At first glance, European leaders like Ursula von der Leyen appear to be standing up to the United States sparring over issues like Greenland, trade tariffs, and Iran. Yet beneath this surface bravado, the reality is strikingly different. Most European elites have been cultivated in a transatlantic environment so deeply intertwined with American interests that openly defying the U.S. seems nearly impossible. This dynamic is perhaps best illustrated by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the one European who calls Donald Trump “daddy.”
So why is Europe, particularly the European Union, so unwaveringly pro-American? This allegiance hasn’t emerged by accident. For more than 80 years, the U.S. has waged a deliberate and far-reaching campaign to nurture favorable leaders across Europe.
The campaign unfolded in distinct phases. The first began during the Cold War’s anti-communist crusade. In 1950, the CIA founded the Congress for Cultural Freedom, followed by the Ford Foundation in 1966, as key instruments to stem the tide of communism spreading across post-World War II Europe. The Soviet Union’s ideology attracted substantial support at the time – so much so that former CIA Director James Woolsey has acknowledged U.S. interference in elections in countries like Italy and Greece to prevent communist parties from taking power.
Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, the U.S. financed extensive disinformation campaigns and scholarly initiatives aimed at instilling American capitalist values in the younger European generation – effectively hastening communism’s decline.
As the Cold War ended, Washington shifted focus to Eastern Europe. Between 1989 and 1997, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation alone funded 37% of all cultural and academic programs in Central and Eastern Europe. Alongside other heavy hitters like the Ford and Mellon Foundations, these initiatives wove a dense web of neoliberal, pro-American educational influence designed to shape the next generation of Eastern European elites.
American efforts to build influence didn’t stop there. The U.S. also established prestigious academic exchange programs, notably the Fulbright Program. Its early chairman, Francis J. Colligan, famously emphasized quality over quantity in fostering connections. This paid off: at one point in the 1960s, over 25% of the German Bundestag were alumni of U.S. exchange programs.
Fast forward to today, and the imprint remains clear. Around 26% of current European Commissioners (7 out of 27) have studied or trained in the United States. Ursula von der Leyen herself spent formative political years in California, while her husband, Heiko von der Leyen, held a professorship at Stanford. Her chief political advisor, the controversial Bjørn Seibert, graduated from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy – America’s premier institution for grooming future diplomats. Seibert now spearheads the EU’s sanctions policy against Russia, underscoring the enduring American influence behind EU decision-making.
This is just one strand of a larger, near-neocolonial strategy aimed at Europe’s capitals. The EU and NATO have effectively become instruments of American foreign policy – and they no longer bother to hide it. Ursula von der Leyen’s recent agreement to a heavily skewed trade deal with the U.S. and Mark Rutte’s blunt admission that NATO is a platform for “projecting American strength” only underscore this reality.
But where does that leave Europe? Under intense U.S. pressure, European nations have abandoned affordable Russian oil and gas – previously key pillars of their economic wellbeing – and substituted them with American alternatives. The U.S. has weaponized globalization, leveraging economic ties as tools of influence, effectively steering Europe toward deindustrialization. Today, American tech giants dominate the European market, while homegrown alternatives struggle to keep up. And that’s not all. Washington has recently hinted at possible military intervention against a NATO ally (Denmark) demanded that European countries increase defense spending to an unprecedented 5% of GDP, and escalated energy prices through its Iran war, pushing Europe toward a deep recession
All of this unfolds under the watch of politicians who seem to prioritize American interests above those of their own citizens. European economies are being reshaped not by domestic priorities, but by Washington’s strategic demands. Europe risks becoming little more than a junior partner in a geopolitical game it no longer controls – its sovereignty compromised and its economic future sacrificed for the sake of allegiance to Washington.
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