Jürgen Habermas: Can the EU Still Escape the Authoritarian Pull of the USA?

Waning US leadership and China's new world order compel Europe to unite or face marginalization.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/can-the-eu-still-escape-the-authoritarian-pull-of-the-usa



This text is a translated transcript of a lecture delivered at the Siemens Foundation on on 19 November 2025.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered, among other things, a belated recognition among European populations of a profoundly altered world situation. This transformation had, however, already been developing for some time with the decline of the superpower of the twentieth century. An early warning signal was the frantic shift in mood within American civil society after September 11, 2001. This change in the mentality of a frightened population was further inflamed by the rhetoric of the government under President George W. Bush and his recklessly militant Vice President. Everyone seemed to feel the dangers of international terrorism up close. In the course of the propaganda for the war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq—a war that violated international law—this shift in mentality radicalized and became entrenched. From an institutional perspective, this change primarily affected the party system. Already during the 1990s, under the leadership of Newt Gingrich, not only had the practices of the Republican Party fundamentally changed, but so too had the social composition of its base. The tendencies toward a more profound and now, it seems, barely reversible transformation of the political system as a whole only prevailed, however, after President Obama had disappointed hopes for a thoroughly changed US foreign policy.

By now, the weakening of the international standing of the former superpower is unmistakable. This was signaled once again at the most recent APEC summit in South Korea at the end of October: the unsettled alliance partners of the USA are now also seeking agreements with other neighbours who are either more neutral or more dependent on China. And after the early departure of the American President—who is more interested in quick deals than in the far-sighted stability of American influence—China’s President Xi is said to have then set the tone with his promotion of the conception of a multicultural world society under Chinese leadership. Ever since the People’s Republic was admitted to the World Trade Organization, prudent governments had pursued the goal of making their country an economically leading great power. But only since Xi Jinping assumed office in 2012 has the declared aim—advanced with a certain “defensive aggressiveness”—been to replace the liberal world trade regime with a Sinocentric world-political order. With the Silk Road project, China had already been pursuing more far-reaching strategic and security-policy objectives for some time. The greatest beneficiaries were Russia, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. But for developing and emerging countries too, China is likely now the largest creditor. The international shift in power is generally revealed by the fact that, from a geopolitical perspective, the decisive conflicts will in future concentrate in Southeast Asia.

It will be interesting to observe how Trump’s seizure of power will affect Taiwan’s domestic politics. But quite apart from this flashpoint, it is not only China and its regional allies on one side, and the USA and the westward-leaning states of the region—above all Japan, South Korea, and Australia—that face one another. In close proximity, India too is now pursuing its own aspirations to world power. The shift in geopolitical power relations is moreover reflected not only in the Pacific region but also in the rise of middle powers such as Brazil, South Africa, or Saudi Arabia, which are self-confidently striving for greater independence. Many such rising states are now seeking admission to the loose, now expanded association of the BRICS states. An end to Western hegemony is also indicated by the profound geo-economic transformations of the liberal world economic order that the USA had created since the end of the Second World War. Not that this rules-based world trade order—now being strained by Trump himself as well—could simply be liquidated, as one can see today in the interesting dispute over the supply of “rare earths”; but hardly anything could better illustrate the now routine security-policy restrictions on world trade than the recent decision by the government of Germany—which prides itself as the world export champion—to prop up with state funds the internationally no longer competitive German steel industry.

Although these changes in geopolitical power relations had been evident for some time, and although Trump’s re-election could by no means be ruled out when the Ukraine war began, the Western governments failed to grasp after Russia’s invasion that this conflict—once its outbreak had not been prevented—absolutely had to be concluded within Joe Biden’s term in office. In the meantime, Trump’s second term has brought about what had long been announced in the Heritage Foundation’s programmatic document: the now barely reversible dismantling of the oldest liberal-democratic regime, following a pattern we in Europe had already come to know from the example of Hungary and other states. These new types of authoritarian regimes apparently cannot be attributed to the particular circumstances of a failed transition from post-Soviet forms of rule. They are probably more like precursors for the democratically legitimated dismantling of the oldest democracy on earth and for the rapid construction and expansion of a technocratically administered libertarian-capitalist form of rule. What we are observing in the USA is the same transition from one “system” to another—not even particularly creeping, but rather inconspicuous in the face of a more or less paralyzed opposition: the last or second-to-last democratic election was the long-announced start of a rapid, arbitrary-autocratic expansion of an executive power that has been simultaneously trimmed and purged. Trump is abusing this power without regard for objections from a legal system that now runs into the void and is gradually being hollowed out from above.

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