There’s a hilarious BBC skit titled The Treaty of Westphalia (part of it’s the Complete History of Everything) which imagines the dialogues between European superpowers as they divide the continent, taking digs at each other’s fish-eating habits (pickled herring), bonding over the desire to kick German arse, figuring out how to split Luxembourg, and wondering whether they ought to have a common currency.Great Britain, for its part, says it is more interested in its colony in America. This leads the lead negotiator to wonder what good America is other than “tobacco, potatoes, and the high-grade narcotics” that you are fond of (while pointing at France, played by Hugh Laurie). Of course, that particular joke becomes wonderfully time-layered because years later Hugh Laurie would play Dr Gregory House, a version of Sherlock Holmes with whom he shares both a manic desire to solve cases and a drug addiction. Of course, a longer historical joke is how Britain’s “new colony” is the one dictating Europe’s fate centuries later.While Western Europe — since 1945 — has becoming increasingly dependent on America, in time the Monroe Doctrine gave way to the Donroe Doctrine, which is simply Trump doing whatever he wants.Read: The real Trump Doctrine Since his return from political exile — something even Napoleon couldn’t do — Trump has gone out of his way to treat Europe the way it once treated the rest of the world: like a body bag without impunity. Throughout history, Europeans have been adept at using civilizational language to create a grammar of violence to justify its barbarisms. Land grabs were Crusades to restore Christian lands. Colonialism was a White Man’s Burden, not a ploy to sell opium and take slaves. Trump is largely immune to such niceties of linguistics but Marco Rubio, his Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and the most competent man in the Trump administration is a bit of the dyed-in-the-wool Republican which explains why he took a more conciliatory tone at this year’s Munich Security Conference.
End of history: Marco Rubio edition
For decades after the Cold War till 9/11, Western policymakers lived under what might be called the Fukuyama spell: the belief that, whatever turbulence the world produced, liberal democracy would win upcoming battles: economic, ecumenic, and, ideological. For the uninitiated, the argument that political theorist Francis Fukuyama espoused in The End of History was that liberal democracy, powered by capitalism and free markets, would remain undefeated, that no rival system could hope to challenge that hegemony. Many people disagreed.
The most famous of them was Samuel Huntington, who argued in The Clash of Civilizations that the future axis of conflicts would not be ideological but civilizational. He even handpicked a few civilizations which he believed would challenge Western hegemony: the Orthodox order led by Russia, the Sinic order led by China, the Islamic world, and the Hindu civilization centered in India.That civilizational pushback is no longer theoretical. China has risen not by copying Western liberal democracy but by strengthening a distinct political model rooted in civilizational continuity with a mix of cafeteria communism or capitalism. Russia has returned somewhat to its Orthodox roots and is flexing its muscle. India’s rise is also tied to the rediscovery of its civilizational identity rather than buying into Western constructs. Even across the Islamic world, political rhetoric increasingly speaks the language of cultural authenticity rather than ideological alignment. And even within Europe, Islam has become a spanner in its liberal order which has hastened the rise of right-wing populism across Europe and America. Without mentioning Fukuyama or Huntington or any civilization by name, Rubio took a hammer to the so-called rules-based international order in Munich. “We convinced ourselves that we had entered the end of history — that every nation would eventually become a liberal democracy,” he said. From that assumption flowed a series of choices: Western governments came to believe that “trade would replace geopolitics” and that international institutions could substitute for national sovereignty. It didn’t factor in the rise of other civilizational forces. In a speech reminiscent of someone reminding a chicken that it has descended from dinosaurs, Rubio evoked Europe’s greatness, reminding it that it was the land of Beethoven and the Beatles, before laying the blame for Europe’s plight on deindustrialisation, mass migration, climate orthodoxy, and excessive dependence on international institutions. Thankfully, he didn’t mention wokeism by name. He argued: “Acting together in this way, we will not just help recover a sane foreign policy. It will restore to us a clearer sense of ourselves. It will restore a place in the world, and in so doing, it will rebuke and deter the forces of civilizational erasure that today menace both America and Europe alike.”Calling America a “child of Europe”, he signed off: “We should be proud of what we achieved together in the last century, but now we must confront and embrace the opportunities of a new one — because yesterday is over, the future is inevitable, and our destiny together awaits.”
Europe hears the ultimatum
For its part, most European leaders publicly celebrated the remarks, seeing them as a thaw in relations after last year’s JD Vance speech, which was far blunter. Privately, however, European officials understood the subtext perfectly. One EU official cautioned, telling Politico: “It is a milder way of telling us that the time of unicorns riding bicycles across rainbows laced with tofu and almond milk is over. This is not simply about being reassured or not. It is about whether we want to live in reality or in an artificial la la land of big announcements.”The notion, in truth, was very simple — and exactly what Rubio left unsaid: Join us, or else.Last year, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had jokingly referred to Trump as “daddy”. Since then, Europeans have tried to show greater independence. But beneath Rubio’s civilizational rhetoric lies the same strategic warning. Speaking of civilizational language, in India’s capital there is a rustic phrase often used during street fights which politely questions the true nature of one’s patriarchal lineage: “Tu janta hai tera baap kaun hai…”At Munich, Rubio was politely reminding Europe who was daddy, and what would happen if America decided to stop being said daddy. While reminding Europe of its history, he also politely reminded it that what Rubio is perhaps telling Europe — exactly what Trump and Co think of them — is that they are on the verge of irrelevance. Join Trump and Co and return to that civilizational parity, but only if one is willing to bend the knee.
The Treaty of Westphalia was a long time ago. The days when Europe could sail the world and challenge anyone is long gone. The world will no longer fight – or even care for Europe’s wars – and call them World Wars. Instead, the shoe is now on the other foot and Rubio is asking Europe if it wants to be part of that history or fade into irrelevance. Just a tad more politely than Trump ever did. He is essentially quoting the T-800 from Terminator 2: Come with me if you want to leave. Whose Trumpian version is: come with us or face civilizational erasure.
