Introduction

When President Barack Obama channeled Martin Luther King Jr. and declared that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” he was not articulating a truth but expressing a hope, a deeply American, almost theological belief in the inevitability of progress. However, any realistic and sober assessment of history would indicate that this arc does not now exist and never has. History does not bend on its own. Justice, freedom, and human flourishing do not arise spontaneously nor inevitably. In post-invasion Iraq, the United States had a singular opportunity to bring such a future into being. But it chose instead to assume that democratic procedures alone would guide the country toward justice. This proved to be a fatal error.

As Dr. Tarek Masoud put it, “the Arab world today finds itself torn between two visions of progress: One seeks to replace the regimes that dominate the region; the other seeks to replace the people who inhabit it”. The latter is a delusion in the short run. People cannot be replaced, cultures cannot be unmade by decree, and the presumption that a social good exists which should be imposed from above is a slippery slope towards tyranny. Therefore, the only practical path to reform in Iraq in the wake of Saddam’s ouster, would have been to replace the regime, not through the abstract, unconstrained democracy which the Iraqis tried and failed to implement, but through the establishment of a strong, coherent executive power capable of maintaining security, legitimacy, and institutional continuity. Only through these prerequisite conditions can the people of the Arab world be given the opportunity, in the long run, to flourish as autonomous and free citizens in a democratic society.

This essay argues that the United States should have imposed a system centered on a strong executive in the form of a limited constitutional monarchy modeled on an American constitution-style strong presidential republic. What matters most is not the symbolism of monarchy versus republic, but the presence of executive strength embedded in institutional constraint. These systems provide frameworks for national stability and gradual civic development, rather than the disorder and fragmentation produced by a French Revolution-style democracy. Drawing on the insights of Marsin Alshamary, Mieczyslaw Boduszyński, Ryszard Kapuściński, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Curtis Yarvin, the only living political theorist who will still be read in two centuries, this essay traces the political failure of post-invasion Iraq to a flawed model of governance.

Dancing Bears

Ryszard Kapuściński’s Dancing Bears tells of a Soviet-trained bear, released into the wild, who continues to perform circus tricks in the forest. The bear has been liberated, but only in his physical form. His body is free, but his habits are not. This metaphor captures the disorientation of societies emerging from authoritarianism. Eastern Europeans, raised in an environment defined by dictatorship, did not immediately embrace or understand the workings of democratic pluralism. Their instincts remained conditioned by control.

Iraqis, too, were dancing bears. After decades of Saddam’s rule, underpinned by brutal coercion and institutional omnipresence, the Iraqi people were thrust into an open political arena with little civic scaffolding. As in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, democratic governance arrived before democratic substance. Elections were held, parliaments convened, and constitutions written. But these gestures occurred in a political culture that had not yet internalized democratic norms.

Kapuściński’s image reminds us that freedom is not just the absence of constraint, it requires re-education, habituation, and time. Iraqis mimicked democratic procedures without believing in them, similar to how the bears danced not because they enjoyed doing so, but because they had always been made to. A limited constitutional monarchy could have functioned as a stable framework in which new civic habits might be cultivated, an intermediate space between tyranny and democracy.

Syrian intellectual George Tarabishi described a similar dilemma in his essay “The Problematics of Democracy in the Arab World” He referred to two ballot boxes: the physical box into which votes are cast, and the psychological “box in the head” of the voter, the set of internalized values and expectations that condition democratic behavior. True democracy, he argued, cannot emerge unless both boxes are addressed. The external trappings of elections and institutions are meaningless unless accompanied by deep internal change in political consciousness and civic responsibility.

Curtis Yarvin further echoes this concept in his article “How to Occupy and Govern a Foreign Country,” where he critiques American postwar interventions for trying to impose democratic forms without reshaping the underlying machinery of governance and public psychology. Yarvin suggests that effective occupation must transform both institutions and ideology, otherwise elections become mere performance and not vehicles of genuine sovereignty. Iraq’s post-2003 experience confirms this. The people received the first box, the structures of democracy, without the long, slow work required to transform the second. That transformation cannot be imposed. It must be cultivated, and it requires not only time but a security and prosperity that allows new habits to take root.

Failures in Unrestrained Democracy

The French Revolution offers a vivid example of how unmoored democratic idealism can spiral into chaos without executive discipline. In 1792, the National Convention, the most democratic body to ever exist in France at the time, abolished the monarchy and declared a republic. The Convention, elected through universal male suffrage, wielded legislative and executive power with few constraints. But without a stable institutional framework or a clear executive center, the Convention quickly devolved into factionalism.

Under pressure from external war and internal unrest, the revolutionary government created the Committee of Public Safety, intended as a temporary measure to enforce order and save the Republic. It became, instead, the engine of the Reign of Terror. Revolutionary tribunals, mass arrests, and guillotine executions followed as democratic legitimacy gave way to paranoia and purges. The very body that claimed to represent the general will became a tool of repression and fear.

This collapse mirrors Iraq’s own post-2003 experiment. Democratic institutions in both cases were empowered before they were secured. Following Saddam Hussein’s fall, Iraq moved quickly to draft a new constitution. A transitional government was established under the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), and Iraqis elected a Transitional National Assembly in January 2005. This body, composed through a sectarian quota system, was tasked with drafting a permanent constitution. This constitution was completed in just a few months. Though it established a democratic framework, the process was rushed and lacked broad-based consensus, especially among Sunni Arabs, many of whom boycotted the referendum. The document reflected both the CPA’s vision and the political calculations of dominant Shia and Kurdish parties, embedding sectarian power-sharing into Iraq’s institutional design. Without a stable executive authority to mediate conflict and enforce the rule of law, Iraq’s parliament became a theater for sectarian conflict and political dysfunction. The lesson of 1789 is not that democracy fails, but that democracy without a strong, yet restrained executive is a recipe for instability and tyranny.

Militias and the Collapse of Authority

“There is no greater tyrant than a weak king,” said The King of Siam in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I . A weak central authority, the hallmark of post-Saddam Iraq, was a recipe for tyranny. Where the state cannot assert a monopoly on force, militias fill the void. Alshamary notes that “the proliferation of armed paramilitaries testifies to the fact that the country has not yet achieved a monopoly on violence”. Boduszyński’s account reinforces this: “Militias filled the void created by the CPA’s disbanding of the Iraqi army and police,” evolving into “the de facto security sector” while also engaging in “criminal activity”.

Central among these militias is the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), or al-Hashd al-Shaabi. Initially formed in 2014 in response to a fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to combat ISIS, the PMF has since evolved into a powerful and entrenched parallel security force. While nominally under the command of the Iraqi state, the PMF operates with significant autonomy, often loyal more to their individual factions or to foreign powers like Iran than to the central government. PMF units have been implicated in abuses against civilians, political intimidation, and the suppression of protest movements. Their pervasive influence over politics, security, and even economic activities in southern Iraq further erodes the authority of the state.

In 2016, Sadrist protesters stormed the Green Zone demanding reforms, and government forces failed to resist them. That power vacuum showed the state’s inability to impose order even on its capital.

Oil and the Obstacles to Democracy

Hazem Beblawi argues that rentier economies sever the link between taxation and representation. In Saddam’s Iraq, oil revenues funded a vast patronage system. Boduszyński calls it “a bloated, inefficient body presiding over an unreformed state-driven, oil-dependent economy”. Alshamary similarly observes that Iraq’s political system, backed by oil rents, has become a spoils system rather than a democracy. Michael Ross, in his influential article “Does Oil Hinder Democracy?” argues that oil wealth enables authoritarian regimes to avoid both taxation and accountability, reducing pressures for democratization while increasing state capacity to suppress dissent. This dynamic has played out in Iraq, where the state became an allocator of oil wealth rather than a responsive democratic institution. The result was clientelism, not citizenship, and dependency instead of participation.

Other scholars, such as Stephen Haber and Victor Menaldo, challenge Ross and Beblawi’s conclusions. In their research, they contend that the relationship between oil and authoritarianism is not as deterministic as often portrayed. Their empirical analysis suggests that oil wealth does not necessarily undermine democratic institutions and that the political outcomes of oil dependence vary significantly across cases. This suggests that the failure of democracy in Iraq may have more to do with institutional design and security deficits than with oil alone.

Constitutional Monarchies Considered

Jordan’s monarchy is both constrained and centralized. It has maintained stability and institutional continuity. The president wields concentrated power over foreign affairs and defense. Yet checks and balances, federalism, and an independent judiciary moderate that power. American federalism also buffers sectarianism by allowing regional self-governance and offers a pragmatic way to manage Iraq’s entrenched regionalism and ethnic divisions. Iraq has long struggled with regional tensions, between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government, and among Sunni, Shia, and minority populations. A federalist model like that of the United States could have provided mechanisms for decentralized governance, allowing different regions to exercise autonomy while remaining under a cohesive national framework. It would have created space for both local identity and national unity.

Moreover, American-style federalism can ease the tension between secularism and religious pluralism by ensuring that no single sect dominates the national stage. Iraq’s post-Baathist political chaos stems in part from the collapse of social hierarchies that, while often oppressive, provided predictability and structure. Paul Bremer’s de-Baathification purged thousands based on affiliation, not conduct. “This policy emptied the bureaucracy of managers… and replaced them with politically connected exiles,” writes Boduszyński, many of whom “had no idea how to run agencies”. It dismantled Iraq’s administrative memory and opened the door for sectarian opportunism. Baathism disrupted traditional tribal and religious hierarchies, attempting to replace them with a state-centered ideology. The consequence was not democratization but disorder, an erosion of authority without a viable replacement. Both a strong executive presidency and a constitutional monarchy with federalist principles would have allowed Iraq to restore institutional hierarchy without reverting to tyranny.

Yarvin calls the U.S. system “a monarchy with bad optics”, executive strength masquerading as participatory rule. He suggests that power should be explicit and accountable rather than symbolic and scattered. Iraq could have benefited from a system in which a democratically elected president wielded real authority, constrained by courts, a bicameral legislature, and a federal structure designed to absorb sectarian tensions.

Counterarguments

Danielle Allen contends that political representation is essential to dignity. Without it, citizenship becomes hollow. Yet, it would be hard to argue that people living under a decades long state of perpetual civil war live with very much dignity. A state must first ensure the lowest tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs before addressing “self-actualization”. A system with strong executive constraints can uphold order while gradually enabling meaningful participation. She might further argue that representation is the only legitimate basis for governance and that strong executives lead inevitably to authoritarianism. But the historical record shows that executive power, when institutionally constrained, can coexist with civil liberties.

Dr. Tarek Masoud might argue that monarchies risk entrenching inequality and marginalizing dissent. Fair enough. However, a limited constitutional monarchy does not inherently silence criticism and can serve as a transitional framework. Masoud’s concern about long-run stagnation presumes institutions that are already capable of surviving in the long term. But in fragile, post-conflict environments, survival itself is the first milestone. Short-term stability must precede long-term reform. If successive short-run governments deliver order and accountability, they can lay the foundation for sustainable democratic development. As Hannah Arendt wrote, “Each new generation is a new invasion of civilization by barbarians.” The message need not be one of pessimism, but can, instead be seen as a message for hope: future generations, shaped under stable institutions, may mature into democratic citizens even if their predecessors could not.

Alshamary expresses cautious optimism, noting that while Iraq faces significant challenges, the country has made progress and may continue on a democratic path. She acknowledges citizen skepticism but urges outside observers to recognize that Iraq’s democratic experiment may still bear fruit. Zhou Enlai’s reputed quip that it is “too early to tell” the consequences of the French Revolution reminds us that historical judgment requires patience and perhaps Iraq’s story, like that of France, is still unfolding. The bungled imposition of democracy on Iraq may still prove to be a success in the grand-scope of history.

Lessons for a Future North Korean Transition

A future collapse of the North Korean government, whether due to internal dysfunction, a power vacuum following the death of its leader, or a rebellion driven by economic and humanitarian desperation, could force the United States to reconsider its reluctance toward nation-building. Despite the ‘never-again’ attitude that followed the Iraq War, such a crisis may compel America to lead a new international coalition tasked with post-authoritarian reconstruction. Such an undertaking would mirror, in complexity and scale, the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq. Yet the errors of Iraq must serve as critical lessons for designing a more effective transitional strategy.

Like Iraq prior to Saddam’s fall, North Korea is a highly centralized authoritarian state with virtually no functioning civil society. Its population has been subject to ideological indoctrination and economic isolation for generations. If the regime collapses, the resulting power vacuum will leave an institutional void. The Iraq experience showed that dissolving core state institutions, such as the army and civil service, without a viable replacement leads to chaos, insurgency, and a loss of credibility for any transitional authority. In North Korea, preserving the basic administrative machinery while gradually reforming it will be essential. De-Kimization must not repeat the overreach of de-Baathification.

Furthermore, just as Iraq’s democratic experiment failed in part due to an absence of executive coherence and monopolized force, any North Korean transitional government must be anchored by a strong executive. A useful historical precedent is General Douglas MacArthur’s administration of post-war Japan, where centralized and decisive leadership under U.S. guidance helped stabilize the country and oversee a successful transition to democratic governance. Whether modeled on an American presidential system or a technocratic caretaker backed by a multinational coalition, the regime must centralize authority to prevent fragmentation among factions, regional commanders, or remnants of the Workers’ Party.

However, key differences remain. North Korea’s ethnic and linguistic homogeneity contrasts sharply with Iraq’s sectarian divisions. South Korea’s existence as a culturally aligned, economically powerful neighbor with a constitutional democratic model introduces an external anchor and possible blueprint for reunification or transition, an asset Iraq lacked. Still, overreliance on external models without tailoring them to local realities, as in Iraq, could be counterproductive. In short, whether America likes it or not, it may again, someday soon, be made responsible for state-building; this time in North Korea. The reconstruction will require institutional humility, long-term engagement, and firm but flexible executive governance. Iraq’s post-2003 trajectory demonstrates that democratization without order is not reform but folly. Only by learning from that failure can the next effort at post-authoritarian state-building hope to succeed.

Conclusion

In 2003, the United States had the power to reorder the Iraqi state. Instead of designing a system suited to Iraq’s unique social and historical conditions, it imposed a universalist vision of democracy divorced from reality. The result has been two decades of violence, instability, and despair.

A strong executive, whether through a limited constitutional monarchy or a presidential republic, could have anchored Iraq in legitimacy and allowed democratic norms to grow gradually and organically. Executive coherence, institutional continuity, and cultural adaptation are essential preconditions for democracy to thrive in post-authoritarian societies. Justice is not an arc. It is the result of a wise purposeful construction and historical luck. Only by learning from Iraq’s mistakes can future state-building projects, in North Korea or elsewhere, hope to succeed. Historical humility is essential and order is a necessary prerequisite to liberty.

Bibliography

Allen, Danielle. Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Alshamary, Marsin. “Iraq’s Struggle for Democracy.” Journal of Democracy, 2023.

Beblawi, Hazem. “The Rentier State in the Arab World,” chapter 8 in Giacomo Luciani (ed.) Public Finance in the Arab Countries, International Development Research Centre, 1986 (pp. 198-212)

Boduszyński, Mieczyslaw P. “Iraq’s Year of Rage.” Journal of Democracy, 2023.

Haber, Stephen, and Menaldo, Victor. “Do Natural Resources Fuel Authoritarianism? A Reappraisal of the Resource Curse.” The American Political Science Review 105, no. 1 (2011): pp. 1-26.

Kapuściński, Ryszard. Dancing Bears. Vintage, 2017.

Masoud, Tarek. “The Arab Spring at 10: Kings or People?” Journal of Democracy, 2021.

Rodgers, Richard, and Oscar Hammerstein II. The King and I. New York: Williamson Music, 1951.

Ross, Michael L. “Does Oil Hinder Democracy” World Politics 53, no. 3 (2001): 325-61.

Tarabishi, George. “The Problematics of Democracy in the Arab World,” 1998, translated by William Tamplin.

Yarvin, Curtis. “How to Occupy and Govern a Foreign Country.” Unqualified Reservations, 2008.

Charles Dickens’s character Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House is a fitting symbol here. Dickens, who in modern parlance, would be referred to as a social justice warrior, through Jellyby coined the term “telescopic philanthropy”, a sentimental concern for distant causes that blinds her to the suffering directly before her. Mrs. Jellyby is so obsessed with her grand mission to civilize Africa that she neglects her own filthy, chaotic household. Letters and pamphlets for her Borrioboola-Gha project spill across every surface of her home. Her children are dirty and neglected. Dickens uses her to satirize moral vanity disguised as compassion, a kind of empathy that is performative and disconnected from responsibility.

Like Mrs. Jellyby, modern empathy politics prioritizes symbolic humanitarianism over the effects felt by the average citizen. Under-resourced schools absorb sudden enrollment spikes, low-income regions shoulder the burden of social integration, public services strain under increased demand and a sense of shared community breaks down. The loudest advocates of these policies often remain insulated from these effects. Their role is largely rhetorical, publicly promoting compassion, dignity, and inclusion, while privately enjoying the social rewards of their signalled virtue.

Germany’s migration policy during the 2010s offers a telling parallel. One friend shared an instance with me where many of his German friends who supported high levels of immigration refused to send their children to schools with large migrant populations. Their choices betray a revealed preference. Like Mrs. Jellyby, those friends either reserve their empathy for those who are abstract and distant, or they value the social benefits of appearing compassionate more than the actual consequences of their positions (or both). The abstract and distant are ideals untainted by human flaws. They are easy to love. The flaws of your friends, family, neighbors and countrymen are obvious; nonetheless, it is the essential challenge of the human experience to love those who are flawed.

A similar problem lies in the instinct toward self-blame prevalent in Western political discourse. While the colonial and neo-imperial legacy of the West is at best mixed and at worst outright harmful, the notion that sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan, and Syria are poor solely due to Western exploitation is, at best, greatly overstated and, at worst, ahistorical. Their poverty is not primarily a result of this relationship, but instead reflective of the typical human experience—one historically marked by war, tyranny, and famine. Historically speaking most of humanity lived lives which were nasty, brutish, and short and the fact that we live in a time and in places where that is not so is an aberration and a blessing. While each of us should feel a moral obligation to do good, and perhaps to repair the inherent sinfulness of the human condition, the perspective that we owe a collective debt to particular geographic regions of the world, is misplaced.

This dissonance had geopolitical consequences. In a previous class our instructor stated that Brexit would never have happened without Germany’s migration policy. I share this view. The Brexit campaign did not need complex slogans. Three words - “One million Syrians” was enough. These words, usually appended with “and they will come here” by Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson at Wetherspoonses across the UK, captured voters’ fears more effectively than any manifesto.

This paper is not an attack on empathy. It is a warning about how empathy can be manipulated. Empathy should be celebrated, not denigrated. It is a virtue. When I look to liberal colleagues I do not see baddies. I see people who care. That said, political coalitions are often composed of Bootleggers and Baptists—a term from public choice theory coined by economist Bruce Yandle. The phrase originates from the Prohibition era, when moral crusaders (the Baptists) campaigned to outlaw alcohol in the name of public virtue, while illegal liquor dealers (the Bootleggers) quietly supported the same laws because they eliminated legal competition. Though their motives were different, both groups aligned in pushing the same policy. In immigration debates, empathy often plays the Baptist’s role: the language of compassion, dignity, and inclusion rallies public support and shapes the moral framing. Behind that framing, however, the Bootleggers, businesses seeking cheap labor and political parties eyeing demographic advantage, pursue more self-serving goals. The result is that empathy, though often genuine, can become moral cover for policies which benefit the few, undermine democracy and rule of law and are harmful to the society at large.

We should also recognize that empathy does not exist in a vacuum, it is shaped by the moral ether of a society. This ether is inherited from past generations and molded by the prevailing power structure. What a culture deems “empathetic” reflects its dominant moral consensus, not a universal truth. Consider Vienna as an example: an empathetic moderate living in Vienna across the early twentieth century might have supported three very different regimes over the course of a couple decades: the Habsburg monarchy, the Nazis, and later the socialists. In each case, the individual’s empathy would have aligned with whatever ideology held moral authority at the time. Empathy without ideology can therefore be subject to the whims of the power structure rather than stand on its own. All-in-all, there are far darker moral ethers in world (and European) history than the liberal order of modern Europe, where perhaps too much empathy is extended toward migrant communities and not enough to native Europeans. But acknowledging that relative goodness should not prevent us from imagining other, better orders.

Defining the Problem

American Exceptionalism

In “No True Scotsman,” I argued that American identity is fundamentally value based. When a US military officer is commissioned, the oath is “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The object of loyalty is not a king or even “the American people,” but a set of principles written in 1787 by men who have taken on an almost sacred status in our national imagination. Our Sovereign is a text that anyone can in principle internalize. This creed is joined to a powerful national myth. The frontier story and the immigrant story are two versions of the same narrative: oppressed people bet on themselves, head for new territory, and build something better. From westerns to The Godfather, American cinema celebrates the immigrant who, after some struggle, becomes fully American. The story works because there is a reasonably clear instruction manual: learn English, work hard, obey the law, believe in the Constitution. Millions have done exactly that.

European oaths of office look different. British officials swear allegiance to “His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors, according to law,” and defenders of the British model often gesture toward the “English Constitution.” But the English Constitution is not really a constitution. It is an unwritten web of habits, judicial precedents, and parliamentary conventions that provide no clear civic story for newcomers to join and no founding moment that anchors national identity. Worse, Britain’s own political development in the last several decades has exposed how fragile these unwritten liberties actually are. Its winner-take-all parliamentary system grants governments elected with narrow pluralities sweeping authority, allowing rights that supposedly form the bedrock of the “English Constitution” to be eroded at an accelerating pace. It has become increasingly evident that the true guarantor of British liberty is not Westminster, but the American security umbrella and the liberal hegemonic order it enforces.

Germany, Italy and France, ground their oaths in republican constitutions, but without the quasi religious reverence Americans reserve for theirs. And phrases such as “the rights and liberty of the German people” immediately raise the question of who counts as German, and on what terms. The point is not that Europe lacks nations. It is that many European projects of nationhood do not offer newcomers anything like a widely believed instruction manual for becoming part of “us.” In an age of mass migration, that ambiguity becomes fatal.

Misplaced Guilt

In “Are We the Baddies? Mrs. Jellyby’s Revenge,” I used Charles Dickens’s character Mrs. Jellyby to describe a particular kind of modern Western empathy. Dickens coined the term “telescopic philanthropy” for her obsession with distant Africans while her own children wander around filthy and neglected. He understood moral vanity disguised as compassion long before anyone complained about “virtue signalling.” Contemporary European migration politics often look like a Jellyby household. A German classmate described friends who loudly supported high levels of immigration but refused to send their children to schools with large migrant populations. Their social media personas and their revealed preferences did not match. They loved “Syrians” in the abstract, not as classmates for their kids.

Underneath this lies a story of Western guilt. It is true that European colonialism and American interventions had destructive elements. It does not follow that the poverty of Afghanistan, Syria, or the Sahel is primarily the fault of London, Paris, or Washington. For most of human history, life has been, in Hobbes’s phrase, “nasty, brutish and short.” War, famine, and tyranny are the default condition of humanity, not a special Western export. It may feel morally attractive to say “we owe them,” but translating a general human duty to do good into a specific, permanent obligation to particular regions is sloppy and dangerous. At its worst it becomes a kind of moral accounting in which Europe is forever a debtor and parts of the global South forever creditors.

What Is “the West” by Comparison?

Europe’s confusion becomes clearer when we compare it with other regions. Russia presents itself as a civilization state grounded in Orthodoxy, Slavic ethnicity, and great power status. Its national story emphasizes historic destiny, the Third Rome, and victory in the “Great Patriotic War.” Membership is not something one acquires by subscribing to a creed. Russia maintains a thick, particularist identity and does not apologize for it. China likewise treats its national identity as ethnonational. While the People’s Republic is formally constitutional, “Chineseness” is in practice tied to Han ethnicity, civilizational continuity, and a narrative that is explicitly non universalist. Immigration is tightly restricted and largely non assimilative. No one seriously claims that people who “share our values” can simply become Chinese.

Across much of the Arab world, identity is anchored in a shared language and in Islam, with the ummah binding believers into a larger community. These states are not designed to absorb large numbers of culturally distant immigrants, and prioritizing co-religionists is seen as normal, not evidence of moral failure. Sub Saharan Africa is in some ways Europe’s demographic mirror. It is the world’s youngest region, with many states having median ages under 20, while Europe has the oldest. African governments often manage fragile civic identities layered onto older ethnic and tribal loyalties. In European discourse, these societies are frequently treated as moral creditors, the “peoples we have wronged,” whose youth must be granted access to Europe as repayment. Taken together, these comparisons highlight Europe’s uniqueness. It is the only actor that simultaneously preaches universalism and feels guilty about defending its own particular way of life.

Europe’s Identity Vacuum

Europe’s identity problem has institutional consequences. Since the 1990s, European elites have tried to build a supranational identity on vibes: openness, human rights, and being “rules based.” In practice, European identity is often reduced to lifestyle clichés about wine, siestas, trains, and public health care.

At the same time, the European Union has centralized major parts of migration and asylum policy in institutions that are only weakly accountable to voters. The European Commission, the European Court of Justice, and a dense network of agencies and NGOs shape policy more than national parliaments do. The pattern around referendums is telling. When French and Dutch voters rejected the proposed European Constitution in 2005, its substance returned in the Lisbon Treaty, this time ratified by parliaments. When Irish voters rejected Nice and later Lisbon, they were asked again until they supplied the “correct” answer. Citizens learn that “democracy” is valid only when it ratifies elite preferences.

On a question that touches the basic composition of political communities, voters are treated as obstacles rather than principals. Not surprisingly, trust erodes. The aggregate views of the EU remain broadly favorable, but that headline number conceals intense polarization between cosmopolitan cores and more skeptical peripheries. It is not irrational for citizens who experience policy as something done to them by a distant bureaucracy to ask whether democracy still means anything.

Immigration did not cause Europe’s identity crisis. It forced it into the open. When you do not know who you are, you cannot say who can become one of you. In that vacuum, policy drifts toward a combination of Jellyby style empathy and technocratic tinkering, which satisfies no one.

US 2025 National Security Strategy and the Transatlantic Journey

Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) articulates this critique in unusually blunt terms. The Europe chapter warns that the continent faces “the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure,” driven by EU institutions that undermine sovereignty, migration policies that transform the continent, collapsing birthrates, and the loss of national self confidence. It predicts that parts of Europe will be “unrecognizable in 20 years or less” absent a course correction. The NSS calls for “restoring Europe’s civilizational self confidence and Western identity” and explicitly links American interests to Europe’s ability to remain European. The broader principle that “the era of mass migration is over” is applied not just to the United States, but to the wider West.

In light of these harsh words however, I would reinforce the following. The United States and Europe are not just allies. They are parts of the same civilization. Our languages, universities, legal systems, and cultural references are intertwined. American democracy is unthinkable without British constitutional history and French political thought, just as contemporary European security is unthinkable without the American nuclear umbrella. Beneath Trump’s strong words lies an obvious truth, fortunately or not, a true “divorce” would be impossible. If one partner sinks on this transatlantic journey, we will be dragged under together.

Defining the Opportunity

Europe’s Demographic Iceberg

At the beginning of 2024, the EU population stood at about 449 million, with more than one fifth already aged 65 or older. That share has risen from around 16 percent in 2004 to roughly 22 percent today and continues to climb, especially in countries like Italy, Portugal, and Bulgaria. Europe’s median age is now around 44.7 years, the highest of any world region. Eurostat projects that even with some migration the EU’s population will fall by around 6 percent by 2100. A Guardian analysis suggests that without continued immigration the decline could be far steeper, from roughly 447 million to around 295 million, with enormous strain on pensions, healthcare, and the labor force.

The Immigration Solution

Immigration already functions as a demographic stopgap. Eurostat reports that the EU’s population reached a record 450.4 million in 2024 entirely because net migration of 2.3 million people offset a natural decrease of 1.3 million, as deaths outnumbered births. This is the fourth consecutive year in which migration has been the only source of population growth. Migrants are heavily represented in eldercare, hospitals, agriculture, and low wage service sectors, the jobs native Europeans are increasingly unwilling or unable to do. Demographers agree that without some immigration the fiscal strain of aging societies would become even more severe.

At the same time, immigration is not a silver bullet. To keep old age dependency ratios stable purely through migration would require inflows that would rapidly transform the cultural and religious makeup of European societies. That may be acceptable in theory for those who think identity is infinitely malleable. It is clearly not acceptable to most voters. Demography means Europe no longer has the luxury of muddling through. The question is not whether there will be migration, but which migrants come, under what rules, and into what story. If Europe continues to quibble about bean counting issues like which member state takes which quota and how long people stay in reception centers, the hull of the ship will continue to buckle.

What Ought to Be Done?

Messaging as Deterrence

Political messaging is an underused policy tool which the Trump administration embraced wholeheartedly. Alongside concrete measures such as “Remain in Mexico” and the aggressive use of Title 42 expulsions, it deployed deliberately harsh rhetoric, making clear in speeches and through the president’s and DHS’s Twitter accounts that those who came illegally would not be allowed to stay and that they were not welcome. Even Kamala Harris felt compelled once to say “do not come” to would be migrants. No one believed her, of course, because by then the Democratic Party had lost credibility on enforcement. Data suggest that when Title 8 enforcement with real legal consequences returned, some sectors of the border saw sustained declines, which underscores that credible enforcement requires a change in rhetoric.

The conceptual lesson is straightforward. Messaging from the top is part of the policy toolkit. Elites often treat “being mean” in rhetoric as inherently illegitimate. But if firm words deter dangerous journeys, reduce deaths at sea, and signal that laws matter, then some calibrated meanness may be more humane than the status quo. My friend’s Trump-supporting, first-generation immigrant Nigerian doctor mother captured this with a line I keep returning to. When challenged about Trump’s character, she shrugged and said, “He is not my pastor.” In her view, a political leader’s job is to protect the community, not to be a saint. The famous line from A Few Good Men says the same thing: “You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.” Someone has to say “no.” We confuse the roles of pastors and political leaders at our peril.

When the Center Refuses to Enforce

A Greek center right politician who visited our class illustrated the political danger of permanent niceness. He noted that some far right actors in his country literally advocate bombing migrant boats. His point was not that this will happen tomorrow, but that such ideas become thinkable when mainstream politicians refuse to enforce any boundary at all. I am not arguing that Europe should entertain homicidal fantasies. I am arguing that humane, clearly communicated deterrence by centrist leaders can rescue politics from the boat bombers.

“Mean” European Politicians

We already see European leaders experimenting with firmer lines. Giorgia Meloni’s government in Italy has restricted NGO ship operations and sought to externalize asylum processing through deals with countries such as Albania, explicitly presenting irregular migration as incompatible with Italian social stability. Matteo Salvini, during his stint as interior minister, ran a very public “closed ports” policy, using theatrical standoffs with NGO vessels to signal resolve. In France, Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour have built movements on civilizational rhetoric, promising to reassert national preference in welfare and employment. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has built fences, tightened asylum rules, and openly defended “illiberal democracy” as necessary to preserve Hungarian cultural homogeneity.

These figures demonstrate real demand for firmer boundaries. If the only politicians willing to say what many voters privately believe are those flirting with extremism, suppressing them will not make the sentiment disappear. It may be that something like Meloni or Orbán is the least bad alternative to a much darker future.

Selective Immigration

One lesson from the American experience is that civic identities can be powerful if they are tied to concrete institutions and stories. Citizenship oaths that reference constitutions, civic education that explains the importance of free speech, secularism, and gender equality, and public ceremonies that treat naturalization as a serious rite of passage all help. Civic religion cannot be manufactured on command, but politicians can at least stop undermining their own histories.

At the same time, Europe should be honest about selectivity. In The Culture Transplant, Garrett Jones argues that migrants carry persistent cultural traits, including norms around trust and cooperation, that shape the long run quality of institutions in receiving countries. Countries that admit large numbers of people from societies with low social trust and weak institutions risk importing those problems. Applied to Europe, this suggests a more modest, targeted model. Instead of treating all inflows as morally equivalent, European states should prioritize migrants whose skills and cultural backgrounds make successful integration likely: people with relevant languages, skills, and evidence of respect for liberal norms. That is not racism. It is an attempt to preserve fragile liberal institutions that will not easily be rebuilt once lost.

Conclusion

The Titanic image helps sort big problems from small ones. Policy tweaks to relocation quotas, asylum processing, and NGO rules are deck chairs. The iceberg is identity and demography. Immigration, especially from culturally distant societies, is not the iceberg itself, but it makes the collision imminent by forcing questions of “who we are” and “who can join us” that Europe has tried to avoid. The United States has done better at assimilation because it offers a clear, value based identity anchored in a revered constitution. Europe often does not know what it is asking people to become. A culture of misdirected empathy and misplaced historical guilt leaves elites morally disarmed in the face of large scale migration. Aging populations mean immigration cannot simply be turned off. The real task is to shape who comes, under what conditions, and into what story.

Political leaders are not pastors. Their job is not to make everyone feel included at all times, but to ensure human flourishing for the people and community that comprises their demos. Sometimes that requires being “mean” at the border in order to be kind to the polity. Empathy ordered properly begins at home and radiates outward. Only once the ship is righted can we properly enjoy our transatlantic journey.