Bruno Maçães, writer: "The generation in power in Europe is still living in 1989"

Bruno Maçães was Portugal’s secretary of state for European Affairs between 2013 and 2015, but since then he has become one of the sharpest analysts of the change of era. In our conversation in Portugal, the Portuguese writer examines the political, intellectual and strategic blockages that prevent Europe from acting autonomously.

Maçães interprets the rise of the radical right as "a kind of collapse of European politics". In his view, these parties do not offer a political theory comparable to that of other ideological movements of the past, but rather a mixture of emotion, simplification and aggression. In the same logic, he places the growing power of tech oligarchs, which he reads as a symptom of societies where institutions are losing the capacity to balance interests and hold power to account.

The conversation also turns to the United States, where Maçães argues that "Trump is not the problem. He is a symptom". His criticism points to a system that, he says, no longer responds democratically to its citizens. In the final part, the Portuguese writer takes the diagnosis into the intellectual terrain: Europe, he says, lacks think tanks with enough scale to challenge the strategic agenda. "We don’t really have think tanks that are genuinely European", he laments.
 

Let me ask you a first question about Spain. You are very supportive of the role of Spain in Europe and in global politics.

I’m supposed to be someone on the center-right. 

But for me, the question is not political in that sense. It’s more about strategy and national strategy. Spain, more than any other country, under this government but not only and not necessarily because of this government, has shown an awareness of how the world is changing and is preparing the country for a fundamentally different world.

The other countries in Europe are not even conservative; they are reactive and passive. For the most part, they have a nostalgia for the past that is very paralyzing. There are several examples of this.

On the one hand, on the question of energy, it seems obvious to me that we’re moving to a new energy paradigm. In Europe, ten years ago, there was an interest in renewables, but it came more from environmental concerns. For me, that’s not the whole question, or even the main question. That is a trigger for the energy transition, but the energy transition has to happen in any case because we have energy sources that are cheaper and more powerful.

"It is indisputable —you have to be blind not to realize— that the world is no longer dominated by the West. The West is a source of geopolitical power, but there are other sources"

As our societies need more and more energy, it’s very clear that we’re going to need to harness solar energy, which is a fundamental source of energy on our planet. 99.98% of the energy that reaches the planet is solar in one way or another, so it’s much better to harness it directly at the source. Spain realizes this. Many other countries in Europe, possibly for ideological reasons but also because of the way the political economy in those countries works, are moving very, very slowly, even with setbacks.

Then there is the question of global order. It is indisputable —you have to be blind not to realize— that the world is no longer dominated by the West. The West is a source of geopolitical power, but there are other sources. By the way, I don’t like to call this multipolar because the question is not just the existence of different poles. The question is how these poles organize themselves.

Multipolarity is simply a fact, but we need to raise the normative question of how these different poles will live together. It’s not enough just to say there will be different poles and they will find a way to understand each other. We have to work on institutions for a new world. Pedro Sánchez’s speech in Beijing was about this. In fact, he didn’t talk so much about multipolarity because he simply recognized it as a fact. And then he said: how are we going to manage this fact?

On these two fundamental questions, energy and global order, it seems to me that Spain is adapting and moving towards a new world out of the realization that this is inevitable. And the countries that do this first always have an advantage. They are first movers, ahead of everyone else.

If the transition is done in a planned, deliberate way, it can be successful. But if countries are just reacting, or reacting to a shock, many countries in Europe will experience this transition more as a shock than as a process. So I see Spain as representing the movement towards this new world that is not reactive but active; a choice rather than a shock. That is the main question.

And what other countries in Europe do you think are on the same page as Spain, trying to be the first movers? Are there other countries or not?

None as clearly as Spain, none as comprehensively as Spain, none as deliberately and strategically as Spain. But there are other countries that, in different areas, can be good allies.

For example, on geopolitical questions, there is clearly a coincidence of views between Spain and France. Interestingly, five years ago one would have expected France to play the role that Spain is playing now on the geopolitical question. And, for reasons we can talk about, that didn’t happen.

In the criticism of this insane war in Iran, the first statements on the war from the French Foreign Ministry were extremely supportive. I can find them. Anyone can find them. They are available. Macron was a little more cautious, but from the Foreign Ministry the support was complete. One would have expected France, in the first two days, to lead a principled reaction, as happened with the Iraq War, but it turned out to be Spain.

And on Gaza, it seems that France is completely incapable of being critical of Israel. Macron seems completely incapable of doing that. His government has members who are fanatical supporters of Israel. So it is not surprising. But, again, it has to be said that France has talked for a long time about European strategic autonomy and, in the last five years, particularly since October 7, it has completely failed. And, particularly since Trump returned to power, France no longer represents that.

So, somewhat surprisingly, it was Spain that did it. But that does not mean that, on these issues, the two countries are not clearly close and perhaps should be working more together than they are. And on issues of the energy transition, countries in Northern Europe, Scandinavia, can also be good partners. Spain has to work with these alliances.

It should also be said that the current government in Spain has always made it clear that it is speaking in the name of Europe. Sometimes it is accused of representing what is called a Third Worldist view or the Global South, but that seems quite mistaken to me. That has happened in the past with certain countries in Europe, but that is not the case at all now. It is about how Europe should place itself.

"When Pedro Sánchez recently reached out to China [...] he was trying to lead a European policy towards China, not a Spanish policy"

So when Pedro Sánchez recently reached out to China, in my interpretation, he was trying to lead a European policy towards China, not a Spanish policy. What he is trying to do is push the EU in a certain direction. But again, on these issues of energy, global order and China, Spain has also been ahead of the pack.
 

If you have only two or three countries in the European Union that are capable of understanding what is happening right now, what about Europe? Because if the large majority of European countries are less prepared to tackle the new situation or the new global order, what about the capacity to build an important European role in the world?

It will be difficult. It turned out to be much more difficult than I thought ten years ago. There are different reasons for that.

In fact, you were secretary of state for European Affairs, no?

Yes, about ten years ago. Now it’s more difficult than I thought. Europe turned out to be weaker than we thought, quite dominated by fear in many cases. The American presence turned out to be very deep. Mentalities were the biggest surprise for me.

In retrospect, I understand it better: the generation that is in power in Europe —let us say people born between 1955 and 1965— are those who experienced the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. And this shaped their whole outlook. In a way, the generation in power in Europe is still living in 1989.

They still live in a world where the American presence is entirely benign. They still live in a world shaped by the Cold War and by victory over the Soviet Union. They are stuck in that moment and they want to repeat it. It is almost like a Freudian compulsion to repeat. And so they now want to have a Cold War victory over China, even though China is not the Soviet Union. 2026 is not 1989. History moves, changes. But they don’t seem to realize that.

"They are sometimes still in Berlin in 1989, dancing at night when the Wall fell. They cannot move on to different moments in history"

They are sometimes still in Berlin in 1989, dancing at night when the Wall fell. They cannot move on to different moments in history. I don’t exactly remember what age Pedro Sánchez is, but in my case, for example, I am 40, 45, 46. That helps, because you were too young to have gone through those moments in your late teens or early twenties, which are the moments that shape a life.

I was also too young, and I was too far away. I was not in Berlin. That helps you think outside the box, outside that 1989 box. And that is a big problem, but in a way it will get solved because very soon we will be talking about an entirely different generation, shaped by very different events. We will soon be talking about a generation shaped more by the Iraq War than by 1989.

People who were 20 during the Iraq War would now be 40, 43, 45. Once this generation is in positions of power, it will be different. I believe a lot in the importance of generation, more than the individual. The generation is shaped by the past, and history moves when generations are replaced. Thomas Kuhn used to say that you have revolutions in science when the previous generation of scientists dies. And you have revolutions in politics when the previous generation of politicians retires.

And I don’t want them to die, but to retire. That is an important part. But Europe turned out to be very ineffective at shaping this new world, very stuck in the past and very afraid of change.

Let’s talk for a moment about far-right parties as important movements that could change the way we understand the European Union. This is important, because we are seeing right now what is happening in Spain and France, but also with AfD in Germany or with Meloni and Fratelli d’Italia.

And here too, these days. In Portugal we also have a party which may well even win the election sometime in the future. I see it as a sign of decline in our politics and political culture, because when I look at these populist parties, I don’t see a theory of politics. They can’t even be compared with communist parties. Communist parties had a worldview.

"They represent merely a fall from the previous style of politics into something much less rational, much less organized and much less ordered"

These parties essentially represent a kind of collapse of European politics. They represent phenomena that are clearly phenomena of decay and corruption, of simplification of political discourse; of course, very emotional kinds of politics based on resentment, envy and anger. The disappearance of rationalism from our politics or rational discussion. An attempt to blame the outsider.

They are phenomena of emotion, simplification and aggression. They are all phenomena of a system that is decaying, eroding and no longer works as it is supposed to work. That is my interpretation of populism in Europe, and the far right is an entirely negative phenomenon. They represent merely a fall from the previous style of politics into something much less rational, much less organized and much less ordered.
 
What role do tech oligarchs play in this phenomenon of far-right parties?

That is another area where Spain, a little more tentatively, is also trying to lead the discussion. I mean how to regulate these new technologies and new sources of technological power. It is not a question of left and right. It is a question that both the left and the right will have to address.

That also reveals societies that are cracking under pressure. A lot of these phenomena that we are talking about are treated as if they were visions of the future or, sometimes in the case of populism, populists like to describe their movement as a return to reason.

But I would ask people to consider how they would regard this phenomenon if it were happening in other societies. They would certainly regard it as a sign of disaggregation. For example, if a political leader in Latin America or Africa used the language of football or a very basic language of emotion and anger, this would probably be mocked and attacked in Europe. But when Europeans do it, we tend to provide a veneer of respectability.

What I would say is that we have to treat this as what it is: signs of decline, corruption, decay and disorder. And when it comes to the role of tech oligarchs, it very clearly comes from places where political order is disappearing, where the balance between different interests can no longer be achieved, where power starts to be exercised very directly, not through political institutions, and where there is no accountability or transparency.

"If we saw this phenomenon happening in an African country in sub-Saharan Africa, we would know exactly what to call it"

There is no big mystery in any of this. If we saw this phenomenon happening in an African country in sub-Saharan Africa, we would know exactly what to call it. We would say that this society is on the verge of collapse, that its institutions, rules, sense of order and balance are disappearing. And this is potentially very dangerous because it leads to increased social conflict, worse social and economic outcomes, and it can lead to forms of control, authoritarianism and, potentially, even totalitarianism down the road.

I am surprised that when we see this phenomenon in our society, we seem unable to call it by its name. Across all these areas, that is what you see. What surprises me in the question of digital platforms and tech oligarchs is that we are seeing phenomena that we saw in Russia after the end of the Soviet Union, when institutions disappear and you have a kind of law of the jungle, where power is exercised directly, not filtered through the state and institutions.

And a lot of this is happening in our societies. What is obvious is that the state can no longer react to this phenomenon. It no longer has the power, the ability, the institutions or the structure to do so. And in a second wave, it gets even worse, because as people start to see that many elites do not respect norms or patterns of behavior, the conviction grows that everyone should do the same.

So the debate now in the United States is whether you should shoplift in supermarkets. There was a debate in The New York Times about this. And the two people, young influential activists, were arguing that if nothing else works, you do direct action, anarchist direct action or revolutionary direct action. But I cannot present that as a political virtue, and it can only end very badly.

Is it possible today to do democratic politics in the United States?

No, it seems almost impossible. The political system does not respond. You see that the Democratic Party does not even seem to want to win elections. It distances itself from its voters and from the polls. You would think that if, in a democracy, a poll shows that 90% of the public supports a position, a politician would move there. But the Democratic Party is so controlled by a small number of elites that it responds to those elites rather than to voters.

This happens in other countries and we recognize it when we see it, but we do not recognize it there. On Gaza, the public has a certain view, but the parties do not respond to it. And now the question is: if democracy does not work, should non-democratic means be used?

"It is possible that in the future there will be a non-democratic movement in the US trying to reestablish economic equality"

It is possible that in the future there will be a non-democratic movement in the US trying to reestablish economic equality. For the first time perhaps in its history, the US is facing a radical left movement, but a non-democratic one. We have democratic attempts like Bernie Sanders and Mamdani, but they are limited. And we may soon see non-democratic attempts.

Either way, the real danger is that the system will become non-democratic.

What changed in the United States to allow someone like Trump to become president?

Trump is not the problem. He is a symptom.

Joe Biden, whom the European left seems to like, was responsible for the complete destruction of Gaza, even more than Trump. He did most of the work. And he did it in a way that was offensive and unserious. He mocked and dismissed it. He governed without mental capacity in many cases, and this was hidden.

Hundreds of people knew about it and did not make it public. When it became public, it was denied. People who tried to expose it were threatened. So this did not happen under Trump. The problem goes beyond him. It is a system that is no longer working in a democratic or principled way.

During the war in Iran, we also see that information from the US is often incomplete or manipulated. We know that damage to American bases is much larger than reported. Journalists who report this get into trouble. There is no transparency from the White House.

What happened with CBS News was shocking. People who had worked there for twenty-five years are being fired without explanation because of their positions on Israel and Palestine. This is not a small newspaper; it is one of the major networks. And Europe shows little curiosity about this.
 
And on the other hand, we have China, with a very different political system. But as Europeans, we do not have a real position on China. We have national positions, but not a European position.

Eventually, we need a European position. But, as a rule, and also from my experience in politics, European positions develop when states are pushing. Sometimes states even have to go their own way, and then the EU will follow in some form.

So it cannot be that states have to wait for the EU. Because the EU’s position is formed out of states’ positions. If the states do not want to have a position and wait for the EU to have one, then the EU will never have one.

This is a mistake, by the way, in Portuguese European policy that I have always felt, even when I was in government: Portugal always waits for the European position. But there is no European position. If Portugal waits, the position that will be called European will be the position shaped by those countries that have defined it. That is just how it works.

"Spain is doing well in trying to provide an orientation for what the EU position should be on China"

So Spain is doing well in trying to provide an orientation for what the EU position should be on China. And provided this is done with dialogue, without unilateral measures, eventually it will be recognized. Because soon enough, a position on China will be needed. And then one looks around: what is available?

There is the American position, and there is maybe a small embryo of a Spanish position. The Spanish position will look more attractive because it can actually work. The American position is one of wanting China to disappear, which I never understood.

China is not going to disappear. It is deeply rooted in Chinese history. Some people in the US seem to believe China became an industrial powerhouse only because the West allowed it. But this is not true. It is rooted in centuries of history, and it will not disappear.

So a policy of increasing confrontation while expecting collapse is pure madness. In many respects, it is self-defeating, and it accelerates Chinese development. When we deprive China of access to chips, we make sure China develops them earlier. It is a self-defeating policy. And it creates instability and conflict, and could end very badly.

I would not exclude a scenario where the US triggers a war over Taiwan and then expects Europeans to fight it. We already saw something similar in the case of the Strait of Hormuz, where the US created a problem and then expected European warships to resolve it.

So we need a new policy towards China. Not a pro-China policy, but a realistic one. China will remain a great economic and technological power. Spain is interested in benefiting from Chinese technology. In 10 or 15 years, the technology we need may not be American but Chinese.

"With energy and a new energy policy, and access to Chinese technology, Spain could become an industrial powerhouse very quickly"

Countries that establish those bridges will benefit a lot. With energy and a new energy policy, and access to Chinese technology, Spain could become an industrial powerhouse very quickly. You will not be competitive with US natural gas, nor with American green technology or automobiles.

Again, Friedrich Merz is just living in the 1960s. It is not the real world.

But it is a real problem, in my opinion, that Merz and Macron seem far from understanding what is happening right now. France and Germany have always been the powers that build Europe. Without this common power, it is difficult to understand Europe becoming more powerful.

These things are changing and will change very quickly now because events are accelerating. Even the election of Donald Trump accelerates history. If a Democrat had won, the same process would be happening, but more slowly.

This divorce between America and Europe deepens every week. It is not a bad thing that things move faster. You need to manage speed, but the divorce is happening quickly because people are adapting.

Politics is slow, but once things start moving, they accelerate. Many things that seem normal now would have been impossible a year ago. Yesterday’s statement by Merz that America is being humiliated by Iran almost seems like a psychological break. And it will likely anger Donald Trump. In his mind, something has already changed: he no longer fully cares about Trump’s reaction.

Merz sees unpredictability and pressure from voters. Politicians start reacting when they see change around them. Meloni has already changed her position in the last weeks. Merz seems to be changing too.

The only two who are not changing are Mark Rutte and Ursula von der Leyen. Coincidentally, they are not elected. So they do not face electoral incentives. And you do need that pressure: survival, elections, competition. Meloni will have elections, and if she loses, it may be because of her previous alignment with Trump. So she has to change quickly. Merz too may face early elections.

So things are moving.

On China, things will change more slowly because people in Europe do not know China. They are suspicious and see it as a black box. It is good that Pedro Sánchez goes regularly. That helps reduce fear and misunderstanding.

You start to see how to benefit from relations with China. Chinese vehicles will come anyway. The question is whether we integrate them in a way that creates jobs and technology transfer. China did this with Western companies by importing factories, not just products. So why not do the same in Europe?
 
Let me ask you about democracies competing with autocracies. Is it a problem for democracies to compete with autocracies because of speed?

I don’t agree. The Chinese system also moves slowly. That is a criticism you could make.

The problem in Europe is mentality. People are afraid: fear of Russia, fear of Trump, fear of China, fear of the future. The deeper problem is that our democracies are less democratic than before. Debate is restricted. Ideas are punished. If you propose different policies, you are attacked.

This is not because we are democracies, but because we are less democratic than before. We are not too democratic. We are not democratic enough. Certain forces block change and suppress debate. That is what creates paralysis.

Let’s talk about the role of the center-right in Europe.

I am not fully center-right. In Spain, the PP is influenced by populism, which I do not like. But I do have conservative ideas. I do not like the destruction of traditional societies in the name of ideological projects.

But I also have some left wing and even socialist ideas in my mix. For example, we need to think in systems. Societies are integrated systems. China understands this better.

I also have liberal ideas: freedom of expression is essential. Left-right divisions are increasingly irrational and tribal. We need to think in systems. Societies are integrated systems. China understands this better.

Energy, for example, must be understood as a system. The blackout in Spain and Portugal shows that.

What about the European public debate and the role of think tanks and opinion-makers like you?

We need a completely new landscape because the think tank landscape in Europe is completely dominated by American think tanks. Those are the ones that are large and established; they have money and networks. This has been a big problem for Europe. It is one of the main reasons we cannot think of strategic autonomy, because think tanks are very important. They have a huge influence over politicians, over the debate and over journalists.

And we don’t really have think tanks that are genuinely European. The ones we have are very small. But everyone knows the famous names of think tanks. They are all in Europe and they are all fully committed, certainly not to European strategic autonomy. In many cases, they are fully committed to American interests.

There are also questions about how they are funded. Many of them are fully committed to a certain foreign policy based on increased defense spending. All this is very problematic. No one has been able to change it. The attempts are all very small, fine, but in this world of think tanks you need scale and mass.

I also think that American think tanks are very different from what they were 30 years ago. Already at 20 I was working for one, so I’m old enough to see some changes, and they have become a lot less tolerant of difference, a lot more political. They no longer think. There is not a lot of thinking going on. They are more like propaganda tanks.

And so we need new ones that are European and that are more liberal in outlook. It still used to be the case 30 years ago that think tanks would have a certain orientation, but would want to have different voices inside. That is the only way, in fact, that you could test your ideas and make them better by testing them against disagreement.

In my personal experience, that has completely gone. American think tanks are now extremely authoritarian in nature. Anyone who makes a comment slightly different from the general orientation will be gone as soon as possible. And this should be a big priority for the media and think tanks in Europe. Otherwise, you are not going to have strategic autonomy.

By the way, maybe we can finish with this, but I have said that Macron was a big disappointment because he arrived with good ideas and he had the French tradition, but then he lost them. The reason was that, in fact, he did not have many conditions to do this. He was praised by all the media. He was a media darling on anything he said. He still is to some extent, but there was one thing over which he would have been immediately and violently attacked if he had disagreed: the need for permanent alignment with the US.

If he had said that Europe could have an independent voice from the US, he would have been attacked by all the important media groups. And after a while he got a bit conditioned and did it less and less, because why would you do it if you only get attacks? That is a problem. It is very difficult for a politician to maintain those positions.

"It may not just be the qualities of Pedro Sánchez, but that he has space others do not have"

There is a bit of a mystery about why Pedro Sánchez has been able to do it. But one of the reasons may well be that the Spanish environment offers a bit more space for that. You are not under immediate pressure. There are not the same organized groups going after you. Spain itself is not as immediately dependent on the US as many countries in Europe.

So it may not just be the qualities of Pedro Sánchez, but that he has space others do not have. He has to deal with the PP, of course, but that is a different thing. He may well have a little more room to do this, and he realized that he had an opportunity that others did not.

Thank you very much.