Former US President Donald Trump\u00a0briefly returned as a\u00a0central character in European politics earlier this week. <\/p>\n
According to the European Union\u2019s internal market chief, Thierry Breton, Trump told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2020 that \u201cif\u00a0Europe\u00a0is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you.\u201d <\/p>\n
Breton\u2019s remarks\u00a0during an event at the European Parliament\u00a0came\u00a0less than a week before the Iowa caucuses and the start of voting in the US Republican presidential primary, which Trump is widely expected to win.\u00a0They also coincided with Breton\u2019s proposal for a \u20ac100bn fund to bolster ammunition production across the bloc\u00a0\u2013 a\u00a0fact\u00a0not lost on\u00a0his\u00a0critics. <\/p>\n
Whether Trump actually made these comments or not is largely immaterial to European officials. The former president\u2019s views on America\u2019s historic role in European security are well known. During his presidency, Trump regularly talked about defunding NATO while also complimenting authoritarian leaders, including\u00a0Russia\u2019s\u00a0Vladimir Putin, who are considered\u00a0adversaries\u00a0of the very same military alliance. <\/p>\n
The reminder that Trump holds this view and the fact that he might\u00a0soon\u00a0return to the White House do, however, cause real concern and anguish in Brussels. <\/p>\n
Partly, because\u00a0his beliefs\u00a0are rooted in the uncomfortable truth that European nations have underfunded their militaries for decades on the assumption that war was unlikely and that if the worst were to happen, the US would rush to their aid. <\/p>\n
However naive that might sound, Trump trashed that assumption. And his hostility toward the Ukraine war effort has an impact even now, playing into the Republican Party\u2019s reluctance to pass more US funding for Ukraine. <\/p>\n
During the Trump presidency, this new reality caused Europe to do some soul-searching. Officials concluded that Europe needed\u00a0to\u00a0prepare itself for a future where\u00a0the United States\u00a0couldn\u2019t be relied on in the same\u00a0way\u00a0it always had\u00a0been. That thinking was underscored when\u00a0President\u00a0Joe Biden kept many of Trump\u2019s America-first policies, particularly on trade and China. <\/p>\n
This is the second reason that reminders of Trump\u2019s anti-Europe sentiments sting:\u00a0Despite its best intentions, Europe\u2019s Trump-proofing, as some inelegantly call it, has not gone very far. <\/p>\n
On trade, Europe has taken measures to reduce its dependencies on single nations and diversify its supply chains so it cannot be held to ransom should a trading partner suddenly change its policies, as Trump did on steel, placing tariffs of 25% on\u00a0imports\u00a0from the EU. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo amount of de-risking can make up for a sudden policy change that makes it harder for Europeans to sell into America,\u201d says Ian Bond, deputy director at the Centre for European Reform\u00a0think-tank. \u201cIn a second term, it\u2019s not beyond the realms of possibility that he could decide some other material is a risk to American security.\u201d <\/p>\n
On defense\u00a0and security,\u00a0the EU\u00a0has acknowledged its past failures and agreed to dramatically increase its defense\u00a0spending across the bloc and the\u00a0continent more broadly. It has taken the war in Ukraine very seriously, sending billions of euros in funding along with weapons and aid. It is also working hard to bring Ukraine into the bloc as soon as possible. <\/p>\n
Historically, poking Russia and sending this level of European money and resources to a third-party would have been impossible as\u00a0the member states would almost certainly disagree\u00a0over whether\u00a0it was in their own national interest. It has been remarkable that\u00a0Europe\u00a0the EU\u00a0has been able to go as far and as fast as it has in supporting Ukraine since the start of the invasion. <\/p>\n
Despite this, the uncomfortable truth is that\u00a0rearming 27 countries and changing the way they trade\u00a0takes a very long time, so the deep-rooted ties\u00a0with\u00a0\u2013 and ultimate dependency\u00a0on\u00a0\u2013\u00a0would not be easy to unpick, even under normal circumstances. <\/p>\n
But the past few years have been anything but normal for Europe. Covid-19 took up an enormous amount of\u00a0its\u00a0bandwidth, while the war in Ukraine, a country that borders the EU and is trying to join the bloc, is top of the agenda at every meeting of EU leaders. <\/p>\n
Aside from the distractions, Trump-proofing is hard because Trump himself presents quite a unique threat to Europe. <\/p>\n
Unlike China or Russia, the US is not a hostile state. It is an old ally and is not actively attacking Europe in the way\u00a0Beijing or Moscow might\u00a0through cyber attacks or military action. <\/p>\n
In both those cases, Europe can use economic sanctions or\u00a0an\u00a0increased military presence to protect its interests. Clearly, even under Trump, that would not be appropriate or necessary against the US. However, diplomatic action against Trump is also tricky, as his thin-skinned nature means any criticism risks a massive overreaction. <\/p>\n
The conclusion some diplomats have reached is that the best way to deal with Trump, should he win this year\u2019s election, is to stay calm and keep plugging away\u00a0at\u00a0distancing Europe from the US. <\/p>\n
Another European diplomat said Brussels cannot get distracted by Trump as it did the first time around, nor can it pay too much attention if Trump\u00a0raises the prospect of ending US support for\u00a0Ukraine. \u201cIf he starts talking about that, there\u2019s not much we can really do. We just need to be mature and carry on because however this war ends, it\u2019s Europe that will bear the consequences, not America.\u201d <\/p>\n
It\u2019s no secret that European officials would rather Trump doesn\u2019t return to the White House. Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank, said only this week that Trump\u2019s return would be a \u201cthreat\u201d for Europe. The toxic legacy of his first presidency might be that the trans-Atlantic relationship is never the same again. <\/p>\n
The trouble for Europe is that it will take years, maybe decades,\u00a0to end its reliance on the US. And in that time, it will be very hard to ignore what the most powerful person on the planet is saying on any given day, especially when it\u2019s about you. <\/p>\n\n
Former US President Donald Trump\u00a0briefly returned as a\u00a0central character in European politics earlier this week. According to the European Union\u2019s internal market chief, Thierry Breton, Trump told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2020 that \u201cif\u00a0Europe\u00a0is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you.\u201d Breton\u2019s remarks\u00a0during an event <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14035,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14034","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}