If the US forces me to choose between my two nationalities, I choose France – and Europe | Alexander Hurst

LLast week, a Republican senator from my home state of Ohio, Bernie Moreno, introduced the Exclusive Citizenship Act. The bill would strip me of my American citizenship, because I chose to be French too. Just as Moreno seeks to force me to choose citizenship, the United States is bullying Europe, trying to force it to choose between total submission to its former partner or breaking with it.

Official US policy now is that Europe faces “civilizational erasure” and that the US will actively support far-right, ethnonationalist and neofascist parties hostile to the EU. It is no longer possible to support historic alliances, but to protect Elon Musk and his fellow techno-nihilistic broligarchs – as well as to reap the Kremlin’s praise for it.

What should have been clear by November 2024 should now be completely clear. This version of the United States is worse than simply “not our friend”: it is an actively hostile actor seeking to fracture European society in the same way that Russia sought to fracture British society by promoting Brexit, and American society by fueling disinformation, Maga and Trump. And yet Europe (including the UK) has spent the last year coddling, backtracking, cajoling and capitulating. He ignored insult after insult from the White House, punitive measure after punitive measure.

Haven’t we had enough of the humiliation yet?

Twenty years ago, philosophers Jacques Derrida and Jürgen Habermas urged Europe to capitalize on the wave of popular opposition to the Iraq War to produce a new type of European public sphere with a common sense of shared political destiny and future. According to the two men, only such a Europe would be capable of meeting the challenge of defending cosmopolitanism and the rule of law. The EU is far from perfect and faces its own internal challenges linked to far-right authoritarianism. But this is even more true today than in 2003: the EU is the only global actor with superpower potential that remains committed to the rule of law and inclusive, progressive politics.

As a graduate student, I read Derrida and Habermas and felt piqued. The United States was still under the Obama administration and, at least nominally, committed to some form of international order. Looking back, Derrida and Habermas were prophets of the present. The divide over Iraq, which many thought was temporary, has reemerged as a structural and likely irreparable divide.

Some experts disdain the idea of ​​a more aggressive European response to American interference and coercion. “What is Von der Leyen supposed to do,” they ask: “become a character from South Park and hurl insults at Trump?” To which I might respond: “What if she does? What is there really to lose?”

Changing the material reality of Europe requires changing the discourse. European leaders have spent the last year negotiating quietly behind the scenes, hoping that a mix of swashbuckling diplomacy and strategic patience will preserve the transatlantic relationship. But, and it obviously needs to be repeated, This It is the official policy of the United States to work toward the end of the EU as we know it by publicly supporting far-right parties committed to its destruction.

As the new national security strategy says, the United States will “cultivate resistance” to the EU from anti-union parties in its member states. The United States is also deploying de facto trade sanctions to force the EU to relinquish its right to govern its own digital market, treating EU regulation of X as a mere act of war.

I feel it too, the basis of humiliation that underlies the politics of anger. I feel it as deeply as any other European, with the added benefit that those who are stealing this deeply flawed and aspirational thing that was supposed to be “America” ​​are also working to steal it from me as an individual, as a citizen (again) of the United States. How can we overcome this, to transform a politics of resentment into a politics of belonging? Not by cowering or groveling, or hoping that a magical US midterm election will save us.

The first step towards autonomy is to behave autonomously. This doesn’t necessarily mean matching Trump’s inconsistent and capricious communication style; it means responding to American hostility with a public and rhetorical confrontation that shows Europeans that their leaders are not in the business of submission. That they will clearly state that the American extreme right is an adversary to be fought.

The rupture is as real as Derrida and Habermas predicted, and America’s attempts to force Europe into submission also present an open door: an opportunity to build the confident narrative Europe needs to face this moment. Proposing things like concerted Europe-wide funding of public media, or expanding life-changing programs like the Erasmus student exchange program, may seem quaint. In fact, they are essential for fostering a common future and a sense of political belonging among European citizens.

When I chose French nationality, I also chose European citizenship. Not just a bureaucratic space occupied by technocrats, but a cognitive space. A story deep enough that the stories fit together, where it’s okay to be more than one thing at a time. It was once an ideal that the United States understood and advocated. Actively renouncing the citizenship I earned through the circumstances of my birth would mean renouncing people, place, and stories that matter to me. It’s not something I will do. Renouncing the citizenship I chose – and the people, places and stories I chose along with it – is also something I will not do, and with even more conviction. If the United States ever strips me of the former because of the latter, so be it.

• Alexander Hurst is a columnist for Guardian Europe. His memoir, Generation Desperation, will be published in January 2026.