{"id":10216,"date":"2018-05-22T14:31:38","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T13:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/?p=10216"},"modified":"2018-07-25T09:01:31","modified_gmt":"2018-07-25T08:01:31","slug":"allies-at-cross-purposes-trump-puts-europe-into-damage-control-mode-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/allies-at-cross-purposes-trump-puts-europe-into-damage-control-mode-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Allies at Cross-Purposes: Trump Puts Europe Into Damage-Control Mode"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<header>\n<p itemprop=\"author creator\" itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/Person\">May 15, 2018<\/p>\n<p itemprop=\"author creator\" itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/Person\">By\u00a0Steven Erlanger, The New York Times<\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div>\n<p>BRUSSELS \u2014 After a series of decisions by President Trump that have split the trans-Atlantic alliance, European foreign ministers have begun a scramble to contain the fallout to their own interests, global institutions and stability in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>But even the initial steps of\u00a0Europe\u2019s effort to devise a separate strategyand save the nuclear accord with Iran showed that the allies might now be working at cross-purposes with the United States, further straining years of international consensus.<\/p>\n<p>That was demonstrated on Tuesday, as European foreign ministers met in Brussels with their Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, to try to preserve the deal that constrained Iran\u2019s nuclear program. Mr. Trump\u00a0pulled out of the deal\u00a0last week, calling it a \u201cdisaster.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>The Europeans \u2014 as well as the cosignatories Russia and China \u2014 want Iran to continue to abide by the deal, which is considered a signal accomplishment of European diplomacy. It sharply restricts Tehran\u2019s ability to enrich uranium to prevent the development of a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>To preserve the deal, the Europeans are trying to figure out ways to provide some of the economic benefits it promised Iran, which are threatened now with the renewal of tough American sanctions.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Their efforts come against the backdrop of Gazans being shot in large numbers in demonstrations tied to Israel\u2019s 70th birthday and Mr. Trump\u2019s decision to move the United States Embassy to Jerusalem \u2014 another move made in the face of European opposition.<\/p>\n<p>The European response to the bloodshed in Gaza has been to criticize Israel for what Ireland\u2019s foreign minister, Simon Coveney,\u00a0called a \u201cdisproportionate use of force\u201d\u00a0against mostly unarmed protesters. The European Union\u2019s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini,\u00a0called on Israel to show\u00a0\u201cutmost restraint to avoid further loss of life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Europeans have also emphasized their disagreement over the embassy move.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast to the full-throated support of Israel from the United States, the foreign minister of France, Jean-Yves Le Drian,\u00a0restated his country\u2019s position\u00a0that the embassy move \u201ccontravenes international law and in particular the U.N. Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Ms. Mogherini said Europeans would continue \u201cto respect the international consensus on Jerusalem\u201d and not move their embassies until the city\u2019s final status was resolved in a peace treaty.<\/p>\n<p>Ian Bond, foreign policy analyst with the Center for European Reform, argued that \u201cEuropeans and Atlanticist Americans must preserve what they can of the trans-Atlantic partnership\u201d while Mr. Trump is in office.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut he is doing a lot of damage in the meantime \u2014 not just hurting allies, but actively helping potential adversaries,\u201d he said, pointing to the Iran deal pullout, the Jerusalem embassy and unilateral tariffs on steel that harm Europe.<\/p>\n<p>Nathalie Tocci, the director of Italy\u2019s Institute of International Affairs and a senior adviser to Ms. Mogherini, said that Europe\u2019s foreign and defense policy \u201chas become more difficult now, not least because of the Trump administration efforts to undercut the E.U.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She warned that \u201cif Europeans are serious about their strategic autonomy, now is the time to demonstrate it by standing united behind their shared interests.\u201d And she said saving the Iran deal \u201cis the place to start.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indeed it was. In their meetings with Mr. Zarif, the foreign ministers were preparing for broader discussions among European leaders Wednesday night at a meeting in Bulgaria, which was supposed to center on\u00a0outreach to the six nations of the Western Balkans.<\/p>\n<p>Ms. Mogherini said that the three European countries that helped negotiate the Iran deal would stay with it as long as Iran did. \u201cWe will save it together,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Mr. Zarif said that the talks had gone well, and that \u201cwe are on the right path to move forward\u201d and had agreed on \u201cthe importance of full implementation of the nuclear deal.\u201d Further talks with the Europeans, he said, will \u201ccontinue in the next two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>On Tuesday night, after the meeting, Ms. Mogherini said that the foreign ministers had agreed to begin work, to \u201cfind solutions in the next few weeks,\u201d on issues like Iran\u2019s energy sales, banking transactions, export credits and investment, and protections for European companies working in Iran.<\/p>\n<p>But preserving or increasing European investment in Iran in the face of the American sanctions is a difficult challenge \u2014 especially since the White House has made clear to Europeans that their companies will not get exemptions from the sanctions, which Washington hopes will pressure Iran into a new set of negotiations.<\/p>\n<p>It was an irony that escaped few European officials: They were trying to find ways to ease the economic pressure on Iran and keep it in the nuclear deal, while Washington was trying to increase that pressure for unclear ends.<\/p>\n<p>Many Europeans, like Ms. Tocci, believe that the unstated American aim is \u201cregime change\u201d in Iran, something that the British and French foreign ministers, Boris Johnson and Mr. Le Drian, have specifically ruled out as a European goal.<\/p>\n<p>These same foreign ministers once spent weeks trying to toughen sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile program and its support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah to please Mr. Trump and get him to agree to stay in the nuclear accord. Now they have dropped all such attempts. Instead, they were working to keep Iran in the deal at all and find ways to compensate Tehran for doing so.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>While Mr. Trump\u2019s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, has said that the American intention is to force Iran into new, broader negotiations, European officials said they had heard no American strategy for doing that.<\/p>\n<p>European diplomats, speaking on background because they did not have authorization to talk otherwise, said on Tuesday that they felt no great urgency, which was just as well, given the difficulty of the task. They had the impression, they said, that Iran wants to remain in the deal so long as the government can show benefits to the population, and of course to avoid a more open confrontation with Washington.<\/p>\n<p>The Europeans will try to uphold their side of the bargain, one senior European diplomat said, but it will be very difficult to preserve the economic benefits for Iran.<\/p>\n<p>For all the talk about so-called blocking regulations to protect European companies from American sanctions and the possible use of the European Investment Bank to provide euro-based financing for deals with Iran, there was little optimism that these solutions would work very well.<\/p>\n<p>Many European companies that have invested in Iran \u2014 or might want to \u2014 also do business in the United States, a much more important market, and are unlikely to want to test the American sanctions.<\/p>\n<p>Nor do the Europeans want competition with the United States, which is still Europe\u2019s most important ally and partner, to tip into confrontation, as Ms. Mogherini has said. That is especially important for Britain, which is leaving the European Union and wants Washington\u2019s support.<\/p>\n<p>As the Europeans met with Mr. Zarif, elsewhere in Brussels the American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., was meeting with NATO allies to discuss Afghanistan and European security.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>For all Mr. Trump\u2019s criticism and even misunderstanding of NATO, and his admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia \u2014 who\u00a0opened the first bridge on Monday between Russia and Crimea, which he annexed from Ukraine \u2014 the United States has beefed up its military commitment to NATO and its members bordering Russia.<\/p>\n<p>While NATO had no role in the Iran deal, the three European nations trying to preserve it are also Washington\u2019s most powerful allies in NATO.<\/p>\n<p>But Europeans, in general, feel that the fundamentals of the trans-Atlantic partnership are all under threat from Washington. That can only help countries like Russia and China, which seek to undermine the current world order.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, speaking to a Roman Catholic conference in M\u00fcnster, Chancellor\u00a0Angela Merkel of Germany said\u00a0that with his decision on Iran, Mr. Trump had thrown the global order into \u201creal crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She said: \u201cIf we always step away from multilateral agreements as soon as we don\u2019t like something about them, that would be a bad message for the world. We want to strengthen multilateralism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It is less clear what she and other Europeans are willing to do about it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>May 15, 2018 By\u00a0Steven Erlanger, The New York Times BRUSSELS \u2014 After a series of decisions by President Trump that have split the trans-Atlantic alliance, European foreign ministers have begun<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10215,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-room"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}