A Morning After Reading Le Monde: Europe’s Hidden Divide

A Morning After Reading Le Monde: Old Europe, New Europe, and the Union We Never Intended

✍️ Author’s Note
This is a brief reflection inspired by Kaja Kallas’s recent remarks, which reveal once again the deep fault lines inside the European Union — between Old Europe and New Europe, between strategic autonomy and reflexive Atlanticism, between the Europe we hoped to build and the one we actually created.

“Le nationalisme, c’est la guerre.”

“Nationalism is war.”

— François Mitterrand

EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas declares that the United States is still “our biggest ally,” and that Europe and America “should stick together.”
One reads this and wonders whether the problem lies in Washington’s new strategy paper — or in Brussels’ inability to read it.

Kallas’s remarks are not surprising.
They are simply revealing.

She speaks from the worldview of New Europe, where historical trauma and absolute loyalty to Washington replace strategic autonomy. Her position is not personal; it is structural. She embodies the imbalance built into the Union since the “Big Bang” enlargement — an imbalance Mitterrand naïvely assumed would dissolve under the warm sun of European idealism.

It did not.

Old Europe and New Europe never merged.
They coexist under one roof, with incompatible geopolitical instincts.

• Old Europe: diplomacy, restraint, strategic complexity
• New Europe: grievance, fear, and automatic alignment with U.S. positions

When Kallas says “the U.S. is still our greatest ally,” she is not offering analysis — she is expressing the reflex of a region that has never trusted Western Europe and never will. Washington knows this. Brussels pretends otherwise.

Yet Kallas’s reassurance comes at a moment when the U.S. National Security Strategy plainly states that Europe is no longer central to American interests. Instead of confronting this reality, she downplays it — as if denial were policy.

This is precisely the problem.

Europe cannot form a coherent foreign policy because half the Union sees the U.S. as indispensable protector, while the other half sees it as an unreliable and increasingly self-absorbed power. Instead of building a European strategy, we cling to a transatlantic mythology that no longer exists.

Kallas is not to blame for this contradiction.
The architecture of the Union is.

Mitterrand famously said, “We are all Europeans.” It was a beautiful sentiment, but historically and politically false. Old instincts endure, and in moments of crisis they resurface. New Europe will always side with Washington over Brussels, because for them, America is not an ally — it is the guarantor of survival.

And so we drift forward, divided, reactive, and strategically blind.

This is not the Union I voted for.
It is the only Union we have.

But if the EU continues to follow the fears of the East and the illusions of Brussels, Europe will not merely lose its autonomy. It will lose its purpose — and ultimately itself.

William J J Houtzager, Aka WJJH, December 2025

📌Blog Excerpt

Kallas’s remarks in Le Monde reveal the EU’s deepest contradiction: Old Europe seeks strategic autonomy, while New Europe remains bound to Washington by fear and history. This is not the Union we intended — and if Europe continues down this path, it will lose both its purpose and itself.