As Donald Trump claims Nato forces stayed ‘a little off the front lines’ in Afghanistan, and the Great Greenland Crisis rumbles on, and off, and on again, one thing is clear: Europe keeps threatening to ‘stand up to America’ and every time it does, the effect is roughly equivalent to a damp baguette waved in the general direction of the Pentagon.
Imagine, just for a moment, that Europe calmly announced a ban on American tourists.
The psychological damage would be immense
Why? Because we don’t have the military muscle, the economic leverage or even the diplomatic coherence. We famously disagree on the correct shape of a banana, or the relative evil of Russia.
In this particular brouhaha, we can’t even manage a symbolic boycott of the World Cup. The French have said it’s off the table because they have a justified suspicion they might win again. The Scots will never boycott it, because it’s the first time they’ve qualified since they largely abandoned woad.
Europe cannot slap America with tanks, tariffs or punitive treaties. Any attempt to do so would be a theatrical French mime, with equivalent menace.
But Europe does possess one weapon of extraordinary potency. And that weapon is Europe itself. I mean this quite literally. Europe. The most beautiful place on earth. The continent that gets 50 per cent of all global tourism. I mean Europe as in: the cities. The coasts. The villages. The cathedrals. The rustling wine terraces. The lakes, islands, piazzas, galleries, cafés, boulevards, cottages, castles, palaces, Breton isles and Cornish coves. The entire sensual, historical, architectural and gastronomic inheritance of a civilisation that has been quietly accumulating aesthetic capital for 3,000 years.
Just crunch the numbers. Every year roughly 15 to 18 million Americans pack their bags for European adventures. Surveys routinely show that Europe tops the wish-list of Americans planning a once-in-a-lifetime trip. The American imagination does not yearn, in its most tender moments, for strip malls, freeways and suburban lawns. It doesn’t even yearn that much for Malibu or Miami Beach. It wants Europe.
This makes intuitive sense. Because when it comes to choosing Europe, there is something deeper going on in the American psyche. America’s relationship with Europe is not just touristic. From Harry Potter to Robin Hood, from Disney fairy tales to Emily in Paris, a huge proportion of America’s imaginative life is set in an idealised, gothic, medieval or vaguely European somewhere-land. Turrets, cloisters, ivy-covered colleges. The Shire. Rivendell. The Med. St Tropez. The whole European thing fills the American yearnscape, because Europe is where America goes when it wants depth, enchantment, mystique and ancestry.
This is not accidental. America is still a fairly young civilisation, brilliant at power, speed, innovation and money, but intrinsically insecure about history and texture. So it borrows ours. It overlays its stories with European memes, ruins, spectres and bloodlines, because that is where romance and seriousness are culturally located. Even when the stories are ‘fantasy’, the architecture is European, the costumes are European, the moral universe is European, and the British accent is to die for.
Indeed, Donald Trump came right out and said this in his Davos speech: ‘I am Scottish, and I am German.’ Half the anger in right-wing America, currently directed at Europe is not really contempt for our laziness or cowardice, even if these accusations are sometimes justified. It is a despair that the exquisite European motherland is trashing itself with insane migration policies, immiserating itself with anti-free-speech laws, and impoverishing itself with ridiculous regulations. Americans want to visit Europe and see the old world, the old country, looking good, prosperous and traditionally European. Because they still really want to visit.
Now imagine, just for a moment, that Europe calmly announced a ban on American tourists. Simply: no entry for leisure travel. Business, diplomacy and emergencies only. The rest of you, Non, désolé, try Cancun?
The psychological damage would be immense. No Scottish golf courses for Donald Trump. No Paris for his wife. No ancestral pilgrimage to Ireland for nostalgic hedge-funders. No Capri for the crypto bros. No Amalfi Coast for the influencer wives. No Florence for the earnest daughters doing art history. No boozy Barcelona weekends, no Christmas shopping in London, no Italian lakes for George Clooney. No Riviera yachts, no Provençal lunches, no trips down the Rhine. No Siena, no Sicily, no Paddington Bear, no Venice.
Yes, such a ban would hurt Europe’s tourism industry. The sector is one of our economic pillars, and Americans account for a generous slice of that seasonal revenue. But the pain to Europe would be economic and transient, whereas the pain to wealthy Americans would be humiliating and existential. It would be like a mother snubbing a child. And children, when snubbed by a mother they worship, don’t brush it off or ignore it. They unravel.
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