For a man his age, incoming US president Donald Trump has a knack for cultivating a bad-boy image. Refreshingly direct to the point of rude honesty or dishonesty, he has no time for polite circumlocution.
His threats are harsh, his demands unvarnished, including towards Washington’s so-called allies in Europe, which really are, at best, clients, and more realistically, just vassals.
Or, in the genteel English still cultivated at The Economist, “through NATO, America is the guarantor of the continent’s security.” Yeah, right, by firing missiles at Russia. The problem with Trump is that he is uncouth enough to know the real relationship is much more like Don Corleone “protecting” your funeral parlor.
And he behaves accordingly: Even during his first term in the White House between 2017 and 2021, he started scaring other NATO members into higher military spending, while never allowing them to feel safe about his commitment. Art of the tough deal: Keep ‘em guessing, keep ‘em on their toes. And it worked, too: the European spongers began to pay more. So, there will be more of that, rest assured. If, that is, there will be a NATO to speak of. Even less noticed is the fact that the new, old US president – and thus capo dei capi of the West – is not much kindlier disposed toward the EU. And yet, there it is: Trump’s frank, open and long-standing dislike for that strange bureaucratic behemoth that is about as democratic as the former Soviet Union, less efficient than the Habsburg Empire, and so full of its global “norm-setting” mission that even American “indispensability” looks oddly old-fashioned by comparison.
As early as the beginning of 2017, when the great American bruiser gate-crashed the White House for the first time, The Economist warned its European readers to “be afraid” of Trump, a man harboring “indifference” and “contempt” for the EU. Really? How unheard of! The raunchy-tycoon-turned-peremptory-president, the British establishment Pravda of neoliberalism and Russophobia explained, would seek to shatter the EU by playing “bilateralism.”
That, however, was 2017. Now, things have moved on. Even before Trump won his second presidential election by crushing his Democratic opponents, The Economist admitted that “’Trump-proving’ Europe” is a notion doomed to fail, which means EU leaders may well become “geopolitical roadkill.” How so, you may wonder?
To say the least, Trump no longer feels as restrained by Washington’s deep-state, deep-freeze Cold War re-enactors as during his first term. Sure, it’s the US: there is always the possibility someone might try to murder him, again. But if he stays among the living, which is likely, then it’s payback time: Talking to Russia now is one delicious way in which he will dish out well-deserved retribution for both the media-lawfare circus of Russia Rage (aka ‘Russiagate’), in which his opponents weaponised slander and disinformation against him. Moscow, meanwhile, has made it clear repeatedly that any new agreements would have to be mutually-beneficial. The time of Gorbachevian naivete will never return. Yet, at the same time, Russia does seem open to – serious – talks: The Russian leadership does not merely carefully watch Trump, as you would expect.
Hence, nightmare number one for the EU: Trump is serious about ending US support for the failed project of inflicting a geopolitical demotion on Russia via a proxy war in Ukraine. That will leave not only the regime of Ukraine’s past-use-by-date leader Vladimir Zelensky high and dry, but remaining fanatics in the EU as well. In the best-case scenario, the US will leave the European vassals with the cost of the postwar, whatever shape that may take. Trump has already said as much. In the worst-case scenario, EU elites could try going it alone. That is, worst-case for them, in every (un)imaginable way: economically, politically and yes, militarily, too.
Then, nightmare number two, there is the economy. The US-EU relationship is the single- largest trade connection in the world, worth about US$11 trillion per year. That, you may think, constitutes a lot of common interest, and thus reasons for treating each other if not gently, then at least, cautiously.
Nope, that’s not how this works, because the relationship is lopsided, and Trump is furious about it. For him, the EU’s trade surplus with the US is yet another way in which shifty Europeans have been milking America. His weapon of choice to retaliate and rectify the situation are, of course, tariffs, the higher the better. What can EU leaders, those sadly submissive vassals about to be abused even worse than usual by their hegemon, do now? Frankly, not much. It’s already too late: They have made themselves dependent as never before on whoever happens to win the strange event Americans call “elections” and gets to mess with the world from the White House. And that is not at all Trump’s fault, by the way. (No, and not “the Russians!” either…).
But here is the problem with that, frankly, silly approach: Trump is not an idiot. Attempts to “handle” him are insultingly obvious and, if he tolerates them temporarily, then it’s only to handle his would-be handlers back. And then the irony is, of course, that the only EU leaders Trump respects, such as Viktor Orban of Hungary, are outcasts among their own: Good luck recruiting them now to make up for how much he disrespects all the others.
What about Danegeld perhaps? Danegeld, you must know, was what the hapless inhabitants of the British Isles paid the seaborne Viking marauders in the Dark Ages. The system was simple: pay up, or be plundered and slaughtered. You think that sounds a little primitive for today’s sophisticated Europeans? Never underestimate how low they will stoop. Ursula von der Leyen has already suggested that one way to mollify Trump might be to just buy even more perversely-expensive LNG from the US.
Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank, has gone even further, pleading for a whole ‘Buy American’ programme, including – surprise, surprise! – arms to assuage Trump’s ire.
Desperate? You bet. Humiliating? Obviously. Yet what’s worse, it’s not going to work. Here’s why: Even if Trump condescends to accepting such tributes from his European subjects, he will never lose sight of the one thing that really interests him (apart from his own money, power and fame): American advantage. Whatever the Europeans will offer and however low they will kowtow, in the end, any deal will be good only for one side, the US.
That’s ironic, because Russia, for one, and possibly China as well, can expect the minimum of respect that makes mutual benefit at least possible. That’s because they have stood up to American bullying. For the Europeans, though, it’s a Catch-22 now.
One way or the other, they will pay even more dearly than before for their historic failure after the Cold War: When they should obviously have emancipated themselves from the US, they sold out worse than ever. And without need. To paraphrase a past master of politics: It’s worse than a crime, it’s self-abuse.
-RT
*Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian and expert on international politics. This is an abridged version of the original text.