Europe is reeling from the repeated attacks on it by Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Both, in their own way, embody the new challenges Europe is struggling to meet. Musk, with his disruptive innovations, exposes its structural weaknesses, while Trump, the symbol of a transactional, uncompromising world, underlines its inadequacy for a new geopolitical reality. Far from being anomalies, these figures highlight an aging European model, incapable of competing in terms of innovation and asserting itself in the face of determined adversaries. This observation calls for urgent reflection: Europe must wake up from its blindness and undertake profound reforms to avoid irrelevance.
In 1806, Napoleon crushed the Prussian army in the battles of Jena and Auerstadt. The shock in Prussia was so great that it caused the monarchy to embark on a profound reform movement. It realized that the debacle was the product of an obsolete model in the face of a disruptive enemy. Without hesitation, it wiped the slate clean: out with the military doctrine, and out with the aging generals who had heralded it. In their place, a group of young, reform-minded officers, including Carl von Clausewitz, were promoted to positions of responsibility. The reform paved the way for the innovative approaches that would allow Prussia, and later Germany, to quickly become a great power again, crushing France in the War of 1870. Innovation had changed sides.
A slow slide into irrelevance
Although Europe had not suffered a military defeat, it nevertheless found itself in a situation similar to that of Prussia in 1806: locked into an outdated model and trapped in a vicious circle of its own making. Innovation and growth are stifled by excessive regulation, productivity collapses, and Europe is impoverished because it is absent from high value-added sectors such as AI, IT, and biotech. The only exception is nuclear power, which was saved in extremis by geopolitical pressure after decades of dismantling. Its historic industries – agriculture, automotive, aerospace – weakened by ideological choices, can no longer finance the future. This weakening, fueled by the debt created by an unsustainable lifestyle, is gradually undermining Europe’s social system and political influence as it slides inexorably toward irrelevance. Meanwhile, determined and disruptive adversaries such as China, Islamists, and now the United States are reshaping the world order. In the face of all this, however, Europe is reacting very differently from Prussia in 1806.
Blindness
Indeed, what is striking is not the scale of the problems, but the lack of awareness and blindness in the face of them. To take just one example, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently described Trump’s comments as “incomprehensible” to European leaders. What if that was the problem: the inability of European leaders to understand that the world is changing radically and rapidly? All collapses are the result of an inability to make sense of new phenomena. With Trump, we’re entering a transactional world where the only thing that counts is the balance of power. This is the upheaval of the world created by the Allies after World War II. Now it’s every man for himself. Faced with this, Europe’s leaders are like rabbits in the middle of the road, blinded by the headlights of the car approaching at high speed.
Misjudgement
This lack of understanding is compounded by a lack of judgment: for many, the cause is clear: it’s all Elon Musk’s fault. A minister is considering banning X, and hostile media reports are multiplying. But Musk is not the problem, he is the symptom of the European problem. We are not weak because he attacks us; he attacks us because we are weak. He’s an eye-opener. Let’s manage him as best we can for the times ahead, but let’s be careful that he’s not a distraction or even a decoy used by Europe’s leaders. While we should not a priori rule out a few retaliatory measures here and there in the context of the transaction, this can in no way take the place of policy. On the one hand, because Europe is now too weak to influence its adversaries, and on the other, because it would not solve its fundamental problem, which is precisely this weakness. That’s where we have to focus our efforts.
Responding
The consequences of the disastrous choices Europe has made over the past twenty years are already being felt, and we’re only at the beginning. It’s already too late to react, but it’s never too late. Walter Isaacson, one of Elon Musk’s biographers, recently remarked, “Those who don’t want Elon to be so powerful should also learn to do things. Like Prussia in 1806, and without waiting for real catastrophes, Europe must learn from the failure of its model. It must undertake rapid reforms to put innovation at the heart of its model. This will enable it to bounce back and become a great power again. Then, and only then, will Donald Trump and Elon Musk be more open to discussion.
🇫🇷 A version in French of this article is available here.
2 thoughts on “Why Europe’s answer to Elon Musk’s and Donald Trump’s attack must be innovation”
While all of this is true, your analysis should also take into account the disgust and rejection that almost half of the US population feels toward Trump, in my opinion. This latent resistance will be activated if he stumbles, which suggests how Europeans could play an innovative role – helping the US understand how policies such as healthcare and gun control operate in other countries. At the very least, an alliance between centrist Americans and Europeans might be the innovation that restores Western cohesion.