Jan Hornát’s article in Survival explores the historical and ideological entanglement between the European Union and the United States, asking how far European integration has functioned as a “mirror” of the American federal experience and why this reflection has fractured under Donald Trump’s return to power. Focusing on the EU as a distinctive “peace pact” rather than merely a bureaucratic project, Hornát traces how American constitutional ideas both inspired and later shaped Europe’s post-war order.
Drawing on historical analysis and contemporary political discourse, the article shows that the EU’s supranational structure emerged not out of technocratic overreach but from the same foundational dilemma that faced the early United States: how to balance decentralised sovereignty against the dangers of anarchy, rivalry, and renewed conflict. Hornát argues that both the American federation and the European Union were designed as systems “to govern governments” in order to suppress inter-state violence and secure collective stability.
The article highlights that the Trump administration increasingly interprets Europe through the prism of US domestic culture wars, portraying the EU as a liberal, over-centralised entity undermining national sovereignty. By openly supporting populist and far-right movements hostile to integration, Washington risks destabilising the very peace architecture it once encouraged. In this sense, the EU’s “mirror” of America no longer reflects shared purpose but competing ideological futures.