How Trump is reshaping European politics Foreign Affairs analysis

In its latest deep-dive, Foreign Affairs delivers a sweeping analysis of how Donald Trump’s return to the White House has redrawn the geopolitical logic of U.S.–European relations. The article argues that Trump is not simply revising American foreign policy—he is exporting his domestic culture war, reshaping alliances along ideological, not democratic, lines.

Over the past ten months, Washington has shifted from traditional diplomacy to what the piece calls “ideological alignment politics.” Early assumptions that Trump cared only about trade imbalances quickly evaporated. His hostility toward Brazil’s leftist government and generous support for Argentina’s right-wing President Javier Milei revealed a worldview driven less by strategy than by ideology.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Europe. Trump’s administration has openly embraced the continent’s far-right movements, including Italy’s government under Giorgia Meloni, Germany’s AfD, Spain’s Vox, and the United Kingdom’s Reform UK. The White House, the article suggests, sees Europe as one electoral cycle behind America—primed for a continent-wide rightward shift.

For Washington, this ideological outreach is a low-cost method to preserve influence while reducing security commitments. As Trump questions NATO burdens, threatens troop reductions, and demands Europeans pay for their own defence, the U.S. simultaneously invests political capital in right-wing parties that may favour a closer alignment with MAGA priorities.

Central Europe is the fulcrum of this strategy. Trump has long admired Viktor Orbán, whose illiberal governance in Hungary is often presented in MAGA circles as a model. Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic have also seen the rise of leaders or parties ideologically aligned with Trump, further shifting the region’s political centre of gravity.

But Foreign Affairs warns that this strategy may backfire. While these movements share cultural conservatism—anti-migration sentiment, hostility to “wokeness,” and scepticism about climate policy—their geopolitical visions diverge sharply. Orbán views the West as declining and sees Europe’s future in a strategic balance between China and the United States. Hungary’s deepening ties with Beijing, and the AfD’s Russia-leaning instincts, underline limits to any lasting U.S.–far-right alignment.

The article also argues that Trump has fractured Europe along new lines: not between pro- and anti-American states, but between pro- and anti-Trump camps. Public opinion in Europe now mirrors U.S.-style polarisation. Supporters of far-right parties view American politics positively; mainstream voters increasingly view the U.S. negatively. Europe’s traditional transatlanticists fear that Washington is losing long-term goodwill by tying itself too closely to radical forces.

Perhaps the most striking warning concerns Germany. As the U.S. retreats from Europe and encourages rearmament, Trump simultaneously empowers the AfD—a nationalist party sceptical of NATO and supportive of a more insular Germany. This, the article notes, risks reviving the historical “German question” about how to manage a powerful but politically unpredictable Berlin.

In its conclusion, Foreign Affairs draws a provocative parallel: Trump’s impact on Europe resembles Mikhail Gorbachev’s unintended effect on the Soviet bloc. By empowering ideological allies and destabilising old structures, Trump may accelerate the very fragmentation that weakens American influence.

By Vugar Khalilov