Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard
“We are in the process of a second American revolution.” So claimed Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation. The Trumpian think-tank’s policy ideas—on everything from education and migration to healthcare and human rights—have helped to shape the seismic change that has upended American politics. But Trump’s revolution, like previous ones before it, is not simply about changing policies and institutions, but about the identity of the country itself. In just six months, the US has shifted from championing liberal democracy to promoting illiberalism and economic protectionism.
This revolutionary transformation reaches far beyond the nation’s borders. In that sense, it is not just an American revolution. It is reshaping Europe, too. Such is the main finding of a major international opinion poll commissioned by ECFR and conducted in May 2025 in 12 European countries, with an overall sample of 16,440 respondents (full methodology below). This paper reports the results of the study, and buttresses them with the political observations and analysis of its authors.
In short: revolutionary change in America signals the collapse of assumptions that have undergirded European security for decades. Reliance on American guarantees, NATO as an alliance of liberal democracies, the promotion of free trade and a taboo against aggressive nationalism—it is all falling away. The new reality is a crisis of the alliance itself, the growing threat of a global trade war and the looming prospect of American troop withdrawal from Europe. And, as ECFR’s polling shows, this in turn is transforming Europe’s political and geopolitical identity.
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