I was sent an English [machine] translation of a speech by Jürgen Habermas together with a prequel summary.
… I am sharing below the new speech by 96-year-old Jürgen Habermas, titled “From Here On, We Must Go Alone,” which he gave at the Siemens Foundation in Munich. It is about the future of Europe and its relations with the US.
Basically, he traces what he calls the “democratically legitimized winding up of the oldest democracy on earth.” By this he means the United States. He sets out how the Trumpists are attacking the separation of powers on which the rule of law rests. They are carrying out a “rapid, arbitrarily autocratic expansion of an executive power that has at the same time been cut down to size and purged.” This, he writes, is taking place against the backdrop of “a legal system that is running into the void, gradually hollowed out from the top down.” Trump has “usurped the legislative powers of Congress” and has already made the army in its higher ranks “pliant.”
He knows that Washington in 2025 is not Berlin in 1933. But it is clear that he fears for “the rule-of-law system of the United States.” “To this day,” he says, “I see no convincing signs of a reversal of the course that has been set towards a politically authoritarian-steered, technocratically administered but economically libertarian social system.”
Habermas postulates that the EU must now constitute itself as an “autonomous player,” independently of the United States and independently of “system-distorting compromises with the USA or other authoritarian states.” So he counts the United States among the authoritarian states. Yet he then shows, using the example of Ukraine, how difficult—indeed nearly impossible—this independence for the time being is.
For the complete speech (machine translated):
From here on we have to go on alone
In view of the new power relations in this world, the further political integration of Europe is more vital for survival than ever before. A bitter reckoning. And a hope. By Jürgen Habermas. Süddeutsche Zeitung, 21 November 2025
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered, among the European populations, a delayed awareness of a profoundly changed global situation. This change, however, had long been in the making with the decline of the United States, the superpower of the 20th century. An alarm signal for this was already the abruptly altered mood in the civil society of the United States after 11 September 2001. This shift in the mentality of a frightened population was further whipped up by the rhetoric of the then government under President George W. Bush and his ruthlessly militant vice president.
Everyone seemed almost physically to sense the dangers of international terrorism. In the course of the propaganda for the war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq, which violated international law, this change in mentality became radicalized and solidified. Institutionally speaking, it was above all the party system that was affected by this change. Already during the 1990s, under the leadership of Newt Gingrich, not only had the practice of the Republican Party fundamentally changed, but so too had the social composition of its supporters. The tendencies of a deeper and by now, it seems, hardly reversible transformation of the political system as a whole only fully established themselves, however, after President Obama had disappointed the hopes for a thoroughly changed foreign policy of the United States.
In the meantime, the weakening of the international position of the former superpower is unmistakable. This was once again signaled at the recent APEC summit in South Korea at the end of October: the unsettled alliance partners of the United States are now seeking agreements with other neighbors who are more neutral or more dependent on China. And after the early departure of the American president, who is more interested in quick deals than in the long-term stability of US influence, China’s President Xi is said to have set the tone with his promotion of a conception of a multicultural world society under China’s leadership.
Ever since the People’s Republic was admitted to the World Trade Organization, shrewd governments have pursued the goal of turning their country into a leading economic great power. But only since Xi Jinping took office in 2012 has it become a declared goal, presented with a certain “defensive aggressiveness”, to replace the liberal world trade regime with a Sino-centric world political order. With the Belt and Road Initiative, China had for some time been pursuing more far-reaching strategic and security policy goals. The greatest beneficiaries have been Russia, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia. But for developing and emerging countries too, China is now likely the largest source of funds. This primarily economic shift in power reveals itself generally in the fact that, from a geopolitical perspective, the decisive conflicts will in future be concentrated in Southeast Asia.
It will be interesting to observe how Trump’s assumption of power will affect Taiwan’s domestic politics. But apart from this flashpoint, it is not only China and its regional allies on the one hand and, on the other, the United States and the countries of the region that tend toward the West—above all Japan, South Korea and Australia—that confront each other here. In the immediate vicinity, India is now also pursuing its own great-power ambitions. The shift in geopolitical power relations is reflected not only in the Pacific area, but also in the rise of middle powers such as Brazil, South Africa or India, which are confidently striving for greater independence.
Many such rising states are now seeking admission to the loose and meanwhile enlarged association of the BRICS states.
The deep geoeconomic changes in the liberal world economic order, which had been created by the United States since the end of the Second World War, also point to an end of Western hegemony. It is not that this rules-based world trade order—now strained even by Trump himself—could simply be liquidated, as one can see today in the interesting dispute over the delivery of rare earths. But hardly anything could better illustrate the now customary security policy restrictions on world trade than the recent decision of the government of Germany, the world export champion, to support the internationally no longer competitive German steel industry with state funds.
Although these changes in the geopolitical power relations have been emerging for some time, and although, at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, a renewed election of Trump could by no means be ruled out, the Western governments did not grasp, after Russia’s invasion, that this conflict, once its outbreak had not been prevented, absolutely had to be brought to an end within Joe Biden’s term of office.
In the meantime, with Trump’s second term in office, what had long been announced in the programmatic text of the Heritage Foundation has come to pass: the hardly reversible dismantling of the oldest liberal-democratic regime, according to a pattern we have already come to know in Europe from the example of Hungary and other states.
These new types of authoritarian regimes cannot evidently be traced back to the particular circumstances of a botched dismantling of post-Soviet forms of rule. Rather, they are the forerunners of the democratically legitimized dismantling of the oldest democracy on earth and of the rapid establishment and expansion of a technocratically administered, libertarian-capitalist form of rule.
What we are witnessing in the United States is the same transition from one “system” to another—by no means especially creeping, but rather, in view of a more or less paralyzed opposition, relatively inconspicuous: the last or penultimate democratic election was the long-announced starting signal for a rapid, arbitrary-autocratic expansion of an executive branch that has at the same time been trimmed down and purged. Trump abuses this power without regard for objections from a legal system that is gradually being hollowed out from top to bottom and is increasingly running into the void.
The president has first, through his rigid tariff policy, usurped the legislative powers of parliament and tried to restrict step by step the independence of the press and the university system. Then he intimidated the opposition by deploying the National Guard, unbidden, in major cities such as Los Angeles, Washington and Chicago. Their mere presence signals the government’s willingness, should the occasion arise, to use an army that has already been rendered compliant in its upper ranks against its own citizens. While within the EU the party system and democratic elections are still protected even in authoritarian states such as Hungary (or formerly Poland), their fate in the United States is for the time being open.
Following the most recent, localized election successes of the Democrats, Trump’s aim is the marginalization and disparagement of the political opposition using methods of denunciation. In foreign policy, he does not concern himself with international law either, as his arbitrary military actions against smugglers off the coast of Venezuela show.
The most astonishing and so far not plausibly explained phenomenon of this creeping yet single-mindedly pursued takeover of power is, above all, the timidity of a largely resistant-less civil society—not to mention the willingness of students and professors to adapt, who only recently had pushed to the limit, on their campuses, their cost-free resistance against the allegedly colonial power Israel.
This is not to suggest that we would behave differently. I see, up to now, no convincing signs of a reversal of the course set towards a politically authoritarian-steered, technocratically administered but economically libertarian social system. For Trump’s possible successors possess an even more closed “worldview” than does the pathologically narcissistic president, fixated on short-term personal “gains” and on confirmation and recognition, who would prefer to be seen as a tycoon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate rather than as a politician with vision.
For the foregoing reflections I cannot claim any competence beyond that of a newspaper reader. They interest me above all with regard to the question of what the shift in geopolitical weight and the long-prepared political division of the West mean, in the present situation, for Europe. In what follows, I proceed on the assumption that, with a few isolated exceptions, the governments of the EU and its member states still have the firm will, for the time being, to adhere to the normative foundations and the well-established practices of their constitutions. From this follows the political goal of strengthening their weight to such an extent that the EU can assert itself, in world politics and world society, independently of the United States and independently of system-distorting compromises with the USA or other authoritarian states, as an autonomous player.
Already for this reason there is, on our side, an interest in a rapid ceasefire sought by the Ukrainian leadership. This has a consequence for Europe that is now no longer possible to overlook. The EU cannot politically distance itself from the passive United States, which has stepped back, as it were, into the ranks as a NATO member, even though this has the result that “the West” still acts, but can no longer speak with one voice in normative terms. The war in Ukraine forces the EU to hold fast to an alliance with the United States within the framework of NATO, an alliance which, due to the recent change of regime in its most important and hitherto reliably leading member, can no longer credibly invoke human rights to justify its military support for Ukraine.
With regard to the continuation of the war in Ukraine, “we”, if I may continue to speak from this European perspective, remain dependent on the support of the United States already for the reason that we do not possess its technologies for the necessary aerial reconnaissance. Without the support of the USA, the Ukrainian front could not be held. But these United States, which can no longer uphold, in normative terms, the role they had declared under Biden as a support for Ukraine legitimate under international law, and which at best supply weapons that Europe (that is, in effect, the Federal Republic of Germany) pays for, have become an unpredictable partner for their allies.
Already for this reason, there is also on our side an interest in the rapid ceasefire sought by the Ukrainian leadership. This has a disadvantageous consequence for Europe that has, up to now, not been thematized. The EU cannot politically distance itself from the passive NATO member USA, which has, as it were, stepped back into the ranks, even though this has the consequence that “the West” still acts together, but can no longer speak with one voice in normative terms. The war in Ukraine forces the EU to hold fast to an alliance with the United States within a NATO which, due to the admonished change of regime in its most important and hitherto leading member, can no longer credibly invoke human rights to justify its military support for Ukraine.
Anyone who has heard Trump’s recent speech before the UN General Assembly must admit that the rhetoric of international-law justification for taking the side of the attacked Ukraine, claimed since the first day of the conflict by what was at that time still a united West, has been devalued. Not affected by this embarrassment is only that group of originally thirty states which extends beyond the EU but, under the leadership of France and the United Kingdom and independently of the USA, has come together to support Ukraine. It is therefore, as I hope, an unintended irony that this group of states has thoughtlessly given itself the name “coalition of the willing”—that same name under which George W. Bush, with the help of the British prime minister but against the resistance of France and Germany, assembled a coalition in support of his invasion of Iraq in violation of international law.
After this sketch of the altered situation of a divided West, I now come to my main question: how realistic is it to strive for further political unification of the EU with the aim of being recognized, within the framework of world society, not only as one of the economically most significant trading partners, but as an independent subject capable of political self-assertion and action? Although the newer member states in the East of the EU are the loudest in calling for rearmament, they are the least prepared to restrict their own national sovereign powers for the sake of such a common strengthening. In view of this consequence, the initiative would have to come—although Meloni’s national government would fail in this respect as well—from the western core countries of the Union and today, in view of France’s current weakness, primarily from Germany. The recently begun development of a common European defense force could provide the impetus for this.
Eurobonds are also anathema to Merz, in this quite the son of Schäuble
The Bundestag has now approved funds for substantial expansion and build-up of the Bundeswehr, though the questionable justification with the allegedly current danger of a Russian attack on NATO need not concern me here. The federal government is pursuing the development of “the strongest army in Europe” under the premises of the existing treaties, that is, ultimately within the framework of its national sovereign powers. In doing so, it is continuing the hypocritical European policy it practiced under Chancellor Merkel: rhetorically always pro-European, it rejected in past decades various French initiatives for closer economic integration, most recently the urgent initiative of the newly elected French President Macron.
But Eurobonds are also, for Chancellor Merz—here very much the son of Schäuble—anathema. There is no serious sign that the federal government is taking serious steps to bring about a European Union capable of acting on the global political stage. Admittedly, in an era of daily growing right-wing populism in all our countries, such a step—long overdue—towards further integration of the EU and thus towards its global capacity to act would find even less spontaneous support than before. In most Western member states of the EU, too, domestic political forces favoring a decentering or rolling back of the EU, or at least a weakening of Brussels’ competences, are stronger than ever.
I therefore consider it likely that Europe will be less able than ever to detach itself from the former leading power, the USA. Whether it will be able, in this slipstream, to preserve its normative, and up to now still democratic and liberal, self-understanding will then be a central challenge. At the end of a political life that has been, politically speaking, rather favored, it is not easy for me, despite everything, to draw the following exhortative conclusion: the further political integration of at least the core of the European Union has never been so vital for our survival as it is today—and never so unlikely.
This text is the slightly revised manuscript by Jürgen Habermas for the Süddeutsche Zeitung of the lecture that the philosopher delivered on 19 November at a colloquium on the crisis of Western democracies at the Siemens Foundation in Munich.
Italics are by DFL
The featured image is made by deepai.org, from the following prompt, “the european union needs democracy, unity and defence but Germany and Eastern Europe are conflicted”