During the Cold War, the large and influential communist parties in Western Europe maintained ties with Moscow, ranging from sympathy to outright subservience. The United States distanced itself from them and in many cases politically and financially supported their opponents.
Today, Europe faces a loose alliance of pro-Russian parties, but this time from the opposite end of the political spectrum - the far right. And the US government has taken a completely different approach: it is welcoming them.
The US thereby condones Russia's undermining of post-war Europe, whose construction and security America helped to secure. The parties favored by Russia are hostile to the European Union, oppose increased military spending, and tend to accept Russian arguments about the recklessness of NATO expansion and the need to strengthen right-wing Christian values.
If these parties and their populist allies take over in Europe - and they are already in power in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovakia, while significantly influencing politics in France and Germany - they could completely weaken NATO and geopolitical neutrals, if not subjugate Europe. That is certainly what Moscow hopes.
A Europe in such a position would undermine America's post-Cold War vision of a continent "whole and free" - a vision that the EU and the Atlantic alliance, despite all its problems, have greatly advanced and which has been an enduring source of geopolitical stability.
Of course, Donald Trump's administration has clearly shown contempt for these achievements.
Earlier this month, US Vice President J.D. Vance urged European leaders at the Munich Security Conference to stop isolating extremist parties in their countries. German politicians, he said, should remove the “firewall” that prevents them from cooperating with populist parties, an apparent reference to the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD). He then met with the AfD leader. Elon Musk, who appears to be acting as Trump’s unofficial prime minister, congratulated the AfD leader on his second-place finish in Sunday’s German election.
Then, further undermining transatlantic solidarity, Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, about the future of Ukraine, ignoring Ukraine itself, as well as Europe. It seemed clear that the US intended to restore relations with Russia, which would likely mean lifting sanctions, pressuring Ukraine to hand over occupied territories, and perhaps even a guarantee that Ukraine would never become a member of NATO.
After the conference, Trump absurdly told reporters that Ukraine started the war by refusing to cede territory to Russia. By calling President Volodymyr Zelensky a "dictator," Trump paved the way for Vladimir Putin's ultimate war goal: to remove Ukraine's Jewish leader as a prelude to installing a Russian puppet regime under the pretext of "denazifying" the country.
Moscow could hardly have devised an outcome that better fits its dubious argument that NATO expansion has forced it to reclaim its sphere of influence and invade Ukraine. This narrative, largely embraced by the European far right, further solidifies Russia’s threat to NATO’s eastern members, starting with the Baltic states, if Ukraine is defeated or forced to capitulate.
Trump and members of his entourage have also shown sympathy for and influenced right-wing populist parties in Austria, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain. In the UK, Elon Musk is trying to undermine the Labour Party in favor of the right-wing Reform UK party. Trump and his associates openly admire Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has visited him at Mar-a-Lago several times and provided him with a blueprint for authoritarian policies.
The parallel between European parties that were pro-Moscow during the Cold War and the far-right parties of the 21st century is certainly not entirely accurate. Far-right parties also show varying degrees of sympathy for Russian interests.
Western communist parties were more formally linked to the Soviet Union than today's European far-right parties are to Putin's Russia. Before World War II, they belonged to the Moscow-controlled Communist International, which Stalin later dissolved to appease his new American and British allies during the war. Its post-war successor, the Informburo, included French and Italian communists, as well as Eastern European parties directly responsible to Moscow, before it was abolished in 1956. By the 1970s, some Western communist parties—notably in Italy and Spain—had declared a degree of independence from the Soviets under the banner of "Eurocommunism".
A consistent factor, however, remains Moscow's penchant for fifth columns to advance its interests - from the Informburo in the early Cold War to today's international right-wing groups. Today's right-wingers include quasi-fascists and Christian white supremacists, whose views are strengthening and appealing to Christian nationalist conservatism in the US; Putin's nationalist autocracy, protected by the Russian Orthodox Church; and Orbán's "illiberal democracy".
Moscow is active in Europe. The Kremlin’s political and material support for far-right groups deepens social and political divisions, helping Russia discredit Western democracy. Russian interference includes covert influence operations that German officials believe have penetrated German political institutions and the AfD. Last year, German journalists uncovered emails and text messages between a Russian intelligence officer and an adviser to an AfD member of the Bundestag, aimed at supporting the party’s efforts to stop the sending of German battle tanks to Ukraine. The officer and the adviser have denied involvement.
Czech authorities believe that Voice of Europe, a news portal based in Prague, has been funneling money to politicians in at least six European countries as part of what authorities say is a Russian influence operation. Russia has denied involvement in disinformation campaigns against the West.
Regardless of Russia’s tactics, today’s far-right parties in Europe share the Trump administration’s hostility to “wokeness” and immigration, much as 20th-century Western communist parties espoused goals that were close to democratic administrations during the Cold War: social justice, civil rights for African Americans, and an anti-colonial agenda. Yet, unlike Vance today, democratic administrations have never suggested that European governments should conform to them.
American administrations then assessed the Soviet threat as too dangerous to engage in political experiments. Today, the stakes are at least as high: if a belligerent Russia were to thoroughly infiltrate European politics, its far-right proxies could undermine the political structures that European nations have painstakingly built to prevent a regional return to authoritarianism.
In a sign of mild criticism of Trump, Vance and Musk, the AfD did not do as well in Germany's elections on Sunday as some had expected. But given the rise of the far right, European governments are now more susceptible to its influence than they were to communism until the 1960s, when Europe's political center stabilized.
The Trump administration doesn’t seem to care. Vance made it clear that moderate European leaders cannot count on American moderation, that Trump administration officials are unlikely to be willing to accept intelligence that illuminates the depth and breadth of the Russian threat to Europe, and that negligence and betrayal have become part of American policy.
The authors are senior fellows at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
The article was taken from the "New York Times"
Translation: A.Š.
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