(SeaPRwire) –
By: Marcus Sinclair
The U.S. is days away from its 250th independence anniversary. Official planners have billed it as a moment of national unity. They’ve planned parades, fireworks, and cross-country events to celebrate shared American values. The latest Gallup pride poll tells a very different story. For European security analysts like me, this isn’t just a domestic cultural story. It’s a flashing red warning sign for transatlantic stability. For 70 years, U.S. domestic cohesion has been the bedrock of NATO and the Western alliance structure. We didn’t always agree with U.S. policy choices. But we could count on a basic consensus across U.S. parties on core alliance commitments. That consensus is gone. We’ve long worried about congressional gridlock and election denial. Those are institutional failures. The collapse of shared national pride is something deeper. It means the social glue holding U.S. power together is coming unstuck. My team at a Brussels-based think tank has run 12 separate war games on Baltic defense scenarios. In every single one, U.S. domestic political unity is the single most critical variable. If Congress delays funding or deployment authorization, NATO can lose air superiority within 72 hours. We used to assume that basic national pride would push lawmakers to set aside differences in a crisis. That assumption no longer holds. The partisan split on core national identity is now so wide that even a direct military attack might not unify the country. That’s not a fringe take. It’s a consensus view among most independent European security analysts right now. We can’t dismiss this as a temporary blip from a heated election cycle. The numbers track a 23-year decline that crosses multiple administrations and crisis points. It’s a structural shift, not a cyclical one. And it has direct consequences for European security, global trade, and the balance of power with rival states.
The Gallup poll, released on Monday, is the latest hard data point backing this concern. The Gallup survey pointed to widening partisan and generational divides behind the decline. It surveyed 1,001 random U.S. adults across the country between June 1 and 15. Only 58% of respondents said they are “extremely” or “very” proud to be American. That’s the lowest figure recorded since Gallup first asked the question in 2001. The 2001 baseline came just months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Those attacks triggered a years-long surge in national pride that pushed the “extremely proud” number to record highs. Now, the overall pride number has fallen below that initial pre-9/11 starting point. The share of people calling themselves “extremely proud” fell eight percentage points from just a year earlier. That’s a massive single-year drop for a metric that usually shifts slowly. Another 22% described themselves as “moderately proud.” Fifteen percent said they are “only a little proud.” Nine percent said they are “not at all proud” to be American. Taken together, nearly a quarter of U.S. adults have minimal or no pride in their national identity. The decline is driven almost entirely by two widening divides. First, the partisan gap is staggering. Roughly 70% of Republicans say they are “extremely proud” to be American. That compares to 28% of independents and just 14% of Democrats. The 56-point gap between Republicans and Democrats is nearly a record. Last year’s gap was 57 points, the all-time high. The gap is now so wide it defies historical norms. It’s wider than the partisan split on most high-profile policy issues. The generational split is just as stark. Among adults aged 18 to 34, only 14% say they are “extremely proud.” That’s a 10-point drop from last year. For adults aged 35 to 54, the number is 30%, down 12 points year over year. Adults 55 and older sit at 48% “extremely proud,” with almost no change from last year. Younger Americans are now half as likely to feel extreme national pride as their grandparents’ generation. These numbers aren’t just bad. They represent a complete breakdown of shared national identity across party and age lines. There is no single, widely accepted version of what it means to be “proud to be American” anymore.
These divides have direct, measurable geopolitical costs. First, U.S. foreign policy will grow even more erratic with each administration. Republicans and Democrats now have such different views of what America stands for that policy swings will be sharper than ever. Alliances can’t rely on consistent U.S. support across election cycles. We saw this with the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, and trade policy with China. Each new administration reverses the previous one’s key foreign policy decisions within months. That pattern will only get worse as national identity becomes more partisan. European states have already started building independent defense capacity to hedge against this risk. The EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation initiative was a direct response to growing U.S. unreliability. That process will accelerate fast in the coming years. Second, rival powers like China and Russia will exploit the identity split to weaken U.S. influence abroad. They will fund and amplify partisan content on social media to widen the rift. They will point to U.S. domestic chaos as proof that Western liberal democracy is a failed model. This will make it harder for the U.S. to build coalitions on trade, climate, and security issues. Developing nations will be more likely to stay neutral in great power competition if they see the U.S. as internally fractured. Third, the generational shift will reshape U.S. global engagement over the next 20 years. Younger Americans, who have far less national pride, will be less likely to support costly foreign interventions or alliance commitments. They will prioritize domestic issues like student debt, housing, and climate change over global power projection. As this cohort moves into voting age and positions of power, U.S. foreign policy will become more inward-looking. The end game isn’t a sudden collapse of U.S. power. The U.S. still has the largest military and economy in the world. It’s a slow, steady erosion of U.S. global credibility and willingness to lead. For European states, the only feasible response is to speed up integration of defense and energy policy. Waiting for the U.S. to fix its internal divides is no longer a viable strategy.
Author bio: Marcus Sinclair, Senior Fellow at a leading Brussels-based geopolitical and security think tank, focuses on transatlantic alliance dynamics and great power competition.