Les cent jours qui ont changé les États-Unis
“The man who returned to the Oval Office of the White House on 20 January 2025 is identical to the man who settled in there eight years earlier, as if time has no hold over Donald Trump. And, as was the case in 2017, a tornado immediately swept over Washington, reaching well beyond the borders of the United States”, says Gilles Paris in the introduction to this work, a compilation of articles published in the French daily newspaper Le Monde (our translation throughout). The author goes on to point out that the Republican had four years to prepare his revenge, but also, first and foremost, to “reaffirm his hold over his followers […], turning numerous legal cases to his advantage, most of which were dismissed by means of a strategy of smear campaigns with the connivance of majority conservative judges and the Supreme Court, who tended to be favourably disposed towards him”.
“Accustomed to the position, unlike his first term in office, in January 2025 [af1] Donald Trump also has the gratification of a clear victory, albeit not the landslide he would like to claim it was. Drawing a considerable advantage from the inability of Joe Biden’s Democratic administration to grasp the scale of the exasperation created by ongoing inflation and a huge wave of migration, he took the popular vote as well as the majority in the Electoral College”, Paris writes. He further argues that “where the ‘Trumpism’ of 2017, still taking its first tottering footsteps, could be described as a cross between a powerful anti-elite sentiment, symbolised by the Tea Party movement that preceded him, and the defence of those left behind by globalisation, Trumpism in 2025 is ideologically far more deeply rooted. Since 2016, eight years of primary elections dominated by the MAGA (Make America Great Again) have radically transformed a Republican Party that has now been stripped of the slightest island of resistance. Increased electorally (…), the victorious coalition ranges ideologically from the Christian Right to the tech oligarchy, embodied by the Giants of new technology out in force at the swearing-in ceremony. This reinforcement of ‘Trumpism’ is reflected in the ‘roadmap’ provided by the think tank Heritage Foundation, which has been methodologically implemented during the first hundred days of his presidency, with the stated aim of transforming the United States for ever”.
“This ‘Trumpist’ revolution has a long line of precedents in the history of the United States. Imperialism and the reference to a ‘golden age’ hark back to the Presidency of William McKinley (1897-1901), which saw the emergence of voracious capitalism. The war on immigration which resumed on 20 January 2025 is a reminder of the ‘Immigration Act’ of 1924 which dramatically cut immigration quotas and led to mass expulsions of people of Mexican origin between 1929 and 1936”, the author explains, adding that “the offensive against knowledge has its counterpart against the bastions of the scorned elite of universities. An individual’s level of education is now one of the most reliable variables in voting. The vast majority of people without degrees vote Republican. This attack echoes the ‘monkey trial’ against the theory of evolution, which was held in Tennessee in 1925. It was the symbol of the fight between evangelical Christianity and scientific teaching and the tendency of Bible belt states to interfere with the content of school curriculums. This is topped off by vaccine scepticism and climate change denial already developed by Donald Trump during his first term in office”.
“In his decision to cut social spending to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest, Donald Trump also broke with a commitment from his first term in office, revealing the plutocratic nature of his administration. Removing the notion of conflicts of interests, the capitalisation of his influence in the ecosystem of crypto-currencies are other departures from the norms that prevailed up to now. Trade wars have also slowed down an economy that was in excellent health when the Republicans returned to the White House”, Paris goes on to stress.
“An illiberal downward spiral, contempt of international law, neo-imperialist aspirations, the politicisation of the apparatus of State, overlaps between public and private interests, the cult of leadership in his camp and the Conservative propagandist media: the United States is on a fast track to ‘Putinisation’”, according to Piotr Smolar. He considers that the “attempt to resolve the conflict in Ukraine illustrates Washington’s radical change of course. The agreement on exploiting Ukrainian mineral resources, which the Trump administration negotiated brutally with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has not been accompanied by any clear security guarantees for the future. The White House attacked the legitimacy of the Ukrainian leader as well as his honesty. The American strategy that is emerging is one of a vast bilateral agreement with Moscow, which will start with a ceasefire and move on to joint economic projects”.
Smolar goes on to argue that “Donald Trump assumes a shared vision of history with Vladimir Putin, one of major powers setting borders and undoing them. They both disdain the International Criminal Court and the catechism of democracy. In this vision, allies are unimportant and multinational bodies are empty shells which the United States is happy to shed. The world is divided into prey and predators. Vladimir Putin has conquered 20% of the territory of Georgia, annexed the Crimea in 2014 and has embarked on a conquest of the east [and of the south, he adds] of Ukraine, possibly with a view to absorbing Belarus as well one day. Trump talks about taking back control of the Panama Canal, seizing Greenland, making Canada the 51st state. Their credibility is unimportant: their words betray equal disregard for the people of these countries and validate the idea of a zone of influence, available to the major powers. For the United States, the entire American continent. Russia’s is the former Soviet periphery. And China’s? To date, Donald Trump, though not usually short of words in front of the press, has said nothing that might reassure Taiwan in the event that Beijing should decide to invade it”.
This book is a must-read to understand more why the Europeans have been flying blind for the last year… and that their only hope is to keep the damage to a minimum while keeping their fingers crossed for the American President’s position to be weakened in the mid-term elections of November 2026. (Olivier Jehin)
Gilles Paris (editor). Les cent jours qui ont changé les États-Unis (available in French only). Éditions de l’aube. ISBN: 978-2-8159-6864-5. 282 pages. €18,90
The narrow but inescapable path of the European pillar of NATO
Pierre Tardy presents the European pillar of NATO as “a possible response to both the planned withdrawal of the Americans and the long-term Russian threat”. He considers that this “offers strategic advantages, as it should provide Europeans with the means to exercise their own sovereignty”, but that it is also “a path to emancipation, now recognised as essential by the vast majority of Europeans”.
“By questioning American involvement in Europe, and incidentally by moving closer to Russia, Trump’s second term is upsetting [the] calculation and restoring value to initiatives aimed at empowering Europeans. This need is all the more evident as Russia sinks into a threatening posture, placing Europeans in the unprecedented situation of facing both a strong threat and the failure of the corresponding security guarantee. In the shorter term, the prospect of Europeans alone implementing an operation to supervise a hypothetical ceasefire agreement in Ukraine makes their emancipation all the more imperative”, he writes.
He goes on to explain that “a starting point is that NATO will remain an essential organisation for European defence, even in the event of a US withdrawal. This is because NATO is the only organisation offering expertise (largely provided by the Americans) in terms of planning, command and conduct of complex military operations”. It is even more the case as it would be fruitless to look to the Europeans to set up an integrated command of a similar scale, in addition to but alongside that which exists within the Alliance, if only due to insufficient levels.
Buying time to become independent is an option under consideration. But is it the right strategy? “Faced with Trump, the Atlanticist countries have acknowledged a form of American abandonment, but are not yet fully prepared to ‘kill the father’ in order to make emancipation possible. Chancellor Merz’s comments advocating greater European independence in the field of defence are thus almost systematically accompanied by references to the indispensable nature of America’s presence within the Alliance. The same applies to European nuclear deterrence, which can only complement American deterrence. The change of ear (Zeitenwende) is certainly evidence in German and Polish defence policies, and no one is suggesting a complete break with the Americans; but the American presence, in the difficult context of the Trump presidency, also highlights the limitations of what could be a European pillar within NATO. The Atlantic Alliance summit in The Hague in June 2025 and the meeting between Europeans and the American President in Turnberry in July (during which the US-EU trade agreement was approved) confirmed the severity of this situation. In both cases, the Europeans’ desire for emancipation and the brutality of the Trump presidency clash with the need, on the European side, to avoid precipitating a break-up as far as possible. This effectively places a limit on emancipation”, Tardy reasons.
The author takes the view that a European pillar of NATO “makes cooperation with the United Kingdom essential, without which the pillar would not exist. Of course, the British position within NATO may make it the natural leader of the European pillar, but their status as a third country vis-à-vis the Union undermines this claim. France, as a member state of the EU and a nuclear power, enjoys a privileged position, even if its relationship with NATO continues to fuel mistrust. In this context, their co-leadership of the ‘coalition of the willing’ on Ukraine foreshadows what the European pillar will look like, here in a largely de-institutionalised format”. It is our view that this fails to take account of Germany’s position – it has the largest European defence budget, which is likely to increase further, passing the 150 billion euros mark within the next three years – and it co-chaires, along with the United Kingdom, the contact group or military aid to Ukraine and, in the terms of the latest statement, the ‘coalition of the willing’. The E3 would therefore be the natural driving force of the European pillar within NATO, as long as the three partners are capable of adopting a common vision for the long term. As Tardy stresses, “the establishment of a new ad hoc cooperation format – the E5 – bringing together the defence ministers of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland and Italy also contributes to the operationalisation of the European pillar of NATO”.
Designing a European pillar also presupposes greater coordination of positions, but also greater responsibilities in the NATO organigram: “efforts to share the burden must also lead to greater requirements for Europeans to share responsibilities within NATO headquarters (high-level civilian and military posts)”, Tardy stresses, adding that “ultimately, the question of the position of SACEUR, currently still held by an American, will arise. His responsibilities in the nuclear field make this a sensitive issue, and the retention of an American in this position is seen by many as a guarantee of their commitment. But conversely, what kind of autonomy is possible if the commander of the Allied forces in Europe is systematically non-European?”. (OJ)
Pierre Tardy. The narrow but inescapable path of the European pillar of NATO. Institut Jacques Delors. Policy Paper no. 316, November 2025. 11 pages. This paper can be downloaded on the Institute’s website at: https://aeur.eu/f/jt3