December 2025 marked a dangerous turning point in the post-Cold War order. Despite recent election victories for mainstream centrist parties in the Netherlands, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, the underlying political forces are shifting dramatically toward the extremes. Europe's democratic center, once considered the anchor of global stability, is now barely holding.
The Great Political Upheaval
Across the continent, a new reality has emerged: far-right and nationalist parties now lead the polls in France, the United Kingdom, and Germany. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces a dire 21 percent approval rating, while French President Emmanuel Macron's support has plummeted to 11 percent. The mood in Paris has become so bleak that even the spectacular Louvre heist earlier this fall has been treated by some as a metaphor for a nation struggling to manage its crises.
"There remains a majority in the center for a strong Europe, and that is crucial for stability," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, after the EU Parliament elections last year. "In other words, the center is holding." — but sixteen months later, that hold is looking anything but secure.
Trump's New Strategy
In a brutal rupture of transatlantic norms, a new U.S. National Security Strategy aims to use American diplomacy to cultivate "resistance" to political correctness in Europe — especially on migration — and to support parties it describes as "patriotic." Trump himself told POLITICO that he would endorse candidates he believed would move Europe in the right direction.
Will Marshall from the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist American think tank, warned: "What [Europeans are] getting from Trump is the strategy of maximum polarization that hollows out the center. The old established parties of left and right that dominated the postwar era have gotten weaker." This is a nationalist or populist right's revolt against the entire postwar political establishment.
Geopolitical Implications
The implications for geopolitics, from trade to defense, could be profound. If Europe fractures along these new ideological lines, it risks becoming an extension of U.S. domestic politics rather than an independent geopolitical actor. The post-Cold War balance that allowed Western democracies to cooperate on migration, climate, and security may be irreparably damaged.
"On that trajectory, in the next four years the political map of the West faces its most dramatic upheaval since the Cold War. The implications for geopolitics, from trade to defense, could be profound."
For the European Union, this represents an existential challenge. For NATO and U.S.-Europe relations, it represents the unraveling of a postwar political compact that made the Atlantic Alliance possible in the first place. Europe's center is no longer holding — and the consequences will be felt across the globe.