There is an active effort underway, amplified daily by our foreign adversaries, to split the Western alliance by driving wedges between the United States and Europe. This is not new. Since NATO’s founding in 1949, Russia’s central geopolitical objective has been to weaken and fracture the transatlantic relationship. A divided West is a West Russia can dominate; a united one is not.
Because Western nations are democracies, this effort does not primarily take the form of tanks or missiles. It takes the form of narratives: carefully crafted stories designed to shift public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic. The goal is simple: persuade Americans Europe is alien and irredeemable, and persuade Europeans America is reckless, unstable, and unrecognizable.
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The transatlantic relationship was never built on the assumption that America and Europe would face identical challenges, adopt identical policies, or develop in lockstep. It was built on something far more durable: shared and enduring values: democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law, free enterprise, and the inherent dignity of the person.
Those values still bind us. They are precisely why Ukraine matters. They are why NATO endures. And they are why authoritarians work so hard to convince Californians and other Americans that our allies no longer share our values.
Conservatives played a decisive role in building the transatlantic alliance after World War II. We understood that American strength depended not on standing alone, but on leading a community of free nations. Today, that alliance needs defending, not from honest disagreement, but from those who seek to turn disagreement into division.