Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook: Europeans, Stop Being Reactive and Fortify Your Institutions

Europe can no longer afford the luxury of voluntary blindness. The second coming of Donald Trump to the White House is not a simple anomaly, but the culmination of a calculated process of institutional erosion. As warned by the senior advisor of the Bertelsmann Stiftung Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook in her book The American Wake-Up Call, which we previewed exclusively in ‘Agenda Pública’, we are facing the “first steps of systemic destruction” driven by an administration that has achieved what other illiberal leaders barely dreamed of: intervening simultaneously in all spheres of political and economic life of the world’s leading power.

The analyst unpacks how this dismantling did not happen overnight, but is the result of decades of polarization, media deregulation, and aggressive reinterpretation of the Constitution. The strategists of the MAGA movement have aggressively leaned on the “systematic weakening of our institutions” to concentrate presidential power, rewriting history and undermining the foundational pillars of a republic that is careening toward its 250th anniversary.

In light of this, the message for the Old Continent is an unmistakable wake-up call. It is no longer enough to wait for institutional checks and balances to contain the chaos; Europe must face reality head-on. Clüver Ashbrook urges us to develop a “strategic creativity” to rethink our relationship with Washington and, most importantly, to harden our own democracies: “stop being so reactive. Step back, recognize the patterns, see how things connect“.
 

Thank you for sitting down with Agenda Pública. We have your book in front of us, The American Wake-Up Call. What exactly is that American “wake-up call” or “alarm”?

In essence, it is a message for Europeans. Also for Germans in an election year, but above all for Europeans: face reality head-on and develop a more demanding strategic mindset —what I call “strategic creativity”— to rethink the relationship with the United States.

The book describes the first steps of systemic destruction that we have seen over the past year from the Trump administration, something many Europeans perceive as an extreme acceleration. This Administration has done something that Orbán, Erdoğan, and even the PiS government in Poland did not manage to do: it has tried to intervene simultaneously in all spheres of political and economic life of the United States, sustained by the ideological beliefs of some of the movement’s principal architects. Some are very evident; others are still taking shape.

“The objective is to strengthen Europeans from within and make our democracies more resilient so that we do not suffer a systemic weakening of our institutions and democratic processes”

But the arc I describe is much longer than Europeans like to admit. That is what I try to do with the book: sketch a broader view and, subsequently, translate the accelerated, interventionist moves of this Administration into better diagnostic tools. One aim is to bolster Europeans from within and strengthen our democracies so that we do not experience a systemic weakening of our institutions and democratic processes, especially because this Administration now intends to export its strategies. The other is to have better and more creative responses.

Take us on a guided tour of that broader view. Where does it begin? How do we get to November 2024?

The book’s premise is to step back, in part, to the visionary intent of the American founders and the revolutionary ambition of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that followed. I wrote it in the year the United States marks its 250th anniversary, and in which three unalienable rights were articulated: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

Today many hear “the pursuit of happiness” and think of American capitalism and its unbridled character. That was not Jefferson’s aim. The idea was that this republic —newly forged, created from commitment and later defended with blood— should receive constant investment. Thomas Jefferson saw persistent threats to democracy and, from the start, demanded permanent vigilance: only thus can freedom be made real.

For thirty years, the American system lost sight of the goal of strengthening democracy from within. The degradation of institutional trust does not happen overnight, and it includes the weakening of the fourth estate: functional media outlets.

“The strategists behind this transformation actively and aggressively lean on that weakening to dismantle the architecture of democracy and reinterpret the Constitution in favor of presidential power”

The democracy demands active involvement. The strategists behind this transformation actively and aggressively exploit that weakening to systematically dismantle the architecture of democracy and reinterpret the Constitution in favor of presidential power. Forbes and Moody’s downgraded the United States’ credit rating not due to the first Trump Administration, nor the Trump–Biden transition, nor the second coming of Trump, but due to twenty years of dysfunctional governance.

The commitments that made the Declaration and the Constitution possible were volatile. In 1787, a political philosopher who signed with the pseudonym “Cato,” but who was probably New York Governor George Clinton, wrote that “if a president is possessed by ambition, he has power and enough time to ruin his country.” And although there have been presidential missteps in the past — including the politicization of the Department of Justice and the FBI in the Nixon years — the norms and the morality seemed to govern the presidency in such a way that the United States escaped that fate… until now.

In the book I investigate what structural changes over time made possible the second Trump Administration and its ambition to dismantle core democratic functions. Politically, much begins in the late 1980s with the fall of the Berlin Wall. For Europe, it was the beginning of the Pax Americana and all that “good”: the West “won”.

But for the Republican Party, by the late 1980s, a couple of things became evident. Demographically, it was unlikely they would win the popular vote again in a presidential election. Since then it has happened only twice: in 2004 with George W. Bush and the miracle of 2024 with Donald Trump. They needed a different strategy. With the end of the external enemy —the Soviet Union— they needed an internal enemy.

What had worked before was saying: “We, the Republicans, are the bulwark against communism. If you vote for Democrats…” That long McCarthy-era line in American history. It stopped working. In ’89 and ’90, when the Wall fell, figures like Newt Gingrich, charged with strategy within the party, needed a new narrative focused on the internal enemy.

“Reagan’s deregulation of the media opened the door for that language to enter a broader public debate, and contributed to splitting the media space into partisan environments”

In 1990, Gingrich published Language: A Key Mechanism of Control, a toolbox for the 1994 congressional elections. The changes in political language and in political media occurred almost simultaneously: the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, during the Reagan Administration, made possible the rise of partisan information, while Gingrich reshaped right-wing political language: he wanted Republicans to be “disagreeable.” Describing the adversary as “anti-American” or “anti-Christian” enters the Republican vocabulary with Gingrich. That major shift in political language begins a weakening of political norms.

Reagan’s deregulation of the media opens the door for that language to enter a broader public debate, and it becomes part of a bifurcation of the media space into partisan environments. The strategists behind these movements — including Roger Ailes — later became key stewards of monetizing opinion-based information. Ailes creates Fox News. Later, a Clinton-era decision in the early days of the internet makes platform providers not responsible for the content exchanged on them, paving the way for information bubbles that today frame the realities perceived by many Americans.
 

Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook is a scholar of American politics. Photo: Agenda Pública

And the rise of Political Action Committees (PACs) wasn’t part of this?

PACs —as a result of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision— act as an accelerant: that is when all the money pours into the system.

But, meanwhile, there is a weakening of the idea of institutional facts and what facts are reliable. It is a slow-moving machinery. In the Clinton years there is early deregulation of the market. Then comes the Internet era.
 
The changes in the media market, the information landscape, and the weakening of institutional trust run along the same long arc, but in stages. In the end, figures emerge such as Steve Bannon manipulating discourse, creating dystopian “realities,” changing the narrative, to arrive at where we are now at the Munich Security Conference: Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban refugees, recounting a completely white version of the United States.

“This Administration is now asking Americans not to trust their own eyes or ears, which is literally ‘Orwellian'”

We are approaching the 250th anniversary in July 2026. Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk’s organization, is building a national curriculum that eliminates all “blackness” from American history. There is currently an AI exhibit in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building about the American founders that denies Benjamin Franklin owned slaves. A dystopian whitening is taking place. On the fifth anniversary of the Capitol assault — January 6, 2021 — the White House’s official website presented a completely new narrative of those events, which hundreds of thousands of Americans watched live on television. Both in that lived-history rewrite and in current events — think of Minneapolis and the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti — this Administration is now asking Americans not to trust their own eyes and ears, which is literally Orwellian. And it is openly asking Europeans to accompany its rereading of the “Western civilization” as a white, nativeist project.

It is crucial to understand that the instrumentalization of these slow-moving phenomena is the “genius” of the MAGA movement’s strategists. In some cases they contributed to acceleration; in others, they instrumentalized the widening distance between Americans — their retreat into social network bubbles, the hardening of partisan lines. While testing the strength of norms and rules, they also sought legitimacy for their rupture.

The reinterpretation of Article II of the Constitution is the starting point. The Unitary Executive Power is the idea on which MAGA strategists and their constitutional advisers are betting, focusing on the word “vested” (acquired, invested), interpreted as absolute. Congress, in their reading, simply yields its power to the Executive. That is the justification of Russel Vought for an illegal maneuver called impoundment, by which the president reclaim funds previously allocated by Congress, or arrogates authority to destroy from within the U.S. bureaucratic system. Agencies, according to that theory, are instruments of executive power and that power would have absolute control, even though key agencies like the Federal Reserve, the SEC, or the FCC were created by Congress to be independent and ensure expert oversight.

So, what have we seen over the past year? An Administration that governs by executive order and creates new realities even if the judiciary resists. Those “new realities” perceived are reinforced by a shrinking media space. As media ownership concentrates into fewer hands, the messaging space narrows, and what Americans hear is greatly reduced. Although some executive orders are challenged, the norms have already been broken and the checks and balances weakened.

In the first Administration, Trump did three historic things for the neonationalist conservative movement, or the white evangelical-driven conservative nationalist movement. Three things no previous Republican president had achieved.

First, he changed the nature of the Supreme Court: a conservative majority for a foreseeable future. That check is weakened, or disappears. The Supreme Court, to a large extent, rules in favor of the president: immunity rulings, the idea that ICE can target people who are not typically white, many things of that order.

Second, abortion: the end of Roe v. Wade. An evangelical project with a long arc that began in the 1970s in Colorado Springs. Trump made it possible and solidified a base.

“In a country of immigrants and pluralism, before you learn how a bill becomes law, you learn to negotiate difference”

Third, the dismantling of public education in the United States, gradually. In the “one big, beautiful bill,” for example, if you fund a religious school you get exactly the same amount as a tax deduction. Not 5%, not 3%: everything. It is, essentially, like money laundering to disarm the public school system. Diversity is learned in public school, and that is why the evangelical movement has long aimed to weaken public education.

Why does that matter? Because in a country of immigrants and pluralism, before you learn how a bill becomes law, you learn to negotiate difference. Here they are saying: no, that is no longer necessary. And the integration of American schools — Brown v. Board of Education — was about that: the civil rights movement was about that.
 

What’s astonishing about hearing that long historical arc, and what Europeans thought about the United States — or didn’t think — all that time. In Europe we have had many years of military dependence, dependence in procurement, and perhaps we did not want to see what was happening in American politics. Even when Trump won the first time, the mantra was: “take it seriously but not literally”; “the adults will contain him.” Then he loses power, Biden returns, and it is: “America is back.” Then comes 2024 and the belief that “there is no way Trump can win again.” Why have we been so blind for so long?

In part, because we did not understand that domestic politics always influences foreign policy, and vice versa.

And when people want to predict Trump’s fate, I always say: look at Hungary and Turkey, and look beyond the tech bubble to the fundamentals. Autocratization, kleptocracy, and oligarchy bring enormous economic costs, and then a greater push to control a suffering electorate.

This MAGA government has not only interfered in governance. It has also interfered in the internal economy of the United States. Less successfully, and that is where it begins to become a danger to the Trump system, but it has intervened in all of it.

“A volatile U.S. president has not provided the stable economic environment needed for massive investments in the United States’ industrial base”

Remember: the promise was to reindustrialize. If you check the Department of Labor’s X account you will see all those pale men with signs that read “your country needs you.” The reality, however, is that industrial production is contracting, not expanding, for two reasons: investments are slowing, both domestically and those promised through international trade agreements (for example, with Europe and Japan). They are slowing for one reason: insecurity. A volatile U.S. president has not provided the stable economic environment needed for massive investments in the United States’ industrial base.

Trying to have elite universities fund workforce training programs — as is the case in many of the deals closed with Ivy League universities — is incongruent, because, while this Administration deregulates AI and the semiconductor industry, in practice it is preventing reindustrialization.

Regarding tariffs: the Kiel Institute has just published its latest analysis. But we already knew: consumers pay. Midde income families: $1,000. Healthcare costs rise. Long-term unemployment grows. And part of this is connected to a shrinking industrial base.

Then there are farmers. USAID is eliminated. Half of the farmers who grow long-preservation grains, and agricultural research at Iowa and Indiana universities, had USAID as their biggest client. You remove it, and then what? You impose tariffs on China, meaning soybeans are not exported to China, and American farmers — again — have to seek alternative crops, and when that fails, the Government must intervene with massive subsidies to fix a problem of its own making. Then, the Government gives $20 billion, then a total of $40 billion, and even a large debt forgiveness managed by the IMF for Argentina, and then Argentina begins selling soybeans to China. It’s not surprising that American farmers are unhappy. Deportation policies have kept skilled farm workers away, deported them, or driven them to leave voluntarily, while Americans are not stepping forward to do these jobs. The imbalances are everywhere and in all sectors, except AI.

It seems this Administration still has not grasped how all the problems of its economic intervention connect, partly because bureaucratic expertise has been drained away through DOGE and massive efforts to reduce expertise within the system. Much of that expertise, by the way, does not reside in Washington, and includes the local expertise of the Departments of Agriculture and Forestry.

Under the tech bubble, as you’ll see more clearly this year, an internal domestic economic crisis is emerging. That will affect the voters of the coalition that Trump mobilized for this historic victory.

And who will be blamed for that in the midterm elections?

President Trump will find many targets. But, in a sense, that is almost secondary. The part of the system that was controlled has been clear and directed: they have managed to subvert and destroy the United States’ democratic and bureaucratic system. The policy layer, by contrast, has been chaotic. That clash implies that, to retain power, they need to do what we have seen accelerate in the last six months: attempt to control elections. It is a deeply autocratic behavior.

Meanwhile, Europeans did not connect the foreign policy impulses of the first Trump Administration — Greenland and Venezuela were ideas from those four years — and now they are not seeing the structural changes in the country that will affect the political maneuvers of this Administration to hold power and control.

What do you mean by ‘first Administration’ things?

The legal case against Maduro, the Manhattan case, was drafted by Emil Bove in the first Administration. Emil Bove later became the president’s personal attorney.
 

So, Greenland? It was also on the table during the first Administration.

Yes. The idea is this: there are personal interests in Trump’s inner circle on foreign policy matters that have little to do with Realpolitik and everything to do with mobilizing resources to sustain a MAGA campaign in the midterm elections and also to fund influence operations ahead of the November elections. The first beneficiary of the Venezuela incursion was a commodities trader who donated $6 million to Trump’s latest campaign; the idea of the “buying of Greenland” comes from a billionaire, Ronald Lauder, who donated $1.5 million to that same campaign. These foreign policy maneuvers and their payoff in domestic policy must be viewed together.

“Ben Haddad said it on the Munich stage and I say it in the book: stop being so reactive. Step back, recognize the patterns, see how things connect”

And that returns us to Europe, and to what the French Minister for Europe, Ben Haddad at Munich said and to what I say in the book: stop being so reactive. Step back, recognize the patterns, see how things connect. At a minimum, be smart enough in your diplomatic diagnosis to see it.

Afterward, widen the lens, take a breath and map your weaknesses. The Canadian prime minister Mark Carney did not deliver his now-famous Davos speech about middle powers without Canadians having rehearsed invasion scenarios for months, to be able to find a direct and clear language about their own capabilities.

Europe should do the same. Identify strategic assets that can be deployed when the United States enters serious economic trouble, which will come.

Assets like what? Tariffs?

Immediate responses to threats and long-term moves to blunt edges of threats that could still emerge from the White House. Europeans have worked more on how the coercion instrument would function in practice, and on how to compensate companies that lose when these mechanisms are applied. That has helped put it in order, but that is a tactical, not strategic, response.

What levers are most valuable for Europeans?

We saw it in Davos: Trump responds to markets and responds to surveys. That combination in Greenland — surveys plus markets — worked. And at the end of his Davos speech, when he said: “if you start pulling capital out of U.S. bond and stock markets, we will remember that” — whatever that may have meant — the point is that merely raising the possibility of such realities worked, and the president reversed course.

Do you think small European troop deployments changed anything, or were other factors at play?

In Davos the president was responding to a reconnaissance mission. The fact that he seemed threatened by a short reconnaissance mission reveals how weak our functional diplomacy is. The Bundeswehr sent fifteen soldiers to scout; they came back a day early, and to the White House that read as an offensive action. That suggests serious communication problems.

“Europe has tools, but that requires changing how we do industrial policy. In Germany, in particular, policy and corporate decision-making have been separate for a long time”

In theory you could say: finally Europeans are better assessing threats. Fine. But if interpreted the other way, then we are not communicating clearly, or not in a way that the other side understands. The Arctic Sentry mobilization seems to indicate that, in intelligence on joint moves by Russia and China in the Arctic, the United States and Europe are aligned. So why keep hinting, as heard in Munich, that Greenland remains an open issue? Europeans are operating with that assumption and are preparing all strategic options in case the issue reappears.

And on the economic front, Europe has tools, but that requires changing how we do industrial policy. In Germany, in particular, policy and corporate decisions have long been separated. Yes: the chancellor takes a business delegation to China, but then businesses do business and policy does policy.
 

We don’t even have the language or framework to think at this level of state capitalism.

Americans would say that Trump’s interventions — golden shares, for example — merely imitate what Europe has long done to protect and promote its economic champions. Yet in the European case these moves have never been explicitly tied to offensive economic interests, which would constitute true economic diplomacy. Right now everything must serve the national interest. That requires a different discourse with European companies because, as the pain points in the United States become evident, Europe has mechanisms to relieve that pain — through investments, but also through operational excellence, including robotics and electronics — a know-how in machinery that exists only in a few places in the world, including Germany and Italy. Deploying these “tools” prudently, politically, could increase Europe’s capacity for coverage. They are power assets. In diplomatic terms, I would introduce them into a conversation of strategic hedging.

That requires building a base of economic diplomacy within Europe to be able to deploy it all. Because, as I say in the book, the Trump Administration is prepared to use all tools and all tactics to achieve its objectives.

We heard it again yesterday, and I heard it here last year: Americans love what they call a “cowboy mentality.” Rubio spoke with admiration of the Spanish cowboys. They want speed and they want things to move.

Speaking of Rubio: his speech was described as reassuring by some people on the stage, and even in some reviews. A message of reassurance, of embracing Europe. I don’t think it was. My sense is that very few people here found it reassuring, probably including those who used that word. But you speak of the conversation we need to have to be more resilient as Europeans. And there is also this approach of trying to contain Trump — “contain him while we build independence” —. What message does that send to European voters?

That was the first thing I thought when I saw it.

“Those who stood up and applauded were also signaling back to Washington, because you always have to see the inner piece”

You could argue that those who stood up and applauded were also signaling back to Washington, because you always have to see the inner piece. In the run to 2028, there is a strong rivalry between Marco Rubio and J. D. Vance, and such a speech telegraphs to Washington. And perhaps the people in the room were also telegraphing to Donald Trump, to show their willingness to cooperate.

But it is extremely dangerous for his credibility. People stood up and applauded, and then, upon leaving, many said: wow, what a revisionist speech.

“There were many coded messages in white nationalist language directed at an internal audience. Uses English terms, but they translate. The British public should see it as well”

Beyond white and nativeist themes tied to supposed achievements of white civilization, the speech included several anti-Semitic jabs, such as when he urged Germans to stop “atoning for their past.” A past that includes the organized killing of 6 million Jews. Saying that in Germany, where that act of atonement is considered endless and defining, requires audacity, and fits with AfD’s manifesto.

There was a lot of dog-whistling in white nationalist language directed at an internal audience. It uses English terms, but they translate. The British public should see it too. Ethnonationalist attitudes were present.

And while your objective is to send a message to Washington, your voters are watching. I saw that large image of the German defense minister applauding. He was the first person last year, just after J.D. Vance gave that speech, to stand up and say: absolutely not.

And this year he was again critical in his remarks, but we all saw him standing in the hall at the Bayerischer Hof, with important state elections ahead in Germany.
German federalism is different from American federalism, although structurally it owes a debt to the Americans. But if you manage to elect an AfD governor in Saxony-Anhalt in September this year, he will begin to break the system from within. Many of the long-term corrosive elements that fed the acceleration in the United States are already visible in Germany’s domestic politics and across Europe, as I illustrate in the book.

So, for any European audience, that moment of applause was dangerous. Then you cannot say: “I understood the racist messages, but I applauded the softer tone.” That does not work. Your voters are also watching.

Let me ask you about the relationship between Trump and far-right movements in Europe. Is it good for radical-right parties to have a close relationship with Trump, or can it backfire? If you are nationalist, you should protect your country. When Trump attacks Europe, or a European country…

You’re right: it is a hard moment for right-wing parties that do not have a coherent framework for almost anything.
They want American money and American strategies. It is easier in the United Kingdom, where there is not the same Russian temptation. It is much more complex for a party like the AfD, where for a long time the appeal has been anti-Western and pro-Russian, especially to capture eastern Germany.

There was an early romance, with prominent party figures travelling to Washington to argue that freedom of speech and political expression are under threat in Germany, and urging the American Administration to maintain its criticisms. The anti-EU stance serves as a bridge between Trump supporters and the party’s pro-Russian elements, but the party’s anti-American historical roots create inconsistencies. If American officials eventually normalize relations with Russia as Trump has long wished, perhaps those differences would fade.

“More than 40% of Germans do not trust public institutions; the media market is shrinking across Europe; and public schools have become recruitment targets for right-wing groups to foster a climate of denunciation and mistrust”

There are large inconsistencies between the ideological components emanating from Russia and those emanating from the United States. What unites them is a strange admiration for white nationalism. This Administration views Russia as admirable because it is supposedly a Christian nation, even though Russia has 190 ethnic minority groups and is one of the most diverse countries in the world. But they do not see it. They look at Putin, at how white he is, and at the conservative church that has backed its stance on Ukraine. They see anti-woke and authoritarian control, and Donald Trump finds that marvelous.

The MAGA movement, however, knows precisely where it believes it can push for success: it does not attempt to ideologically direct Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella. They are a product of the French system.

They can help with tactics and strategy — and of course with money — but interference in messaging is far less direct than in other cases. The AfD remains MAGA’s strategic putty and, therefore, receives more attention.

The AfD also knows it needs resources from the United States. The National Security Strategy implies that financial backing for these movements will come directly from the U.S. State Department and other government resources.

The AfD wants support, but is full of contradictions. Exposing those contradictions and those within MAGA was part of why I wanted to write the book. I wanted people to understand the system and the intention behind destruction; to understand that its success did not happen in a vacuum or due to a rapid genius, but through tactical observation of the country’s weaknesses and strategic manipulation of those weaknesses with elements of the autocratic manual to achieve this kind of acceleration. More than 40% of Germans do not trust institutions; the media market shrinks across Europe; and public schools have become recruitment targets for right-wing groups to foster a climate of denunciation and mistrust, just like other spaces that once sustained social cohesion. I have been encouraged by the large audiences at my readings and events: it shows the message is getting through. These changes are happening here, right now; and they form a dangerous breeding ground for further radicalization, as we have seen in the United States. It is time for concerted action: protect institutions, strengthen the rule of law, including party financing laws, and redouble political education in schools. That moment is now. 

Thank you very much.