Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher, social theorist, university professor, and public intellectual. He holds a number of academic positions, including that of the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, a philosophy professor at the European Graduate School, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, and a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana. This essay draws heavily on earlier versions of two articles the author published for The Kyiv Independent and his Substack page, respectively. These were combined, edited, and republished with the author’s permission.

The second line of the Ukrainian anthem, “Fate/luck still smiles on us, fellow Ukrainians,” sadly no longer holds. Worse still, we should extend this retreat of luck to Europe itself: fate no longer smiles on us, fellow Europeans. To anyone who follows our media, it is more than obvious how Trump’s new administration threw our time out of coherence—both in internal and external politics. But why should Europe be the one chosen to set time straight? The reason is not merely that Europeans seem to be the biggest losers of Trump’s new global politics.

Some of us still remember the famous opening of the Communist Manifesto: “A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies…” Could we not use the same words to characterize the status of “Europe” in today’s public perception? A specter is haunting the world—the specter of Eurocentrism. All the powers of old Europe and of the new world order have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Farage and Putin, AfD and Orbán, pro-immigrant anti-racists and protectors of traditional European values, Latin American leftists and Arab conservatives, West Bank Zionists and Chinese ‘patriotic’ Communists…

The EU’s indispensable partnership? | Source: Guliver Image

There is a profound similarity between Trump’s attacks on the triad of environmentalism, immigration, and LGBT+ rights, and the conflict between Russia and Europe. One should ask a simple question: which civilization today fully encapsulates the triad attacked by Trump? The answer is only one: European civilization as the latest form of Enlightenment. Trump’s real ideological enemy is not China but the EU. What Trump now tries to do is dissolve European unity—and his efforts find an echo across more and more European states (Hungary, Germany, Austria, the UK, etc.). In an interview from July 15th, 2018, just after finishing a stormy meeting with EU leaders, Trump named the European Union as the first in his line of “foes” against the United States, ahead of Russia and China. During the latest Munich Security Conference, the first act of new U.S. Vice President JD Vance was to launch a brutal ideological assault on Europe, accusing its leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration, and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs. He openly questioned whether current European values warranted defense by the United States.

Today, “Europe” is a terrain of ideological and political struggles. Many visions of Europe compete and coexist in a kind of superposition: the conservative notion of Europe as a space for Christian sovereign states, the technocratic vision of Europe as an economic unity, and more. So which Europe bothers Trump and the European populists? It is the Europe of transnational unity, vaguely aware that we must move beyond the constraints of nation-states in order to cope with the challenges of our moment. It is the Europe that desperately strives to remain faithful to the old Enlightenment motto of solidarity with victims and their suffering, and the Europe aware that humanity today is one—and that we are all on the same boat (or, as we say, on the same Spaceship Earth).

This brings us to the scandalous performance known as the Munich Security Conference. There, British historian Timothy Garton Ash raised the timely question: “Will the peace be like Chamberlain’s peace for our time?” My answer is that it could turn out to be even worse, because our time is one of a new BRICS multipolarity. Both prospects of peace in which Trump’s administration is now engaged—Gaza and Ukraine—are exemplary cases of how the emerging BRICS world will function: yes, it will be multipolar, but in the sense of a few strong states, each defining its own sphere of influence and limiting the sovereignty of its smaller neighbors. Trump’s foreign policy fully fits this BRICS model: he concedes that Ukraine lies within Russia’s sphere of influence, while insisting that Canada, Greenland, Mexico, and Panama belong to the U.S. sphere. The reality of BRICS thus uncannily echoes George Orwell’s 1984, set in a world divided into three superstates locked in constant warfare: Oceania, Eurasia, and East Asia. This world mirrors today’s reality with some adjustments: the United States conquers Latin America as Oceania, while Russia conquers Western Europe as Eurasia (except the UK, which remains part of Oceania).

That is why Trump immediately engaged in negotiations with Putin, openly excluding Europe from peace talks. Even when Trump and Putin disagree on many things, they already speak the same language. Putin’s (surprising, to some) endorsement of Trump’s plan to annex Greenland reflects their shared vision of a new world order. The two also share responsibility for major war crimes: in Gaza and the West Bank, and in Ukraine. However, China is an exception—it is far less expansionist, more interested in open trade, and seemingly better positioned to foster innovative capitalism (digital products, medicine, electric vehicles…). Although Europe is economically strong, it is becoming increasingly marginalized geopolitically, ignored more with each passing day. If the EU wishes to survive, it must assert its sovereignty forcefully—not just against Russia, but primarily against the United States.

Now that Europe is clearly no longer treated as America’s main ally, one option to consider is a strategic alliance with China against the emerging U.S.-Russia-India axis. Although China is closer to Russia in the Ukrainian war, it signals clearly that it does not fully support Russia’s aggressive policies. Yes, there are many critical things to say about China (and about Europe as well), but neither Europe nor China are oligarchic neo-feudal states like the United States and Russia. Perhaps our very survival depends on this distinction. It’s no surprise that Trump has also suggested for Russia to rejoin the G7, signaling a broader re-normalization of ties. So, it’s not that Europe should unite to become one more major power within the BRICS space; rather, it should become an exception—a place that offers support to the victims of the new BRICS superpowers, each defining its own sphere of influence.

The announced American takeover of Gaza demonstrates what happens within a superpower’s sphere of influence. To put it bluntly: you do what you want, dropping all pretenses. When Trump announced this plan, we found ourselves back at the two-state solution rejected by Israel, only with one minor detail changed—the two states are now Israel and the United States. So, what happens if Trump succeeds and peace prevails in the ethnically cleansed Greater Israel? Shakespeare once wrote: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” The evil with Trump is even worse: if his deeds succeed, they will be remembered as good—as something that brought peace.

The peace plan advocated by the United States will leave Ukraine caught between two colonizations: the eastern part annexed by Russia, and the western part turned into a de facto economic colony—its fertile land increasingly owned by Western corporations and its natural resources further plundered. A “peace guarantee” for Trump is the assurance from both sides (Ukraine and Russia) that the United States will have free access to Ukraine’s natural resources to offset the costs of its military aid to Kyiv. Russia will thus keep (a part of) its cake, and the United States will eat (a part of) it too—leaving Ukraine with nothing, save for some symbolic titles at best.

 

What can Europe do in a situation best described by Greece’s former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis as “Europe’s last chance to seize autonomy from the United States”? Many things, in fact.

 

For Gaza, Europe could easily go a step further than merely condemning the Trump takeover and organize a large-scale relief operation, delivering vast quantities of aid through the sea and Egypt: food, medical equipment, and tents. If the United States—not just Israel—were to block this assistance, the truth, already obvious, would become much harder to ignore. Trump would have to elevate his sophistry to a new level, arguing that concrete aid to Palestinians in Gaza somehow causes them to suffer more…

 

As for Ukraine, one should simply infer the consequences of what Zelenskyy said in Munich on February 15th, 2025:

 

“Let’s be honest. Now we can’t rule out the possibility that America might say no to Europe on an issue that threatens it. Many, many leaders have talked about [a] Europe that needs its own military—an army of Europe.”

It is Ukraine, too, that now faces a difficult choice between the United States and Europe. Until now, it was able to rely on both Western poles, but the crack is now wide open. The message from American government representatives is clear: negotiations will begin only between the United States and Russia, with Ukraine joining them later. In short, Ukraine’s role will be to sign whatever the two big brothers decide, with the threat that if Ukraine dares to say no, it will be left to fend for itself… and to a Europe now entirely excluded from negotiations, despite the war taking place on its doorstep. JD Vance’s anti-European statements make it more than clear that the true target of the shift in American politics regarding the Ukrainian war is not Ukraine itself, but Europe. The question looming behind all of this is: will Putin take the negotiations seriously at all, or are they just another step in continuous Russian expansion? The answer is not hidden deep in Russia’s soul; rather, it depends largely on how others will react.

So, again, what could (and should) Europe do if it is to assert itself as an autonomous power? First, Europe will have to clearly (re)define itself—and here problems already arise with states and populist forces opposed to a united Europe and its emancipatory legacy. Second, part of this redefinition must include military autonomy. Former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton predicts that Trump will withdraw the United States from NATO—let’s hope this happens so that NATO transforms into the armed forces of a united Europe. Third, Europe will have to rethink its economic policy toward greater coordination and—to use the forbidden word—planning: large-scale, obligatory planning, not just some vague “coordination” or “collaboration.” There is simply no other way to confront the crises that threaten our very survival. Planning in such times of multiple crises must combine features that may appear mutually exclusive. Their outcomes cannot be predicted, let alone planned. Nevertheless, they demand from us a great deal of planning. After carefully outlining competing tendencies as they manifest, we must act with full awareness that we may need to shift our position due to the unexpected consequences of our actions. Does this sound utopian? Absolutely not. Just look at some of the most successful economies around the world, where activity is closely regulated and directed by state apparatuses—from Switzerland and Singapore to South Korea.

In other words, the stance Europe should adopt today is one of principled pragmatism. American comedian Groucho Marx once said: “These are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.” This is the formula of unprincipled pragmatism—when those in power change their principles just to stay in power. In the ongoing peace negotiations regarding Ukraine, Trump presents himself as a pragmatic realist, proposing that all sides choose the lesser evil. However, as none other than Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia said: “Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.” Then we have the dogmatic advocacy of principles: we stick to them even if it means economic and social disruption. Principled pragmatism is not the striving for some kind of right measure between the two opposites; it means something much more precise: when a situation radically changes, we must change many of our positions precisely to remain faithful to our basic principles.

Regarding Europe, the principal object of faith refers to unconditional fidelity to the Enlightenment and its legacy, adding a pragmatic dimension to many unpredictable and difficult decisions. Europe should treat its ongoing crisis as a chance to reassert itself and regain new strength. President Macron was right to organize the urgent summit of European leaders in Paris, but the problem, again, is how far this group can and will go. Will it be just another declaration serving as an excuse to do nothing? In recent decades, Europe has been full of such declarations. So, my conclusion is not cautiously optimistic but pessimistic—with a hope that miracles may happen. The battle is almost lost, but not yet fully lost. We hear constantly that Europe is lagging behind the United States and China in digitalization and AI. However, sometimes it is good to be late: in this way, we allow others to make the unavoidable mistakes and enter the process at a more adequate moment. It is here that we should recall Friedrich Nietzsche’s maxim: “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

This is the choice Europe faces today. There is no time for modest pragmatic realism: for Europe to survive at all, it will have to act as a superpower. Not just as another superpower in the new BRICS multilateralism, but as a potential ally of all those states that are victims of major powers—as the only civilization that remains faithful to the notion of global solidarity. This sounds utopian, but my point is that Europe can only survive this way. If it merely seeks to become one of the new big players, adding its name to the list of the United States, Russia, China, and India, it will disappear.

Although Europe has been facing this choice for decades, what made it impossible to ignore was Trump’s second presidency—an event not in the noble sense evoked by Alain Badiou, but in the catastrophic sense of an occurrence that makes us aware that the world as we knew it has ended. The shortest formal definition of an event is a change not merely in local moments within a situation, but in the entire coordinates of the situation itself. Let me paraphrase here an old joke from the GDR that I often use: Putin, Xi, and Trump meet God, and each is allowed to ask Him a question. Putin begins: “Tell me what will happen to Russia in the next decades?” God answers: “Russia will gradually become a colony of China.” Putin turns around and starts to cry. Xi asks the same question: “And what will happen to China in the next decades?” God answers: “The Chinese economic miracle will be over, and it will have to return to a hardline dictatorship to survive—while asking Taiwan for help.” Xi turns around and starts to cry. Finally, Trump asks: “And what will be the fate of the U.S. after I take over again?” God turns around and starts to cry… This is the true change—when God Himself (who stands here for the big Other, the neutral frame that encompasses the situation) breaks down. In this case, it is, of course, a catastrophic change: our basic coordinates for measuring the quality of public life are suspended and will have to be rethought. Such a break has a positive side, however: it compels us to accept the fact that there is no return to the old era (of the liberal-democratic welfare state). A new beginning from ground zero is needed.

In his inaugural speech on January 20th, 2025, Trump proclaimed that the U.S. government would recognize only two sexes—male and female—ending “radical and wasteful” diversity, equity, and inclusion programs within federal agencies. Officials branded both measures as “common sense” orders belonging to the broader “restoring sanity” agenda. To add insult to injury, the gender order was presented as part of a policy “defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.”

The order also prevents taxpayer funds from being used for gender-transition health care and from adding “privacy in intimate spaces” in facilities such as prisons, migrant shelters, and rape shelters. “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” as one Trump propagandist put it in a cynical stab. Another insult is the claim that it was “very fitting” these orders were announced on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, because they were “meant to return to the promise and the hope, captured by civil rights champions, that one day all Americans can be treated on the basis of their character, not by the color of their skin.”

One can only wonder why Trump, on top of proclaiming two national states of emergency concerning ecology and immigration, did not add an emergency state for the defense of normal sexuality. Regarding ecology, Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, stating: “America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have—the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth—and we are going to use it.” To enforce this measure, Trump declared a “national energy emergency” and, as expected, concluded by saying, “We will drill, baby, drill.”

The president also announced America’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization—a measure that will cause enormous suffering if, or when, a new virus epidemic explodes. In the same spirit of opposing global cooperation, Trump took a series of sweeping immigration executive actions: declaring a national emergency at the U.S. southern border, immediately ending use of a border app called CBP One that had allowed migrants to legally enter the United States, and initiating efforts to end birthright citizenship.

We thus have a state of emergency against immigrants, another against the excesses of environmental protection, and it seems a third one is implied but missing: the one destined to protect “normal” sexuality. Meanwhile, two states of emergency are needed but are conspicuously absent: one to address the environmental crisis, and another to confront the effects of Artificial Intelligence.

Yes, Trump is aware of the importance of AI: he announced a $500 billion AI infrastructure investment into the top three U.S. tech firms to create a new company, Stargate, to grow such infrastructure in the United States. But in 2023, then-President Joseph Biden imposed an important executive order aimed at establishing standards for AI across various sectors. This order directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish a safety program “to help ensure the safe, responsible deployment and use of AI in the healthcare, public-health, and human-services sectors,” and to allow the agency to “receive reports of—and act to remedy—harms or unsafe healthcare practices involving AI.” On the first day of his second term, Trump revoked this order—a clear display of what his “liberalism” effectively amounts to: full power of neo-corporate feudal masters, exempt from public control. This revocation means the general public will simply not know to what extent AI machines will be able to control us and regulate our behavior.

There are numerous other measures imposed by Trump that defy common sense. For instance, Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the UN endorsed Israeli claims of biblical rights to the entire West Bank during a Senate confirmation hearing—so we are back to religious fundamentalism. Another end of common sense practiced by Trump concerns cryptocurrencies. Yanis Varoufakis has shown how the de-dollarization of the world economy poses a threat to U.S. hegemony—but it now seems that Trump himself is taking steps in this direction. Not only are people around him deeply involved in crypto-speculation, but in the lead-up to Trump’s inauguration, the first couple launched a pair of “meme coins”—highly volatile crypto driven by internet or cultural trends, with no intrinsic value—that are already worth billions of dollars on paper.

However, one should leave behind the rather boring enumeration of measures and focus on the ostensibly neutral terms like “common sense” and “sanity.” The problem here is that the era of common sense—when we could rely on traditional values and customs in daily life—is over, and not only in the domain of sexuality. The proof lies precisely in the techno-feudal masters who actively support Trump, sitting right beside him at the inauguration. If Elon Musk succeeds with his Neuralink project (a direct link between our thoughts and the digital space), we will be able to read each other’s minds directly, so the very definition of “being human” will change. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is now building its own mind-reading device, and when asked about the privacy implications of this technology, Zuckerberg said: “Presumably this would be something that someone would choose to use.” Really? Presumed by whom? By the secret agencies reading my mind? So, if they probe my mind without asking me, and their mind-reading tells them I don’t want it to happen, they will politely disconnect? Zuckerberg’s speech outlining his vision of a “metaverse” is a truly neo-feudal manifesto:

“Zuckerberg wants the metaverse to ultimately encompass the rest of our reality—connecting bits of real space here to real space there, while totally subsuming what we think of as the real world. […] It’s not that Zuckerberg’s simulations will rise to the level of reality, it’s that our behaviors and interactions will become so standardized and mechanical that it won’t even matter. Instead of making human facial expressions, our avatars can make iconic thumbs-up gestures,” wrote media theorist Douglas Rushkoff in a 2021 CNN opinion piece.

The metaverse will act as a virtual space beyond (meta) our fractured and hurtful reality—a space in which we will smoothly interact through our avatars with elements of augmented reality (or reality overlaid with digital signs). It will thus be nothing less than metaphysics actualized: a metaphysical space fully subsuming reality, which will be allowed to enter this space in fragments, only insofar as it is overlaid by digital guidelines manipulating our perception and intervention. If neurobiology succeeds in manipulating our DNA, not only our bodily features but even our psychological life—such as courage and learning—our every ability will be open to scientific intervention. These qualities will no longer depend solely on our will, so the whole idea of education will become obsolete. If AI explodes in its scope, will we even know to what extent we are being controlled?

Last but not least, there is ecology. If we’ve learned anything over the last decades, it’s that our survival depends on certain natural parameters we automatically take for granted. The lesson of global warming is that the freedom of humankind was possible only against the background of the stable natural parameters of life on Earth (temperature, air composition, sufficient water and energy supply, etc.): humans can “do what they want” only insofar as they remain marginal enough not to seriously perturb those elements. The limitation of our freedom that becomes palpable with global warming is the paradoxical outcome of the very exponential growth of our freedom and power—i.e., our growing ability to transform nature around us to the point of destabilizing the very conditions for life on Earth. Again, a condition for our survival is that we must leave behind our spontaneous sense of being embedded in a stable natural background.

Trump’s attack on Europe is based on mutually exclusive metaphysical visions of reality. The Trumpian populists, as well as their European partners, are effectively what they claim to be: advocates of common sense, denying the fact that we are in the midst of what is arguably the most radical shift in all of human history. We should, of course, closely analyze the ongoing changes and avoid quick extrapolations, but clinging to the traditional notion of sanity is the greatest madness imaginable today. Trump’s paradox is that he speaks for human common sense while unleashing unheard-of changes that challenge our basic notion of being human.

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