A letter to Europe: Join us in celebrating America’s birthday

Andrew Puzder is the U.S. ambassador to the EU. Bill White is the U.S. ambassador to Belgium.

The United States is about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its founding. All U.S. missions in Brussels have been working diligently to ensure that this is a celebration worthy of the milestone.

America’s cultural and historic ties with Europe run deep, and our relationships with Belgium, the EU and NATO embody those ties. We believe that makes Brussels an ideal spot for this celebration, and we are honored to invite our friends and allies to join us.

Europe’s role in our nation’s founding was profound. While the signing of our Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 was a uniquely American event, declaring independence from British colonial rule, the document itself draws deeply from the original colonies’ shared civilizational history with Europe.

English philosopher John Locke, who is widely regarded as the philosophical godfather of the American Revolution, had a huge influence on the Declaration’s primary drafter Thomas Jefferson, and therefore on the document itself. His ideas appear prominently in the Declaration’s inspiring preamble, which states that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,” including the rights to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.”

The text goes on to state that “Governments are instituted” to secure these rights, “deriving their just Powers” not from hereditary monarchies, religious alliances, or military force, but “from the Consent of the Governed.” These moving words continue to stir emotions 250 years after Jefferson penned them.

The Declaration’s proclamation of a free republic arose in the context of a wider European Enlightenment. Dutch philosophers Hugo Grotius and Baruch Spinoza, German philosopher Samuel Pufendorf, Frenchman Baron de Montesquieu and Scottish philosopher David Hume all contributed to the same intellectual world from which the Declaration arose. All of these thinkers drew from the richest intellectual traditions the world has ever seen, emerging from ancient Greece and Rome.

The fundamental question, both then and since, has been whether these lofty ideals could serve as the intellectual basis for a nation that would survive.

In 1863, during our Civil War, one of America’s greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, confronted the question in his Gettysburg Address, a mere 87 years after our nation’s founding. He reaffirmed that we were still “a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” but he also wondered, amid a devastating war, whether “any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”

On June 28 in Brussels, our nation — so conceived and so dedicated — will celebrate the fact that it has long endured. And we are inviting our European friends to join us, not merely as our allies but in appreciation of their intellectual contributions to our founding.

Over the quarter of a millennium that has passed, alliances have shifted; foes have become friends and friends have become foes. But our shared heritage and the Enlightenment ideals that inspired our founding have never waned — nor will they. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. and Europe have remained the most steadfast of allies, drawn together by these shared ideals.

We each know President Donald Trump personally, and can assure you there has never been a president more committed to the Declaration’s ideals — to political liberty, freedom of speech and rule by consent of the governed — or to world peace and prosperity. We are extremely proud to serve in his administration.

The United States has had an embassy in Belgium for 192 years, since shortly after Belgium’s modern founding. It remains an active force for improving the economic, political and social ties between our two countries, whether involving our joint defense, cutting-edge companies or energy partnerships.

The U.S. and the EU have the largest trade relationship in the world. Just this past year, we entered into a comprehensive trade framework agreement, a memorandum of understanding on a strategic partnership on critical minerals, agreed on the Critical Minerals Action Plan, and the EU signed onto Pax Silica — an initiative looking to jointly secure supply chains related to artificial intelligence. We are also seeking to modernize NATO in the hopes that it will remain the bulwark of peace and security for Europe.

We have much to celebrate, and we cannot wait to do so with our good friends here in Brussels, on a night that will be remembered.

In every family, there will always be differences of opinion on social, political and economic issues. Nevertheless, this year our transatlantic family has an opportunity to celebrate what has held us together over the past 250 years — and, we hope, will hold us together for the next 250 years to come.

POLITICO occasionally publishes opinion pieces from guest authors to offer our readers a range of perspectives on the intersection of power and politics. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of POLITICO.