The Trump administration is drawing on Roman Empire imagery, and Trump’s own version of Christianity, to reinforce its perception of Western values and impose conditional bilateral partnerships. Europeans need to be ready for America’s whole-hearted shift towards values-based diplomacy.
In April, Marco Rubio’s state department launched a blog on Substack. In a post, “The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe”, the Trump administration has drawn the battle lines of a civilisational conflict with Europe. The article accuses European governments of betraying the West by embracing multiculturalism and secularism, and describes how Western institutions of liberal democracy, international law and pluralist governance have become weapons in a campaign “against Western civilisation itself”. For America this is no policy critique, but an ideological excommunication: Europe is now the principal threat to the West’s survival.
President Donald Trump had already established this ideological undertone during his 2017 Warsaw speech, which warned of a West “under siege”. Now, six months into his second administration, Trump’s plan to transform Europe in his image and treat liberal Europeans as an extension of his domestic political enemies is well underway. Rubio’s blog is just one way for the Trump administration to articulate the “ideological roadmap” behind its foreign policy; this forms the rhetorical and strategic blueprint for America to reorder its alliances, redefine “the West” and impose a new civilisational hierarchy.
Such rhetoric, alongside J.D. Vance’s Munich Security Conference speech, demonstrates Trumpian America’s aggressive campaign against Europe’s liberal facets. This clash is cultural and has serious diplomatic consequences: it reframes allies as adversaries, replaces cooperation with conditionality, and recasts values-based diplomacy as cultural reinforcement. Europeans must brace for an antagonism that stretches from the heads of government to keyboard warriors on X. It is clear that Trump sees liberal European democracies not as partners, but adversaries in a civilisational conflict.
Appropriating antiquity
Trump’s attack on European democracy is unfolding along two mutually reinforcing, but distinct, axes. First is his administration’s appropriation of classical antiquity, particularly the Roman Empire, to recast the West as a civilisation grounded in power, discipline and hierarchy. From posting memes of gladiators to giving speeches extolling “manly virtues”, the message is blunt: modernity is over. It’s time to return to antiquity.
These references are not ornamental; the Roman Empire’s core attributes (centralised authority, militarised masculinity, cultural homogeneity) form the ideological backbone of the Trumpist vision. US senator Josh Hawley has praised Roman-style virtues in defence of a revived masculine political order. Michael Anton, Trump’s director of policy planning in the State Department, has long posited that Trump can be the “red Caesar” that America needs. Even Elon Musk, while still in Trump’s favour, insisted his two straight-arm fascist salutes were in fact “Roman”. One aide apparently declared on X that, “The Roman Empire is back, starting with the Roman salute”. Musk has posted memes comparing modern America to the fall of Rome; in 2023 he suggested the West can only be saved by returning to imperial strength, tradition, faith and hierarchical order.
But now these symbols have moved from trolling on X to justifying real-world policy, such as alliance realignment, conditional aid and visa bans. This historical appropriation is not a new phenomenon; the Trump administration seems to share similar ambitions to previous global leaders who were intent on replacing pluralism with hierarchy and reforging the West around an invented past.
Redefining religious values
The second axis is America’s redefinition of the West in explicitly spiritual terms—with an ideology based on so-called “Judeo-Christian values”. In this vision, the Trump administration portrays the US not as a liberal republic but a covenantal nation defending a divinely ordained moral order. The “West” is no longer a shared political project grounded in Enlightenment ideals, but a theological construct rooted in Judeo-Christian authority.
This perspective means Trump increasingly frames the defence of “Western civilisation” as a sacred duty grounded in divine authority—and not a political commitment to freedom and democracy. Senior advisers in his administration, such as Samuel Samson, view America’s Declaration of Independence as theological, shaped more by Thomas Aquinas than John Locke; US secretary of defence Pete Hegseth’s book “American Crusade” proclaims that America’s future is dependent on “exorcising the leftist specter dominating education, religion, and culture—a 360-degree holy war for the righteous cause”. The Enlightenment, in this framing, represents rupture and decay. Samson and Hegseth believe the “true West” is sacred, hierarchical and theologically anchored.
This invocation of Judeo-Christian values stands in direct opposition to the EU’s self-conception as a secular, pluralist and post-Christian political order. Where European liberalism emphasises multiculturalism and the separation of church and state, Trumpism exalts moral absolutes, religious authority and civilisational purity. And the US administration in general is not subtle about integrating Christianity into its policies at all levels. Rubio’s state department has implemented a policy whereby employees report internal “anti-Christian bias”; the official X account of the department of homeland security invoked a bible verse in a recent recruiting video. Hegseth mentioned “God” or “Jesus” 13 times during his senate confirmation hearing (neither secretaries of defence Lloyd Austin and Mark Esper, nor the devoutly religious former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, used either term in their confirmation hearings) and led a Christian prayer in the Pentagon.
These overtly religious acts, played out in public, signal a desired to transform American identity around theocratic nationalism. In this sense, Trump is saying that liberalism is not just wrong—it is blasphemous.
Antagonism in action
These two ideological turns reframe former allies as adversaries, replace cooperation with conditionality, and recast values-based diplomacy as cultural enforcement. But they also have serious diplomatic consequences.
In March, US embassies across Europe issued guidance warning that “diversity, equality and inclusion” (DEI) compliance by European companies in European countries could jeopardise access to US funding. But this approach also conflicts with national laws, including France’s corporate parity statutes. Renaissance party politician Clément Beaune condemned the move as the US declaring “the extraterritoriality of “values””. Samson—the man behind the Substack blog post—also led a state department delegation to Paris and London to “address concerns regarding political censorship and lawfare in Europe”. Shortly afterward, the administration imposed visa bans on European officials for “censoring Americans” online, asserting US speech norms over European laws designed to curb hate speech and disinformation.
The legal justification for such measures is shaky, but the ideological message is clear: compliance with American cultural values is now a prerequisite for cooperation. The Trump administration is attempting to shape the transatlantic alliance to reward ideological conformity and punish liberal resistance. Washington champions far-right figures like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, France’s Marine Le Pen and Romania’s George Simion as civilisational allies, while Trump openly mocks liberal European leaders. In March, far-right think-tanks from both sides of the Atlantic met to discuss how to undermine the EU from within; during February’s “Patriots for Europe” summit, European nationalists hailed Trump as the saviour of Christian civilisation, calling for a “new Reconquista”.
Europe’s moment
Trump’s two complementary ideological threads—on one side the Roman Empire, on the other “Judeo-Christian” values—serve to drive the second Trump administration’s views: liberalism is a disease, with tradition its cure; and Europe is a supranational adversary to be conquered. But Western civilisation is not Trump’s to define and Europeans are not obliged to follow his lead. Indeed, some European leaders are beginning to fight back. This requires standing up to ideological coercion from Washington, asserting Europe’s legal and regulatory sovereignty, strengthening democratic resilience at home, and defending its institutions from cultural imposition.
For example, the French foreign ministry has launched the #EuropeProtects and #DSAProtects campaigns in a response to the attacks on the Digital Services Act (DSA) by the Trump administration. These are necessary first steps, but should become a continent-wide strategy. At the same time, Europe must reclaim the idea of the “West” not as a sacred order defined by tradition and hierarchy, but as a democratic order grounded in freedom, law and human dignity. It could help to reaffirm liberal principles in global governance by building new democratic coalitions with partners like Australia, Canada, Japan and South Korea.
Europe needs to once again assert itself as a player on the world stage. It must demonstrate that it has the capabilities to be an autonomous actor with sufficient regulatory tools and economic cards at its disposal. Whether the West survives as a pluralistic project will depend on how forcefully Europe responds.
About the author:
Chris Herrmann is the US programme coordinator at the European Council on Foreign Relations, based in Washington, DC.