Shona Murray: US administration is on a clear mission to destabilise Europe

US president Donald Trump, centre, with vice president JD Vance to his left, and secretary of state Marco Rubio to his right, arrives for a Board of Peace meeting at the US Institute of Peace, on Thursday in Washington. Picture: Mark Schiefelbein/ AP

The US administration is purposefully stoking up division in European democracies. 

Senior US officials as high up as secretary of state Marco Rubio as well as individual ambassadors to EU countries are on a clear mission to destabilise Europe.

It’s no secret Trump detests the European Union as a concept. He tells us every chance he gets.

 “The EU was set up to screw the US,” he said two months into his second presidency, adding he would slap 25% tariffs on EU member states. 

Since reduced to 15%, one EU official remarked “we’re only ever a Truth Social post away from that deal falling apart”, referring to Trump’s frequent nighttime diatribes and decisions often published nightly on social media.

In addition, this US government’s security strategy prioritises “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations” as part of how to deal with its greatest ally.

Trump officials are going out of their way to amplify tensions and fomenting culture wars in European society, and lending support and credence to far-right, Eurosceptic parties which pose a threat to the EU foundational model of dignity, rule of law, equality, and democracy.

Doubtless, there’s been a significant increase in right-wing and far-right politicians in parliaments and leading governments across Europe — without direct meddling from the US.

Dissolution of the centrist pro-European coalition

Just look at the effective dissolution of the centrist pro-European coalition within the European Parliament which is having a serious impact on vital policies aimed at future crippling impact of global warming. 

This consolidation of the right across Europe occurred as part of the European Parliament election in 2024 — outside Trump’s term in office. But now they’re being further emboldened. And to what end?

Earlier in the week, the US ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, demanded — via a post on social media — the Belgian government halt an investigation into three men for conducting circumcisions without a medical background. 

Dismissing the merits of the case, the ambassador claimed the probe amounted to the ‘antisemitic persecution’ of the Jewish community.

Circumcision of baby boys is legal in Belgium, and common in the Jewish and Muslim communities, but the law states it must be performed by someone with a medical background. 

Around 25,000 circumcisions happen every year within the regulations provided to protect baby boys.

“Stop this unacceptable harassment of the Jewish community here in Antwerp and in Belgium,” Ambassador White said on X.

Inquiry into the three Jewish mohels

White insisted the Belgian health minister intervened to halt the inquiry into the three Jewish mohels.

“To the (very rude) Belgian Minister of Health FRANK VANENBROUCKE (sic). You must make a legal provision to allow Jewish religious mohels to perform their duties here in Belgium,” White said.

Belgium’s foreign affairs minister Maxime Prevot hit back by summoning the ambassador to the ministry of foreign affairs, tweeting: 

“Any suggestion that Belgium is antisemitic is false, offensive, and unacceptable. Belgium condemns antisemitism with the greatest firmness,” saying White’s statements were “unacceptable.”

The ambassador was summoned for an appointment with the Belgian ministry of foreign affairs where he continued his demands for the government to intervene in a judicial investigation.

Later, Prevot issued a statement of the meeting saying: “Personal attacks on a member of the Belgian government and any interference in Belgium’s internal affairs are contrary to basic diplomatic rules.”

As it turns out, White’s role as ambassador was under question due to his relations with a far-right, Belgian Holocaust denier. 

During a congressional hearing, senator Tim Kaine referred to his promoting conspiracies about the 2020 presidential election and support for Belgian MP Dries van Langenhove — a far-right activist convicted of racism and Holocaust denial. 

It appears stirring up discontent and disillusionment is what he was sent to do.

Is Europe prepared for this onslaught?

Other European democracies including Ireland need to take heed. 

However, last week’s standing ovation by European officials at Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference was a sign that Europe has not woken up.

At the conference, for some reason, Europeans appeared to breathe a sigh of relief they weren’t taunted and insulted in the same way as last year by US vice president Vance.

But the message was the same. The West is in decline — because of “godless communist revolutions” and “anti-colonial uprisings”, Rubio told us.

In his address a year earlier, Vance lectured Europe that the real peril to the future of the continent was not the full-scale invasion by Russia and the subsequent two million casualties the war led to. But it was a “threat from within”.

“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor for that matter is there anything you can do for the American people,” Vance chastised his allies, while also meeting with far-right German party the AfD.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz rejects Vance's claims

“I expressly reject what US vice president Vance said at the Munich Security Conference,” German chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote in a post on X.

“From the experience of National Socialism, the democratic parties in Germany have a common consensus: this is the firewall against extreme right-wing parties,” Scholz said on behalf of a truly shellshocked continent.

But rather than temper this policy, the US is clearly ramping it up and taking it to the streets and communities.

Right after his Munich address, the secretary of state jetted off to Budapest to deliver a campaign speech for far-right Viktor Orbán, Europe’s loudest Putin supporter.

“As long as you’re prime minister and the leader of this country it’s in our national interest that Hungary be successful,” Rubio said

It didn’t matter that in 2019 congressman Marco Rubio penned a letter to Trump decrying his relationship with Orbán where he pointed to Budapest’s democratic decay.

“Democracy in Hungary has seriously eroded,” he said to Trump. “Under Orbán the judiciary is increasingly controlled by the state,” he said concernedly.

But that was then. And things have changed beyond recognition.