What is the relationship between the USA and Europe?

What is the relationship between the USA and Europe? In the mid-1880s, my grandfather's grandfather, August Langholf, left the small village of Deschel in Prussia—which is now in Poland—in search of a new life. Together with his wife Elisabeth and their two children, he took the train to Hamburg, where they boarded Polaria, with the destination America. After passing through Ellis Island, they settled in Wisconsin, along with thousands of German-speaking immigrants seeking opportunities, land, and a future in the USA. He could not have imagined what this decision would lead to. His son, August Jr., born in the USA, later fought in the country's army during the First World War. Parts of his service were in Europe. His son, my grandfather Allen, in turn flew bombers over Europe during the Second World War, over parts of what was previously his family's homeland. Four generations later, I would also cross the Atlantic, this time to permanently build a life in Europe, near the places my family had left a century earlier. Now, in these difficult times, I often think about that journey as I observe how transatlantic relations are developing towards perhaps the greatest uncertainty since 1945. My family history is not unique. Millions of Americans have their roots in Europe, just as millions of Europeans have family ties across the Atlantic. But it still illustrates something important about the relationship between Europe and the USA: it was never just a relationship between states. It was built by people, families, and generations of movement between two continents. Today, as a new geopolitical order takes shape, I find myself divided between identities: American by birth, European by free will, and increasingly Polish in both my worldview and sense of belonging. This perspective is not unique and gives me no particular authority to speak. But it has influenced how I view both the growing distance between the USA and Europe and the enduring ties, and it gives me the opportunity to consider both aspects. Despite the tensions that now characterize transatlantic relations, mainly due to Donald Trump's politics, I still believe there is a mutual need. The bond is strained, more than for decades, but it is not broken. Roots I grew up in a small town of 3000 inhabitants in Wisconsin, a state in the Midwest. Founded by Germans in the 1800s, and part of a pattern in the region, where European settlers sought land, opportunities, and to create a distance between themselves and conflicts on the ancestral continent. My own family was part of this pattern and built their lives around agriculture and industrial labor for generations. At the time of my upbringing, much of this heritage had faded. On my father's side, the elders still spoke German to each other, but my parents' generation had largely switched to English, and my generation had very little connection to either the language or agriculture as a way of life. Something more subtle remained: a sense of community and a belief in hard work and self-sufficiency. Like most families at the same time, my family had quite easily become "American." The language disappeared. The old country became an abstraction. For most, the German heritage was abandoned not only due to general assimilation but became an active choice with the two World Wars. Only after my own move to Europe did I begin to understand how much had been lost and how much remained hidden beneath the surface. More subtle influences from Germany remained. The small town I grew up in was, in many ways, an ideal place to grow up. The schools were small but forward-looking, and life was predictable and carefree. Conversations at the town's small restaurant revolved around sports, weather, the harvest, news from the church, but rarely national politics. Political disagreements were kept at a distance from everyday life. This has changed. My hometown has, like large parts of the USA, become polarized, defined more by politics than community. During a recent visit, I passed houses with American flags flying—but now they are also adorned with political slogans. One had a banner with "Make America Great Again," another simply displayed the message: "Fuck Joe Biden." The sight of this made a deep impression. A local community that used to be bound together by church excursions and school championships is now divided by political identity and loyalty. What I witnessed in my upbringing town was not just a local shift in tone, but a part of a broader change in American political culture, which has had direct consequences for how the USA interacts with the outside world. For decades, transatlantic relations rested on a relatively stable foundation, mainly formed during the Second World War, when Americans contributed to freeing (parts of) Europe from tyranny. My grandfather also played a role in this. He flew bombers during the war. But there is a deep irony in him carrying out several missions over the same places from which his family had come, only decades earlier. I have often wondered if he thought about the contradictory nature of it. Did he see Europe only as a battlefield, or as a place that connected him to the family's past? Did he understand how Europe and America were so intertwined? Through family histories, migration, and experiences? What did it mean to him personally, as a child of German immigrants? During my upbringing, we never talked about his war experiences, so I never had the opportunity to ask these questions directly. Most of what I know about his youth and upbringing family I learned long after his death in 2002. He was still alive when I traveled to Poland to study, and he asked general questions about what I was doing and what motivated me, but I never understood that he himself had seen several of the places I came from from a completely different perspective. Perspectives When I first arrived in Poland in 1998, I was a student. I spent the first two years of my stay here. I met my future wife and have now lived permanently in Europe since 2009. I have Polish (that is, EU) citizenship since 2023. After I began researching my family's migration history from the 1800s, I also began to think about my own experiences as a migrant. Coming from the USA, one is not considered a migrant but by some ungrounded reason we are called "expats," which places us in a different category than immigrants from countries like Ukraine, Belarus, or India. However, this does not take away the fact that I have had similar experiences as many immigrants in Poland, or Europe. I struggled with the language, dealt with cultural differences, and over time I began to identify more with the people around me and call Poland home. During these 16 years, I not only became a native of Poland, but I also began to feel that I developed a special kind of ability to understand both sides of the North Atlantic. I often found myself speaking with dual perspectives, making interpretations and analyses of events through this special lens. But, since 2025, I feel an increasing confusion about what is happening in the USA. How could a country, my country (is it still my country?), so central to the building of the post-war international order question its own commitments in this? Why would the USA, which stood for alliances, suddenly undermine them? The answer lies partly not only in the way of perceiving the world but also in the distance—geographical, historical, and psychological. The connections Americans have to "the old world" seem less relevant to them today. Today's immigrants come from other parts of the world: Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East. The European heritage has largely disappeared. At the same time, the responsibility that the USA took on at the end of the World Wars and the Cold War has also become less relevant. This despite Europe now experiencing the greatest conflict in the world since 1945. From my perspective in Poland and in light of Russia's war against Ukraine, I understand how tangible and immediate the threats are. For many Americans, the same threat is abstract and filtered through domestic politics and a lost connection to Europe. A more nuanced part of the answer, however, lies in the fact that this separation has been built up over a long time. The former Foreign Minister Condoleezza Rice wrote in Foreign Affairs 2024 about how the changing conditions of the outside world have affected the USA. If you read between the lines, you can sense how what is described as a threat to American security also forms the basis for the fragmentation between the USA and its European allies. First and foremost, the era of great power conflicts has returned. Russia, China, and middle powers like Iran are involved in territorial conflicts or armed conflicts within their respective regions, driving revisionist agendas to challenge the foundations of the previous world order. The USA's operation in Venezuela, where a sovereign state kidnapped the leader of another sovereign state, removed all illusions that we are seeing anything other than an 1800s geopolitical competition resurfacing. The Monroe Doctrine, invoked in our time—a declaration by the American president in 1823 that declared the Western Hemisphere a zone where European colonization and intervention would not be accepted—said something about how far the USA was willing to go. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Other sources for the rift between the USA and Europe lie in what Rice called the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse": populism, nativism, isolationism, and protectionism. And this is where the challenge really lies, with the corrosive forces that test and dismantle democracies from within. No one is immune, and the domino effect has already been noted in countries like Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, and Czechia. France is in the risk zone, as is Germany. The USA is currently embodied by this phenomenon. Vulnerability increases with elected illiberal leaders who hijack democratic institutions, weakening them. These actors reject governance linked to elections and power shifts in favor of long-term authoritarian plans, carried out through top-down systems that bypass the need for consensus or bureaucratic checks. This is a central control logic not only in the Kremlin but also in Beijing, and today, in Washington. Today's world, shaped by rapid technological change and AI competition, is increasingly preoccupied with issues of power, security, and influence, but lacks a larger vision for a better future for all. China's rise as a technological and economic actor has intensified this dynamic, with its alternative model that does not align with democratic norms. At the same time, the American tech billionaires are neither keeping pace with strategic nor democratic considerations. The focus is instead on building a new oligarchy of money and power that currently seems to be taking Washington by surprise. Fundamental Questions Against this background, the fundamental questions arise: How far has the USA and Europe drifted apart? Is it a temporary break in a bond that can still be repaired? The signs of a serious rift are obvious. Trump's statements that the USA plans to withdraw at least 5000 soldiers from bases in Germany are worth noting in this context. At the same time, the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has spoken about changed transatlantic relations, and that the USA and Europe are drifting apart. Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk also recently said that "the greatest threat to the transatlantic community is not its external enemies, but the ongoing disintegration of the alliance." Trump even called NATO a "piece of paper," which not only undermines the alliance but also invites its opponents, such as Russia, to openly challenge its collective defense. Many intelligence services believe that the window to test NATO's unity is now wide open for Vladimir Putin. However, there is another unresolved question, which has the greatest potential to drive in a wedge and permanently inflict damage on the North Atlantic relationship—Greenland. Since the return to the White House, Trump has insisted that the USA "must have" Greenland. The threat to the Danish territory dates back to statements as early as 2019, but most Europeans, including the Danes, did not take it very seriously. Only after the operation against Venezuela did Trump raise the issue again, which triggered debate at a high level—and some panic—between Europe and the USA. The threat of annexation remains. If the US administration decides to make the threats a reality and actually take Greenland—through military or hybrid means—this would fundamentally change the relationship. It would probably also mean the end of NATO, giving Putin the victory he dreams of. For those with a family history stretching across the Atlantic, these prospects are hard to accept. My grandfather fought for the USA in a world war, my grandfather in another. Generations of Americans have seen Europe's security as inseparable from their own. Even today, after all that this administration has done in foreign policy—Venezuela, Iran, Ukraine/Russia, and so on—most cannot imagine the USA attacking an ally. If you take the fact that 75% of the US population is against the annexation of Greenland in the calculation, there may be hope that we do not have to see it. And despite the anti-European rhetoric coming from Washington, attitude surveys show that 93% of the population believes that economic and trade relations between Europe and the USA are important or quite important, and 81% agreed that shared democratic values are important for strong relations between the USA and Europe. Waiting for Godot? After participating in debates and discussions in many European contexts over the past year, I have tried my best to gauge how Europe is trying to fix these transatlantic relations, or at least minimize the damage inflicted by the Trump administration. Without doubt, Trump's politics have created anger and confusion across the continent, and attempts to divide European states have occurred. But overall, the European consensus regarding attacks and malice from Washington instills hope that the bonds on this side of the Atlantic are stronger than we boast. The latest example of this is Europe's refusal to enter into Trump's meaningless wars against Iran. Perhaps it is a lesson from dealing with Putin's regime in Russia: only strength is respected. Weakness is taken as an invitation to further attacks. In the light of the barrier from Washington, European unity is definitely a strength, but signs of weakness are still many. Most visible perhaps is NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and his overwhelming communication style in relation to Trump, such as calling him "daddy" in a situation. It is clearly just a thin line to balance on, between showing strength and openly challenging and insulting Trump. Given his unpredictability, no one knows how he and the circle around him will react. Today, however, many European leaders have chosen to play a waiting game. In informal talks with Democrats in Washington, they have received the information that change is coming, and it will be soon. Great hope has been placed on the midterm elections, which take place in November this year. Early polls indicate that Democrats will win the House of Representatives, and that they can even get a majority in the Senate. There is hope that the current administration's unplanned politics will get a counterbalance, and perhaps even slow down. But this is a problematic strategy. To begin with, the Supreme Court's decision to remove parts of what is prescribed in the Voting Rights Act has changed the game. In short, states, especially in the South, have been given greater opportunities to create electoral districts without having to ensure that minorities have representation. These are complicated legal issues, but an analysis has reached the conclusion that this could lead to Democrats losing twelve seats in the House of Representatives, and there is no reassuring victory to wait for. Furthermore, even if Democrats win, there is no guarantee that Trump and his administration will accept that their power is limited by election results. Instead, it would mean even more of a retreat in the rule of law and increased political polarization. A Congress completely led by Democrats would try to do big things, including abolishing ICE, halting the funding of many of the current administration's projects, abolishing tariffs, and perhaps even a new attempt to put Trump on trial. However, winning a majority will not be enough for Democrats. The American public will only become even more preoccupied with internal political struggles, and foreign policy will reflect this growing chaos. We Still Need Each Other When I look at the United States from this vantage point, I often wonder if my migration is nearing completion. Since 2025, I have found that I speak about Europeans as "us" and Americans as "them," in a way different from before in my life. This is in most cases unconscious, and there was a colleague of mine who pointed this out and asked if I no longer primarily identify as American. Perhaps she was right. I sympathize more with Europe and feel a degree of hostility towards my homeland. However, the acknowledgment of this internal conflict has made me confront myself, take a step back, and try to see with a broader perspective. The USA is losing its position as a leading superpower. Society is torn apart by toxic politics, and the world is struggling to define the new order we will find ourselves in as a result of this. Whatever it is that Americans go through will last a long time. And after all this is over, and I believe it will be, the focus must be on healing: both domestically and in the relations with Europe (yes, with the whole world). In the short term, I am not optimistic at all. Politics is so conflict-creating and the human element is entirely removed from the equation on both sides. American society is in decline. Millions experience the growing gaps in wealth, education, healthcare, racial discrimination, and quality of life overall. For most, the illusion of what was once the American dream is dead. My grandfather's grandfather sought that dream and some kind of promise of a better future when he and his family crossed the Atlantic. Four generations later, when I traveled in the opposite direction, I did not expect to not only redefine who I was but also to write a new chapter in my family's migration history. This "return to Europe" is not unique to us. Thousands of Americans are now rediscovering family ties, ancestry, and opportunities on the other side of the Atlantic. By doing so, they remind us that migration is not a finished chapter, but an ongoing process. The bonds created by previous generations continue to shape lives in ways that those who first boarded the boats to America could never have imagined. If my own journey—from a small town in Wisconsin to a life rooted in Europe—has taught me anything, it is that these two worlds continue to be more intertwined than they sometimes appear. The challenge today is not to defend the transatlantic bond out of habit or nostalgia. It is to remember what created it.