Adam Tooze: ‘The US exhibits the logic of a serial abuser. Europe has to say no’
The British-American historian believes that Trumpism displays ‘fascistic elements’ and encourages Europe to threaten retaliation against Washington’s coercive practices
Adam Tooze (London, 58) is a historian with a particularly valuable perspective on relations between the United States and Europe. He heads the Department of European Studies at Columbia University, lived in England and Germany before moving to the U.S., and holds dual U.S.-British citizenship.
In an interview conducted on January 21 in the Sanada Lounge at the Davos Congress Center — a place where is it possible to witness figures such as ECB President Christine Lagarde and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon pass by, and where some of the world’s sharpest minds gather for coffee — he encouraged Europe to “say no” to a United States that exhibits “the logic of a serial abuser.”
Question. Do you think Europe was wrong to try to appease the Trump administration for so many months?
Answer. This is where my historian’s hat kind of sits heavily on my head and I realise what I’m trying to do is understand what they did rather than to judge them. And I think it was all about Ukraine. The war’s not been going well, the Ukrainians are not standing on their own two feet. This puts Europe in a really profound dilemma. Europe knows that it can help economically but it probably doesn’t have the military wherewithal to support the Ukrainians in the way Europe would want to. They desperately wanted to avoid an immediate blow-up, so you say what’s necessary. You even make concessions and humiliate yourself to avoid America actually blowing up NATO in the first couple of months of the Trump presidency.
Q. And what should Europe do now?
A. Anything that could be described as surrender in Greenland right now would be a catastrophe for European policies. That’s quite clear. I think the Americans have overplayed their hand. They have a deal with Greenland and Denmark that allows them to do anything they possibly want. They appear to want the bullying, and Europe at some point has to say ‘no, not this way, absolutely not this way and if you use these kind of techniques we will respond with similar coersive techniques.’”
Q. Do you think the United States has escalatory dominance, that it has greater capacity to maintain the standoff? If so, how dangerous is it for Europe to engage in that standoff?
A. It clearly has escalatory dominance, yeah, because they could blow everything up, but the question then is do we actually think the Americans will escalate? How serious are they here? We need to look at the message that you get from a bandwidth of Americans. Yesterday (January 20), for example, I had the dubious pleasure of chairing Howard Lutnick (U.S. Secretary of Commerce) and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America. And these two seemingly serious middle-aged American gentlemen spelled out to me the logic of the serial abuser: “Oh, stop protesting. We’re going to beat up on you. You’re not going to like it. It’s going to hurt. I am the hammer. You’re going to squeal. Then we’re going to come to terms, and we’re going to make a deal, and it’s going to be the deal that we decided on, and you’re going to accept it, and then we’re going to move on.” And that’s what I think is going to happen, and that’s the future. That’s the reality that Europe is going to adjust to, but if that is the truth, then the Americans don’t want to escalate. They just want to bully for its own sake.
Q. And as a historian, when you observe Trump’s actions, do you think this is some kind of new incarnation of fascism?
A. I don’t find the straightforward analogy helpful. At this point, however, we’re beyond the point where we can deny that there’s fascistic or fascistoid elements around the Trump administration, and this operates at different levels. Authentic historical fascism is a product of World War I and the threat of global revolution. We’re not in that world. They were raised in the Weimar Republic or the Biennio Rosso in Italy, or in Spain. Nor is there an actual threat of communism, though they always conjure it up. On the other hand, we are now clearly at the point where fascistoid elements in American society as much as American politics embrace authoritarian squadrismo-esque kinds of values.
Q. Which ones?
A. The ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] bully boys, the people who run the Homeland Security Department’s Twitter [now X] account, are clearly in the extreme right wing. Then there’s Stephen Miller [the ultra-conservative domestic policy advisor to the U.S. president] at the core of the administration, one of several different strands in the Trump cocktail, only one, but an important one. And he would fit very nicely in a Franco regime or a Salazar regime. I don’t know whether he’s really got the chops for a black shirt or a brown shirt, but an authoritarian, he clearly is. And then there is this point about Greenland. That’s a bona fide trace of something, but is it fascism? Or is it just really the mentality of a man who likes to grab women by the pussy? My strong read would have been that. It’s not that fascism is what Trump is. It’s that both fascism and Trump are expressions of very toxic masculinity.
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