Europeans are in shock after the recent Munich Security Conference, an annual meeting of European diplomats and international security officials in Germany.

Academic colleagues and friends across Europe have been contacting me to ask what exactly the Trump administration is doing and how it will affect the European Union and the rest of the world. European nations have long been committed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance and the Trans-Atlantic relationship, as Europeans often describe it.

Many of my historian colleagues in the United States and I are trying to explain the rapid changes within the federal government of the United States and the sweeping changes in U.S. foreign policy to worried academic colleagues around the world.

I have lived in France, Italy, Belgium, and Spain while conducting archival research, participating in European research programs, and collaborating with European professors and researchers. So, I often find myself responding to questions about American politics, society, and culture from European colleagues.

Over the past two weeks, entirely new questions are flowing in, since the Trump administration’s actions and statements have radically altered relations between the United States and Europe.

One key question that is being posed is “After Munich, How Will Europe Handle Trump?”

This is the phrasing of Jonathan Martin, a political columnist with Politico, but the question is absolutely central for European policymakers and citizens. Martin explains that “It was the week European fears about Donald Trump’s America began to come true. … At every turn, the Trump administration seemed to confirm the dread Europe has about the new president: chaos, extremism, protectionism and, perhaps most of all, a softness toward Vladimir Putin.”

Professor Stephen M. Walt, Professor of International Relations (Harvard University), offers a telling answer to Europeans’ questions about how they should understand Trump and Trumpism: “Yes, America Is Europe’s Enemy Now.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has questioned the existence of NATO and the basis of the United States’ alliances with member nations in Europe. Hegseth also made comments suggesting that the United States would sell out Ukraine and accept granting part of its territory to Russia.

Vice President J.D. Vance lectured European diplomats at the Munich Security Conference about paying for their own defense. Vance also suggested that European nations support far-right (fascist) political parties such as the Alternative for Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, or AfD) in Germany, which is a self-avowed fascist party whose leaders minimize and sometimes deny the Holocaust. Vice President Vance’s comments were clearly calculated to meddle in the German elections to be held this weekend, in an attempt to alter the outcome and strengthen the AfD.

President Trump, Vice President Vance, advisor Elon Musk, and former advisor Steve Bannon are all on the record voicing loud support for the AfD and for far-right fascist parities in France, Italy, Hungary, and other European nations. The Trump Republican party has clearly asserted a White Christian Nationalist ideology with their own official statements and repeated tweets on X (formerly Twitter).

Trump and his close advisors have long coordinated closely with authoritarian rulers such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, but also with far-right leaders across Europe: Nigel Farage (United Kingdom) Marine Le Pen (France), Victor Orban (Hungary), Giorgia Meloni (Italy), and many others.

Some European politicians and policy analysts would like to think that this is a fundamentally American development. European observers of the United States often present Americans as overly capitalist, excessively religious, aggressive, gun-toting, violent, uneducated, and rather unworldly. Some of these characterizations may not be entirely incorrect.

However, the rise of Trumpism is clearly part of a broader international trend.

Old political parties have been disrupted in many democratic nations around the world in the past two decades, including in Europe. Many member nations of the European Union have seen the collapse of socialist and center-right parties, linked with the rise of far-right extremist parties. In France, for example, Le Parti Socialiste (PS) on the center-left and Les Républicains on the center-right have seen their support erode radically since the rise of the Front National, a far-right neo-fascist party that has rebranded itself as the Rassemblement National (National Rally) under Marine Le Pen’s leadership.

Many American citizens have similarly complained about the so-called two-party system for decades, longing for a third party. Well, we now have seen the rise and takeover of a third party in the United States.

The old Republican Party is dead. A third party, Trumpist, has completely taken over the old Republican Party and utterly transformed it. There are virtually no Reagan Republicans, Bush Republicans, George W. Bush Republicans, or even Tea Party Republicans left in the leadership or Congressional representatives of the Republican Party. The new Republicans are pure Trumpists. The old Republican Party is dead. Conservativism as a political ideology is done. The few remaining proponents of Conservative politics find themselves without a political party.

This represents a complete party realignment that is transforming the United States political system. Some Christian Evangelicals, older Conservatives, and Libertarians seem to think that they can control President Trump and channel Trumpism into directions that will advance their long-held goals, such as instituting a national ban on abortions in the United States.

The leaders of the new Trumpist Party are a mixture of neo-fascists, White Christian Nationalists, and technological futurists. They may have some populist support, but they are not “populists,” as they have often been described.

I will write more about this political party realignment later, but I want to focus now on the emergence of this new Trumpist (Republican) Party and what it means for European politics and international relations.

Trumpists assert a far-right White Supremacist ideology and a tech-based confidence that they can disrupt and transform the entire world.

I used to think that this was a pseudo-fascist movement, but it is increasingly clear that Trumpism is a powerful neo-fascism, a new international form of fascism with deep roots in Mussolini’s Italian fascism and Hitler’s German Nazism. However, Trumpist neo-fascism also has powerful influences from home-grown American political movements: KKK White Supremacist politics, 1930s American fascism, Jim Crow authoritarianism, and anti-Civil Rights Movement politics.

Some European politicians and analysts fail to understand the power of this international far-right extremist movement. European confidence in electoral “firewalls” in stopping the Rassemblement National or the AfD from gaining more power or actually seizing power may be misplaced. Two failed impeachments, several federal prosecutions, and several state prosecutions did not halt Trumpism’s rise to power. Americans used to talk about the “blue wall” in the Midwest, but it and a broader electoral “firewalls” against Trump were breached in the 2024 Elections. In his speech at the Munich Security Conference, J.D. Vance offered support for the AfD in the upcoming German election and warned Europeans that “There is no room for firewalls.”

The impact of this Trumpism on European politics and society will be enormous, since it is not limited to supporting ideological allies in far-right parties within European nations.

President Trump’s diplomatic rapprochement with Putin’s Russia and the total disruption of American—Ukrainian relations is stunning, but not unexpected. President Trump has repeatedly met with Russian officials and had phone calls with Putin. He did this before he was elected President the first time in 2016 and has done so ever since.

Many political analysts refer to President Trump as purely transactional, but his repeated connections with Russian officials and far-right political leaders display a pattern of communication and a fundamental agreement on basic ideological principles and authoritarian aims.

This week, President Trump falsely claimed that the Ukraine started the current Russian-Ukrainian War (2022 to present). Trump also falsely claimed that Ukrainian President Zelenzky was not elected as leader of Ukraine. Trump then insulted President Zelenzky and attempted to extort him into giving 50 percent of Ukraine’s mineral rights to the United States in exchange for U.S. support.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to play damage control around the meeting of the Munich Security Conference, but it is clear that United States foreign policy has changed radically.

The United States of America’s relations with Europe is in tatters, and Europeans are discovering what it is like to live in Trumplandia.

Jonathan Martin’s column on “After Munich, How Will Europe Handle Trump?” is at Politico.

Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations (Harvard University), published “Yes, America Is Europe’s Enemy Now” in Foreign Policy.

The New York Times reports on J.D. Vance’s comments at the Munich Security Conference. Michael Hersh published an article on “The New Meaning of ‘Munich’” in Foreign Policy. An article on “JD Vance Stuns Munich Conference with Blistering Attack on Europe’s Leaders” is available in The Guardian. An article on “Vance Attack on Europe Overshadows Ukraine Talks at Security Conference” is in Reuters.

On European responses to Vance’s speech and U.S. foreign policy shifts, see an article on “Stunned Europeans Make Plans after US Announcements on Ukraine” is in EuroNews. On Europeans’ moves to create its own nuclear deterrent force, see “Europe Targets Homegrown Nuclear Deterrent as Trump Sides with Putin” in Politico EU. A discussion on “What Could Happen if the U.S. Abandons Europe” is in The New Yorker.

On the AfD and the German Elections this weekend, see an article on “German Election: Will the Far-Right AfD Break Through the Firewall and Take Power?” in Politico EU. An article on “From Migration to Economy: The High-Stakes German Elections” is published in DW.

On the radical shifts in U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine, see “Trump Flips the Script on the Ukraine War, Blaming Zelensky Not Putin” in The New York Times.

There are many analyses of the current political realignment in the United States and Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, as well as the death of Conservatism. For one perspective, see David Brook’s article on “Confessions of a Republican Exile” in The Atlantic. I plan to write a new post with information and references on Trumpism as a new neo-fascist ideology.

For European analyses of European Union politics and foreign policy, see the research affiliated with the Robert Schuman Centre, an inter-disciplinary research centre of the European University Institute (EUI).