From Europe, Donald Trump looks less like an aberration and more like an exposure: of fragile democratic guardrails, selective morality in international law, and systems that relied on restraint long after accountability was needed.
From Europe, it has often been tempting to treat Donald Trump as a uniquely American problem. A political oddity. An unfortunate detour. Something loud, embarrassing and, with luck, temporary.
I don’t think that interpretation holds.
To my mind, Trump was never the point. He was the exposure.
I think he is deeply unsuited to leadership. I think he is careless with power, uninterested in responsibility, and driven more by impulse than consequence. The damage done during his presidencies is real, and it should not be minimised. But focusing only on Trump as an individual lets something far more troubling off the hook.
A system that can be bent this easily was already bent.
When “Strong Institutions” Turned Out to Be Fragile
For years, the United States was held up—especially to its allies—as a model of institutional resilience. The message was always reassuring: the guardrails will hold. The courts will intervene. Norms will protect the system from its worst impulses.
What the Trump years revealed is how much of that confidence rested on assumption rather than enforcement.
Much of democratic governance, it turns out, depends on good faith. On people choosing not to push too hard. On shared agreement about what shouldn’t be done, even if it technically can be.
Trump didn’t respect those unwritten rules. And when he ignored them, the response was often slower, weaker and more hesitant than many expected. Not because safeguards didn’t exist, but because they were never designed to be tested this aggressively.
That should concern anyone who still believes democracy is self-correcting.
Dropping the Pretence Abroad
From a European perspective, Trump’s foreign policy was often described as a rupture. An abandonment of international norms. A rejection of multilateralism and international law.
But here, too, the substance mattered less than the style.
Long before Trump, international law was applied selectively. Military interventions were justified after the fact. Civilian harm was regretted rhetorically and absorbed politically. Strategic interests quietly outweighed legal or moral consistency.
Trump didn’t invent this behaviour. He simply stopped pretending otherwise.
By speaking openly in transactional terms—about alliances, defence, influence—he stripped away the language that had long softened these realities. What remained was uncomfortable, but not unfamiliar. Especially to those outside the US who had experienced American power less as principle and more as pressure.
When Right and Wrong Became Optional
This is where, I think, the real damage began — long before Trump ever entered political life.
At some point, we collectively accepted that principles could be applied selectively. That international law could be invoked when convenient and ignored when inconvenient. That occupation, domination, or the denial of self-determination could be tolerated in one context and condemned in another.
You cannot argue, with credibility, that some people may live indefinitely without sovereignty while others must never be ruled against their will. You cannot claim to defend universal values while treating them as conditional. Once right and wrong become negotiable, they cease to function as principles at all.
From Europe, this inconsistency has been visible for decades. And once it takes hold, it corrodes everything: trust between nations, faith in institutions, belief that justice is anything more than a slogan.
Selective morality does not stay contained. It teaches leaders that power outranks principle, and citizens that rules bend for the strong and harden for the weak. The result is not order, but erosion.
What we are witnessing now does not feel sudden. It feels like the delayed consequence of choices long made.
Capitalism Without the Apology
Trump also removed the politeness from capitalism’s relationship with power. Economic interest was no longer carefully balanced against public responsibility in official language. It was prioritised openly.
Deregulation, environmental policy, corporate advantage—these were framed as obvious goods, not moral trade-offs.
Again, this was not new. But it was no longer disguised as necessity or inevitability. For many watching from Europe, it echoed patterns already visible closer to home: money shaping policy, influence masquerading as expertise, democracy bending toward capital while insisting nothing fundamental had changed.
The Temptation to Return to “Normal”
As the political temperature cools, there is a strong desire—on both sides of the Atlantic—to return to normal. To restore the language of decency. To believe that the danger has passed because the tone has improved.
I understand that impulse. But I don’t trust it.
Normal is what allowed these weaknesses to deepen quietly over decades. Normal relied on restraint rather than accountability, on image rather than structure.
A system that only works when everyone behaves well is not a strong system. It is a courteous one.
An Exposure We Should Not Waste
I don’t believe Trump intended to reveal anything. But he did.
He exposed how thin democratic guardrails can be. How conditional international law often is. How deeply money shapes political outcomes. And how quickly institutions prioritise stability over principle when truly challenged.
Trump did not create these realities. He made them harder to deny.
The danger now is not simply his possible return, but the broader lesson being ignored. If the response is merely to replace one figure and restore better manners, then nothing essential has been learned.
From Europe, the Trump years should not be dismissed as an American anomaly. They should be read as a warning: when a system abandons consistency, it should not be surprised when everything built upon it begins to come apart.
