to astroturf a pro-Ukraine, right-wing movement in Europe in the hope that it could be used to get the Trump administration to reengage with the war that so obsesses Brussels. Meloni is at the heart of this attempt. Prior to becoming prime minister, Meloni held genuinely contrarian views that were very much in keeping with many of the attitudes of the American populist right. But since she was elected, Meloni has become another Brussels clone—albeit with the occasional nod to the idea that there might be too many immigrants in Europe.
Why this Damascene conversion? It is likely that the Italian elite sat Meloni down, explained to her that Italy is bankrupt and is only held together because the European Central Bank prints money to suppress Italian bond yields, and warned that if she made any moves that the Brussels elite did not like she would trigger a Liz Truss-style bond market meltdown and be chased from office. The deal that Meloni appears to have struck with the Brussels elite and their agents in Rome is that she is not allowed to take any genuinely heterodox positions on matters of substance, but that she can deploy populist-conservative aesthetics in her government. This is probably the origin of Euroslopulism.
Since then, Euroslopulism seems to have evolved. Several accounts on X have appeared out of nowhere that seek to convince their followers that both hardcore European federalism and the Ukraine war are, in fact, “edgy” and “based” positions for young conservatives to take. These accounts appear to have been boosted after the Hungarian election in April. Viktor Orbán’s government was a genuine threat to Euroslopulism because it insisted on governing on matters of substance, rather than wearing a populist skinsuit while pushing the Brussels party line. Needless to say, before he was ejected from office Orbán and Meloni did not like one another. It looks like there was a plan in place to give Euroslopulism a hard push after Orbán was taken out of the picture.
Reading the tea leaves, it seems that the Atlanticist faction in Europe hopes that Euroslopulism might prove to be the trick that mends relations between Brussels and D.C. If you follow Anne Applebaum closely, for example, you will have noted a distinct change in her rhetoric. She now gives interviews saying that Russia only pretends to be socially conservative and is actually some sort of ultra-liberal kleptocracy. Listeners are supposed to infer from this that, in fact, Ukraine is the socially conservative utopia that American conservatives should support. Whether the likes of Applebaum have any credibility with anyone on the American right, I will leave it to the reader to decide.
The other faction that supports Euroslopulism is what we might call the “Autonomists.” They are a faction in European politics—and especially associated with Paris—who believe that it is time for Europe to divorce from the United States and become an autonomous global player. Sadly for the Autonomists, they appear to have quite literally no idea how to do this. Europe is in an extremely weak position—militarily, economically, and diplomatically—but the Autonomists, trapped in a cloud of Parisian self-superiority, condescend to their global partners and alienate them. The Autonomists also seem oblivious to the fact that the Ukraine war is destroying Europe. Instead, they seem to think that the only way for Europe to become strong is to win the war. But even if that were possible—which it is probably not—it would require the backing of the United States. That puts the Autonomists in what some psychiatrists call a “double bind.”
The Autonomist faction appears to be ascendant in recent months, despite the self-contradictory nature of their program. The Trump administration has boosted this faction by its rough treatment of the Europeans. It is perfectly possible that the Autonomists lured Meloni into trap by telling her that she could change Trump’s mind on the war if she played hardball. In March, Meloni backed a failed referendum on judicial reform in Italy. Her enemies no doubt smell blood, and since the Autonomists believe, rightly, that the Trump administration will not bend on the Ukraine war issue, they may have seen an excellent opportunity to strap a suicide vest to Meloni and tell her to take a run at the American president.
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine is heating up. The Ukrainians now have the capability to produce, with the help of their European partners, long-range drones in large quantities. Recall that even the Biden administration refused to provide Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles because they knew such long-range strike capabilities would enable Ukraine to bombard Russian cities. The long-range drones that Ukraine is currently producing are effectively a poor man’s Tomahawk. Most of the launches are shot down by Russian air defense. But if the Ukrainians launch hundreds of these drones at once, they can be sure they will score a decent number of hits. This is precisely what we saw during the G7, when videos of Moscow burning were plastered all over social media.
The Russians have insisted for months that this is an intolerable escalation. In April, former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signaled that the Russians already had targeting data to hit the supply lines in Europe that are providing the Ukrainians with the capacities to produce the long-range drones that are hitting Russia. The Europeans have completely written off these warnings and, so far, the Russians have responded by beefing up their short-range air defenses. But it is not hard to see a situation in which the Russian people demand that the Putin government shut down the drone threat. That could mean the Russian military launching several hypersonic Oreshnik missiles—missiles that are now in serial production—against key targets in Europe.
It is difficult to determine what is going on in the minds of European decision-makers. One reading is that, as the United States has pulled back, the NATO machinery has been left headless and brainless. The United States has always ensured that all serious decision-making was held in the hands of the Americans at NATO. It is not implausible that the Europeans at NATO are not actually qualified to understand how concepts like the “escalation ladder” work in the real world. We may be seeing a headless NATO with its arms and legs flailing around desperately and dangerously in Europe right now. That is a scary prospect, so scary that serious strategic thinkers like John Mearsheimer have highlighted the possibility that escalation might reach the point of tactical nuclear strikes in Europe so that Moscow can reestablish deterrence.
Regardless of where this goes next, it appears that the Great American–European Divorce is well underway, and no number of slop accounts on X can prevent it. Nor can the sadly mediocre and comically hysterical Meloni. The Autonomists will have their autonomy. The scary thing is that they do not appear to know what to do with it. Europe’s leadership class consists of people who were cherry-picked to behave as vassals to the United States. When left to themselves, they ooze unseriousness. What is really needed in Europe right now is a fresh, serious leadership class that can manage the continent themselves. It becomes clearer by the day that Viktor Orbán’s government had the only remaining adults in the room. Expect Europe to deteriorate into a food fight in his absence.
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