Declan Ganley, the Irish telecommunications magnate and European federalist, sat down with The American Conservative to talk about the present trials and future opportunities of Europe.

The transcript below is lightly edited for clarity.

You have said that there is a chance for a long-term, epochal [Russia-Ukraine] peace deal in Europe and that the Americans would be “the lowest barrier” in achieving it. Can Trump still steer events towards this outcome? How could he overcome the highest barriers posed by Europe, Ukraine, and Russia? Can this be reconciled with another key goal: preventing Russia from becoming a vassal of China? 

I think Trump can steer events towards this outcome. To steer effectively, one has to know one’s end destination and I think (and hope) that Trump’s end destination is a realignment of the world order so that Communist China is thwarted, long term, from what is its clear ambition to set and dominate the world order in accordance with its own values and rules, but mostly rules. 

To overcome barriers, a number of things have to be accomplished. Europe needs to step up and reform, restructure, and indeed re-arm, but not in the manner of the Cold War with Russia as the “enemy.” The massive challenge is this: Can Russia and Ukraine be brought in as part of an overall peace settlement? A settlement that has lasting effect and that removes the causes and instinct to war between the parties? 

The Franco-German relationship post-WWII is a good example of how this can come about, and we already have the guts of institutions that could be reformed to accommodate such a settlement. I’ll tell you a path that I first drafted shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I have updated it a few times since then, but the general strategy has been the same from the outset. 

I did discuss this path with some prominent and good people in Europe and the U.S., but their take on it at the time was that it was too early for leaders to even contemplate such a thing and that there would need to be a lot of attrition before people would be ready to accept the need for such dramatic change. While one can say that it was an appalling opinion, it was also one that fully understood the realpolitik of the situation. I think Trump’s strategy can be helpful in that it has catalyzed the environment necessary for big changes to be made. We could have had another few years of attrition and that would have been an horrendous tragedy in the loss of so many more young lives on the battlefield.

Here is my thinking and my plan:

Both Ukraine and Russia are full members of the European Union. Both Russia and Ukraine are members of the Northern Hemisphere Treaty Organization (NHTO), which is a restructuring of NATO to bring in Russia, with the byproduct of removing Russians from the Chinese military orbit and protecting it from the PRC [People’s Republic of China]. NHTO’s Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe is a job held for five years at a time. Out of every 20 years, 15 will be led by an American, five by a Russian. 

This treaty should have at least a 100-year term. The European Union will have established a bicameral legislature. The existing European Parliament will be the lower house (with members from Russia and Ukraine added) and a European upper house/senate will balance out the larger member countries vs the smaller countries with an equal number of senators from each EU member. 

Russia will keep Crimea, the Kursk salient will immediately return to Russia, while the Donbas will remain part of Ukraine. The areas of the Donbas occupied by Russia as of January 1, 2025 will be administered by an international peacekeeping force until 2030 and shall then come under regular Ukrainian administration within the EU. 

The above settlement will require constitutional/treaty change in the EU. This will require referendums in a number of member states. Those referendums should be held rapidly and can be promoted as a “peace and prosperity” referendum, as that is what it would be. The admission of Ukraine to the EU should be completed by January 1st, 2028, with admission of Russia by January 1st 2030. This will require both countries to align their economies and regulatory structures to be as EU-compliant as possible by those accession dates. Some other changes may need to be made in the symbols and ceremony of this reformed European Union to incorporate the significance of the addition of Russia and Ukraine, which would expand ‘Europe’ from the West of Ireland to the Bering Strait.  

Why do this? What are the wins? The war ends permanently, and the causes of war are removed; the border between Ukraine and Russia becomes as open as the border today between France and Germany or France and Belgium. China’s designs on Russia are stymied. China’s effort to divide the West fails. Russia secures its eastern flank. Zelensky saves Ukraine, keeps it sovereign and independent and brings it into the EU. Putin achieves what Peter the Great failed to achieve and brings Russia into "the West" while adding to Russia’s prestige by recognizing its central importance to the security and preservation of Western civilization. Russia will have made the ancient symbol of the double-headed Eagle facing East and West a reality. Russia also opens up its economy to major investment and development as a full EU member. America is locked in as the military leader of the NHTO alliance and the alliance can credibly contain even a much stronger Communist China for the next century.

Were this to happen, Russia would very clearly not be a vassal of China; it would be very much part of a new Europe and in a long-term alliance with the U.S. and would be a sister country of Ukraine within the European family. There can be no doubt that Russia would have a major voice in Europe, as does France and Germany. The scope for economic growth and innovation here is epoch-changing in its potential.

That’s a bold, intellectually courageous vision, and our Western political class is not well-versed in long-term thinking, so I’m not sure about their responsiveness. You’ve remarked on X that “the chat about the US leaving NATO may seem clever, but it’s unwise.” How would you make the case to America for staying in the alliance? Realistically speaking, are Europeans capable of reducing the asymmetry in the security burden? Or do they have a deeply ingrained conviction, despite virtue signaling on the Ukraine war, that they live in a permanently low-threat world?

I’m not focused on what responsiveness might be. We have a very big, and I believe civilizational, existential question which needs a comprehensive answer. That answer, if it is going to work, is going to be difficult, but not completely impossible, for all sides to swallow. It has to be grand in scale; baby steps are more likely to end up on land mines than sunlit uplands. We need to make a leap for the uplands and perhaps we will make it, perhaps we won’t, but this is the time to take bold risks and cast aside this constant quest for low-risk “certainty,” which has led us to the mess we are in. 

With respect to my remarks regarding the U.S. potentially leaving NATO, I think the extent to which the post-war order has been destabilized in Europe prevents us from fully appreciating how powerful American NATO membership and leadership have been in securing peace on the continent. America has built an enormous store of value, and it paid for it dearly on the beaches of Normandy, in the air over wartime Europe, and in the convoy lanes of the cold North Atlantic. It removed the causes of war in most of Europe, fostering harmony, particularly within all of the militaries of Europe, and it built an enormous store of trust and cultural reach. The economic stability and growth that sprung from that has made the whole world more prosperous very much including America. It’s also likely saved incalculably vast numbers of lives. 

America is a vast continental power, and so is Europe. Though at the moment the latter is economically lethargic and militarily insignificant, history suggests it will not always remain that way. The explosive Middle East and North Africa is on Europe’s own lake, Mare Nostrum, the Mediterranean, or to follow a fashion, the Gulf of Europe. Whether it likes it or not, Europe is destined to be an active participant in those regions, because those regions are going to continue to have great effect on Europe. 

Strategically, America is probably a lot better off in a large Northern hemisphere security alliance than out of it. Indeed, for its own interest, America should want the chair in any such military alliance, so it can always keep at least one hand on the tiller. There might also be an American interest to have both Japan and South Korea join a Northern Hemisphere Treaty Organization. 

I could also see an equal European (including Ukraine and Russia) interest. America remaining in NATO probably makes NHTO easier to bring about, unless one wanted to argue that American withdrawal from NATO and the inevitable resultant unwinding of its current structures would make a new NHTO alliance more palatable to join for Russia. I think it would be unnecessary institutional vandalism; these things take decades to build. Restructure, reform—don’t destroy. When I was younger, there was a time Russians openly talked about wanting to join NATO and even the European Union. It was a different time and, in my opinion, a squandered opportunity, but Russian membership of a restructured and renamed NATO does not have to be a bridge too far, as long as they are fully integrated into it.   

I do think Europeans are capable of reducing the asymmetry. There are huge efficiencies to be found via greater harmonization on security and defense. Europe gets a lot less bang for its buck than America does because European planning, equipment, and procurement are so atomized between European countries. Fix that and we are quickly headed in the right direction. Spending is one thing, effectiveness and lethality another. That’s a question for another time, but what capability Europe and the U.S. get for their money is much more important than how much they pay for it. A NHTO alliance would fundamentally change the calculus, allowing for far greater efficiencies and far greater effectiveness. As for Europeans thinking they continue to live in a low-threat world, that comfy blanket has gone through a shredder in the last couple of years, I doubt that mentality can remain pervasive for very much longer. If it does, the age of Europe will be over.

J.D. Vance delivered a great, historic speech in Munich. He stated that European elites are afraid of their own people. Wasn't the Lisbon Treaty, which you campaigned against, driven by fear of European nations? The aim of this treaty was, de facto, to override the results of the 2005 referendum, when the Dutch and French, despite a massive media offensive, rejected the Constitution for Europe. What did you learn from that campaign? Hasn't Europe's democratic deficit only grown since then?

The Lisbon Treaty, which was a rebranding of the European Constitution and was voted down in French and Dutch referenda, and then subsequently by the Irish in 2008, is a constitutional formula for Europe which is prescriptive. It is a large book, hundreds of pages. It is impenetrable because it was designed to be impenetrable. It is not a script for free peoples, or for a free single market, or for a strong Europe with what Georgia Meloni would call a “millennial vision.” The Lisbon Treaty is the dead hand of bureaucracy in a rigor-mortis grip around the throat of Europe’s future. 

I waged the Irish campaign against the Lisbon Treaty precisely because I had read it, all of it, and it was crystal clear to me that it would drag Europe in a wrong direction. It sought to vest power in a giant bureaucracy that had no real levers of democratic control. Certainly, it can be argued that there is certain democratic consultation, but it’s window dressing. What’s more, everyone in Brussels knows it’s window dressing and admits so in private. What it did is free the giant bureaucracy from the need to win over Europe’s peoples. It failed to ask them to grant a mandate for a shared vision. It didn’t lead or inspire; it hid in a cave and plotted. Worst of all, it lacked real ambition. The Lisbon Treaty ensured that no European demos could form, though I don’t believe that was the intent or that it was even thought through. 

So yes, Europe’s democratic deficit has grown since then. Back in 2008 and 2009, I said that the Lisbon Treaty formula, if implemented, would cause lethargic growth, would not foster European innovation, would not provide European security and that we could see member states end up leaving the European Union. I also said it would not provide for the unity of Europe on things that mattered to ordinary Europeans. It failed to engage them properly at the democratic level. In 2008/9 I even did a book on the subject with Irish journalist the late Bruce Arnold. The title was The Fight for Democracy. Unfortunately, I was right with respect to my most serious concerns.

In that same period and in the short few years following, I also predicted the Kremlin’s expansionism because it was clear to me that there was not going to be anything credible to stop them, to set them on a different course, or indeed to provide for a lasting peace with Russia. 

What I learned from that campaign was that certain European elites, at least back then, had no real interest in making Europe great. No real interest in building prosperity or elevating the place of family, or in making Europe the most secure, beautiful, and prosperous place on earth. They had no notion of how such objectives might be achieved, far less about how Europe might be led to achieve them. They were focused on smaller things, sinecures, enhancing their own personal prestige and position, and the perception of holding power even if that ironically meant trading away power to the bureaucracy. It was what I called then a “tyranny of mediocrity.” 

I also learned that it did not matter what I thought or what I said about a vision for Europe, it only mattered what the then-powerful media organs said I thought. They sought to turn me, a European federalist who treasures and understands the value of national state sovereignty and tradition, into the image of what they labeled an “anti-European.” It was bizarre, twilight-zone stuff. But it was a very valuable lesson. So was the fact that they made Ireland vote on the Lisbon Treaty twice, because they decided we gave the wrong answer the first time. 

One indication that we are entering a new era is the sudden realization of how much the world of bits depends on the world of atoms. We take the internet for granted. However, it relies entirely on undersea cables, which are under increasing strain and are becoming ever more frequent targets of adversarial actors. You and your company, Rivada, are working to make the internet more resilient in an era of global fragmentation. Tell us about Rivada’s mission. How do you see the relationship between technology and independence evolving in the 21st century?

I see the relationship between technology and independence as completely interdependent. If the technology we rely upon in our daily lives and interactions is controlled or can become controllable by those that don’t share our values, or worse still, by those that would seek to undermine us and set the rules of how we associate with each other, then we will not have independence. 

My company, Rivada, has designed and is working to deploy what we call the “Outernet.” Rivada’s space-based Outernet will be the world’s first completely self-contained global private network that can connect any point on earth to any other point without having to touch the internet or anyone else’s network. Rivada is building the world’s first unified, global, self-contained high-speed network.

Today, the world is connected via a patchwork of networks. Some are more trustworthy than others, but as the recent and continuing revelations about Salt Typhoon are exposing, even supposedly reliable network operators have virtually all been infiltrated, compromised, or hacked. 

The internet—designed as a “network of networks” some 60 years ago—has been a brilliant innovation. But it was not designed with modern security threats or today’s geopolitical environment in mind. Data sent across the internet passes through a series of nodes with the sole aim of reaching its destination efficiently. And for cat pictures and Netflix series, that works well. Better than that—it’s brilliant. It’s changed the world utterly over the past 30 years. 

The other commercial LEO constellations being built today share one thing in common—they are designed to connect their users to the internet. Data goes up from the user’s dish to a satellite in low-Earth orbit and then back down to a gateway that sends it on its way across the network-of-networks that is the Internet. 

Rivada’s Outernet, by contrast, is designed to keep user data off the Internet. It is a globe-spanning network of fully interconnected satellites capable of transmitting customer data between any two points on the planet without passing through any intermediate networks. And strange as it is say, this is completely unique.

On your bits and atoms point, they both matter, a lot. Europe’s potential enemies will likely want to rapidly take away, compromise, or denude any advantage that bits might offer. We have seen a highly sophisticated and well-resourced effort to capture control of the delivery systems for Europe’s cyber domain. 

I was vociferous in my objections to allowing Huawei’s infiltration into Europe’s cellular communications networks. In recent days, we seen the arrest of people across Europe connected with Huawei’s influence campaign to achieve their European objectives.  

If you can denude or compromise the advantage of bits, atoms get much more important. In Ukraine we see once again that metal on metal delivered kinetically still shifts the balance, and here mass industrial production and logistics matter. Then consider that, in 2023, Chinese steel production was eight times greater than that of all of Europe, 1.019 billion tons vs 126.3 million tons of crude steel. China’s share of global steel production was 54 percent, while Europe’s was 6.7 percent, and dropping. If you look at history, there has never been a peer on near-peer war where the smaller steel producer ended up winning. It’s a sobering thought. So is the fact that China is stockpiling vast quantities of steel in warehouses.

President Trump once said, “If you have no steel, you have no country.” Recent history offers a few striking examples of rapid industrialization, primarily in East Asia. However, Trump 47 aims to achieve something unprecedented: reindustrializing the world's most advanced economy. I see this effort as necessary, but do you think it is feasible? Does the fate of the Western world depend on its ability to rebuild its manufacturing potential?

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Yes, I think it’s feasible and yes, I think the fate of the Western world depends on the speed of American and European re-industrialization in manufacturing and on deregulation in the areas of crucial services and resources. So we need to start making raw steel again, copper, aluminum, building ships and applying state-of-the-art tech to make that process faster and more efficient. We need to free up the constraints placed on wireless spectrum resources in the West, constraints that have allowed China to steal a march in such a pivotally important domain as wireless and cyber. We also have to smash the crony corporatism that has captured the regulatory state and harnessed it to protect powerful oligopolies and even monopolies and has ended up starving the innovator/disruptor economy of the resources that would otherwise be available to it.  

We have to make stuff, and we don’t have to do it the way we did before. We have to do it smarter, more cost effectively and faster. I believe that’s possible. I know it’s doable and I am certain that it is existential in its necessity. 

It is essential for our security, it is essential because human kind, in my opinion, is duty bound to strive to always be better, to advance, to be responsible stewards of our contract with future generations as well as our contract with those gone before us, to harness the resources of our planet, to strive for the stars and build the industrial and technological capability of becoming an interplanetary species and eventually an inter galactic one. That can only happen over the scale of many generations. It’s the way Christendom built its cathedrals. We have done it before. With will, determination, and enlightened motivated leadership, we can do it again.