Power in the Age of Fracture

In the wreckage of World War II, there was no question who had won. Europe lay physically and morally bankrupt...

America, in contrast, emerged not only militarily triumphant, but also civilizationally intact...

The Marshall Plan, as it came to be known, was a masterstroke of economic strategy. But it was more than that—it was a civilizational covenant... the United States reseeded the very soil of European life with the means of moral and material reconstruction. The goal was not merely to avert famine or restore infrastructure, but to reorient Europe toward the West—toward a shared vision of liberty, dignity, and law grounded in the remnants of a Christian moral order...

But what begins in moral solidarity must be sustained by strategic alignment. And that alignment has, over time, deteriorated—first subtly, then unmistakably...

Since then, Europe has undergone a transformation that cannot be ignored by serious strategists. It has embraced a technocratic, post-national, and aggressively secular worldview that is increasingly at odds with the older moral grammar that once undergirded transatlantic cooperation. Mass immigration from the Global South—encouraged in part by the ideology of universalist humanitarianism—has not only strained Europe’s welfare states but also disrupted the cultural cohesion that made democratic self-government possible. This is not simply a demographic issue—it is a civilizational one...

Decoupling is... the correction of a misaligned strategy, a movement toward equilibrium under new conditions. In practical terms, it means a reordering of U.S. commitments to reflect the reality that Europe is no longer a strategic partner in the traditional sense...

The United States is not condemned to eternal guardianship of a continent that no longer believes in itself...