The Reckoning

The Epstein network signifies America's elite moral collapse and a "you can do anything" impunity that fuelled MAGA. Europe must respond by reducing US dependence and strengthening its own democracy.

Everything is connected. Until the past week, the Jeffrey Epstein network seemed to be best seen a grotesque and revolting exercise in sexual violence, the like of which we have seen too many times — from on-street grooming to institutionalised abuse in orphanages and care settings. This one just happened to touch wealthy and famous men. Unfortunately, it has become clear in the past week, hideous though it is, that it is also far more than that. In fact, it was one of the sewers in which modern American breakdown was incubated.

Let’s start in the only decent place possible. It is easy to run away with commentary. The voices who should be centre stage in all of this are the countless women who were abused by the men in this network. The shadow of sexual abuse and violence is a very long one indeed, and it destroys and also ends lives as the psychological pain becomes too great.

This network of abuse and violence is particularly destructive for those who survived it. Every day for years now they will have been reminded of what they had to endure, and they will have seen their abusers getting away with it — and they still are. It’s quite possible, if not probable, that one of them is the most powerful man in the world. Their bravery in enduring, in raising their voice, in sounding the alarm when they will have been ignored by the police, by intelligence services, and many others besides, must be recognised.

Jeffrey Epstein was a devil. He is a devil that, through the scale of the evil he perpetrated, has ended up shining a light on American decay. And that is fundamentally what we are all confronting now — abrupt American moral collapse. Somehow, the most powerful nation on the planet, the sun around which the postwar international system orbits, has convinced itself that it is the victim. They are the biggest winners yet they think they are the losers. And it was in structures like the Epstein network that this collapse was both becoming evident and further cultivated.

Essentially, the US has experienced elite collapse which has led to institutional malaise and is now shattering the postwar system. At the centre of this postwar system was, as Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman have articulated, “network asymmetry”. When the US operated on the basis of a value set of enlightened self-interest — basically underwriting a system of international trade, capital, and security — all seemed calm. The potential was always there for this system to be disrupted through “weaponised interdependence”. And, with MAGA, that is precisely where we are. Mark Carney is completely right: we are “at the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality.”

An easy analysis would say the Epstein network symbolises this moral breakdown, where America realises that it can seize short-term gratification through the exercise of raw power and domination. There is such a symbolic level. I’ve come to believe, however, that it is more directly connected than that. It is now clear that the Epstein hell was where powerful men were shown that they could do whatever they wanted and face no consequences. This is the signature of MAGA. Remember in the 2016 election when a recording was released of Donald Trump saying “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything”?

You.can.do.anything. And it is in this network, not only this network but certainly there, that the “you can do anything” world was cultivated. Epstein gave access to wealth, power and sex. Everyone in it was there for at least one of these things — it wasn’t his sparkling personality. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was there for sex. Steve Bannon was there for power. Peter Mandelson was there for wealth. All of them were there because it enabled “you can do anything”.

And that is now what we have in Minneapolis, in global relations, in Fulton County — everywhere the MAGA poison seeps. The Epstein network is part of the genesis of MAGA and of might is right — because you can do anything.

So here we are. And the questions for Europe are immense. They are currently answering them very badly and have been for some time. We are at least a decade into the American malaise. And still, European leaders grovel when we need to be putting in place a firewall. The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, had it right, just prior to Donald Trump’s re-election:

“With the war in Ukraine, the entire EU – under the illusion of a reinstated Western unity under Biden – has placed itself in the hands of the leading NATO power. In so doing it’s refusing to see that the politics of the USA has just been unsettled by the rise of China; the USA has been shaken, in its own institutional foundations too. The breakdown of the public sphere and the party system had been coming for a while…”

And that is the key point. This is part of the process of decline, and it is one that US society and polity is handling very destructively. It’s not going to turn even if Trump and his cronies disappear tomorrow. Once “you can do anything” is released, it is incredibly difficult to restrain it again. The US constitution is broken in the sense that it can no longer sustain checks and balances that is a core objective of the document. It has been re-written without a single quill pen needing to touch parchment. This is the reality in which we now live.

Habermas goes on to say:

“We seem equally helpless in the face of growing right-wing populism…..we haven’t found a plausible explanation for this growing potential yet.”

As it happens, I’m not sure he’s quite right on us lacking a plausible explanation. In Political Anguish, I explored:

“This is the dynamic at play in politics: the intersection of lost status, right-wing elite radicalisation, and a new information environment that brings these two drivers together. Underneath it all lies an economy and democratic politics that has failed to distribute status equitably over decades.”

It is in environments such as the Epstein network that right-wing elites became radicalised. It is also in social media spaces such as X and many more sites of radicalisation beyond. What is now also becoming clear is that those with the highest status can still experience status loss. They are so psychologically damaged that, through a kind of uber-narcissism, they consider themselves to have been deprived of their just lot in comparison with another imagined even more nihilistically powerful version of themselves.

You can see this with the tech bros, with Trump, and with Putin — the latter of whom Donald Tusk is convinced nurtured the Epstein network. Weirdly, in the case of MAGA, this enables a politics of grievance linked to real and lost status amongst different groups in society such as redundant factory workers. Then, once they seize power, this sense of grievance and status lost and denied becomes part of the international system. What else does Make America Great Again mean?

This is where Europe’s response has been woeful. When faced with a corrosive dynamic of lost status and might is right, accommodation can only work in the short term. Fundamentally, such toxicity must be isolated. It was in the perfectly reasonable desire to try to somehow neutralise Trump 2.0 that Keir Starmer appointed Peter Mandelson. In so doing, and in apologising he seems to acknowledge this, he allowed his attention to the reality of what links to the Epstein network meant to be distracted. It is a distraction that may cost him his job. It is one of the cruel ironies here that a fundamentally decent man who instinctively mistrusted Peter Mandelson is one who is at risk while the US President, right at the centre of it all, brushes it off. History is cruel.

There is still time for reflection and a change of course. Because “you can do anything” can be managed for short periods of time, but over time US institutional corrosion will pass to the UK and to Europe unless there is a change of strategy. In fact, it is deliberate strategy of MAGA to pull down European democracy from within. For Europe and the UK, it means shifting from “asymmetric interdependence” to “conditional engagement”. In effect, over time, to shift policy with regards the US towards a more neutral, equidistant standpoint — closer to the type of relationship Europe has with China, where trade is entwined with national security and each must be balanced against the other.

This doesn’t mean that there can’t be trade deals or even security cooperation through NATO — but it must be eyes wide open and absolutely conditional. Europe must move to take ownership of its own security once again. It must realise that the US is now an ideological risk and that it extends its power through the economic and security spaces it dominates. It is also now a petro-tech state.

Therefore, Europe must dismantle its fossil fuel reliance which, of course, will create knock-on challenges with regard to China, as that is where comparative advantage when it comes to green tech is having a detrimental effect on European industry. Smart transition, with management of access to domestic markets, is essential. If Europe is decimated industrially then that in itself will hand the continent to post-liberal-democratic forces. The French approach to transitioning to EVs while managing the access of Chinese manufacturers to its markets is instructive here, as explored by the Centre for European Reform. Where there is a genuine chance of catch-up within industries, Europe must be willing to support strategic sectors, including with protective barriers. It has to be rigorous in avoiding “lemon socialism“ but nor should it be naïve.

The conditional approach needs to apply to US tech. It is staggering that the UK government is signing enormous deals with Palantir, given the ideologies of its founders, one of whom believes that freedom and democracy are incompatible, and how its technologies are being used in the US security state, including in Minneapolis. What people who are supplying critical tech infrastructure believe is absolutely relevant to national security. And of course there are links to Epstein. Of course there are. More broadly, Europe has to accelerate its own sovereign AI.

All of this will be costly and difficult. And it requires a big public conversation. For this, Europe needs a healthy democracy. The crossover between American big tech — in the form of X and also Meta, but not only these — and the decay of the public square is now obvious. With great power comes great responsibility, and those who own and sometimes manipulate key public spaces show little regard for a healthy democracy. In fact, they try to pull it down from within.

A healthy public square is foundational to proper democracy, and therefore to free speech. When the information environment is algorithmically manipulated and the quiet many are chased off the square, then speech is not free. We should use the law accordingly — to protect European democracy.

For the UK’s part, it is most at risk from institutional decay. The appointment of Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to the US wasn’t just a monumental error of judgement; it was emblematic of an approach to the US which is highly risky. For the PM, the best thing he can do in this moment is reassess what led him to that decision. There has been more than enough in the past few weeks alone that demonstrates the risks of not changing geopolitical strategy.

The UK’s future, as it has been from the moment the guns fell silent at the end of World War II, is European. Nothing has changed other than we can no longer trust the US in that context. Confrontation would be foolish and against our interests. But decisively shifting our strategy towards our European allies — where our values are aligned, our interests are shared, and our collective security can be defended — becomes unanswerable. It’s a long game but one we must get to.

The next few years are about managing the fallout from American decline and the rise of China. Europe is not a passive observer in this. It has an active say in its future. And when it succeeds in protecting modern democracy — because succeed it must — then it will be a beacon for others as they look at US decay and Chinese authoritarianism. Europe can do anything — when it’s united and strong.