{"id":10233,"date":"2018-05-23T10:12:22","date_gmt":"2018-05-23T09:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/?p=10233"},"modified":"2018-07-25T09:06:39","modified_gmt":"2018-07-25T08:06:39","slug":"europe-again-humiliated-by-trump-struggles-to-defend-its-interests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/europe-again-humiliated-by-trump-struggles-to-defend-its-interests\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe, Again Humiliated by Trump, Struggles to Defend Its Interests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><time datetime=\"2018-05-09\">May 9, 2018<\/time><\/p>\n<p>By\u00a0Steven Erlanger, The New York Times<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>BRUSSELS \u2014 It is by now a familiar, humiliating pattern. European leaders cajole, argue and beg, trying to persuade President Trump to change his mind on a vital issue for the trans-Atlantic alliance. Mr. Trump appears to enjoy the show, dangling them, before ultimately choosing not to listen.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, he demands compliance, seemingly bent on providing just the split with powerful and important allies that China, Iran and Russia would like to exploit.<\/p>\n<p>Such is the case with\u00a0the efforts to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear pact. Both the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, made the pilgrimage to Washington to urge Mr. Trump not to scrap the agreement. Their failure is very similar to\u00a0what happened with the Paris climate accord, and to what is happening now with unilateral American\u00a0sanctions imposed on steel and aluminum imports, and to Mr. Trump\u2019s decision to\u00a0move the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.<\/p>\n<p>And with each breach, it becomes clearer that trans-Atlantic relations are in trouble, and that the options are not good for the United States\u2019 closest European allies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>However angry and humiliated, those allies do not seem ready to confront Mr. Trump, wishing to believe that he and his aides can be influenced over time. To some, it is reminiscent of what Samuel Johnson said of second marriages: a triumph of hope over experience.<\/p>\n<p>But there are\u00a0signs that patience is wearing thin, and that many are searching for solutions as Mr. Trump, in the name of \u201cAmerica First,\u201d creates a vacuum of trans-Atlantic leadership that the Europeans have so far seemed incapable or unwilling to fill.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>\u201cThe allies are certainly sick of this but don\u2019t seem to have an alternative,\u201d said Jeremy Shapiro, a former career State Department official now at the European Council on Foreign Relations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Europeans are invested down a path of trying to please the president, not out of belief but more hope against hope that they will convince him,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd they only pursue this at such a level of embarrassment because they don\u2019t have an alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At least for now. After their statement on Tuesday regretting Mr. Trump\u2019s response and promising to work with Iran to preserve the deal, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany are to meet on Monday with Iranian officials \u201cto consider the entire situation,\u201d said the French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside>\n<div>\n<article>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>Already, Mr. Macron spoke by telephone on Wednesday with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani. Afterward the \u00c9lys\u00e9e Palace issued a statement saying that it was \u201cthe will of France to continue to enforce the Iran nuclear deal in all its dimensions,\u201d potentially widening a breach with the Trump administration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe pointed out the necessity for Iran to do the same,\u201d the statement added.<\/p>\n<p>But the real question for the Europeans, Mr. Shapiro said, \u201cis not if they stick with the deal but will they stand up to the American effort to unravel it and take active measures to protect their companies and banks trading in Iran?\u201d That would be \u201can extremely confrontational stance,\u201d he said, \u201cand it\u2019s not clear that their companies really want that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While some think that they should double down on what has now become a pattern \u2014 keep talking to Mr. Trump and his aides, hoping to convince them of the need for trans-Atlantic solidarity \u2014 others have had enough.<\/p>\n<p>There are increasing voices for rupture within the European Union. In a reflection of the mood, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, the bloc\u2019s bureaucracy, said that under Mr. Trump, the United States is turning its back on multilateral relations and friendly cooperation \u201cwith a ferocity that can only surprise us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He told Belgium\u2019s Flemish regional parliament that Washington \u201cno longer wants to cooperate with other parts in the world,\u201d according to The Associated Press. \u201cAt this point, we have to replace the United States, which as an international actor has lost vigor, and because of it, in the long term, influence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>In Britain, Emily Thornberry, the Labour Party spokeswoman on foreign affairs, said on Tuesday that it was time for Europeans to stop \u201cthis long and unnecessary indulgence of Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A senior adviser to the European Union, Nathalie Tocci, said that the Iran deal was a lost cause, because \u201cTrump and Europe have fundamentally different objectives.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">She said that Mr. Trump \u201cis not interested in keeping a nuclear nonproliferation agreement but in regime change in Iran \u2014 it\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>\u201cWe have to stop being wimps,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p>On climate and trade, on international law, and on the importance of multilateral institutions like the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, the rift with the Trump administration is real, said Ms. Tocci, director of the Italian Institute of International Relations and a close adviser to the European Union foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan\u2019t we defend what our own interests are?\u201d Ms. Tocci asked. \u201cThere is something as fundamental at stake here as the trans-Atlantic bond, because Europe can\u2019t exist in a nonmultilateral space,\u201d a world of competing nationalism and protectionism.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIsn\u2019t it wiser,\u201d she asked, \u201cto temporarily part ways with the Trump administration?\u201d After all, she noted, something similar happened in 2003 over the American-led invasion of Iraq, yet relations were repaired when a new president came along.<\/p>\n<p>Ivo H. Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO, sees such as break as inevitable. \u201cAt some point \u2014 after having pushed the Europeans on NATO, Paris, the Jerusalem embassy move, trade and now Iran \u2014 the Europeans will come to the conclusion that they\u2019re better off going their own way,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that point is rapidly approaching.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But whatever the mutterings in Berlin, London and Paris, European governments currently show no palpable sign that they are ready to make that sort of separation.<\/p>\n<p>The European Union has instead been preoccupied with other dangers \u2014 populism, migration, Islamophobia \u2014 and the challenge to its values of democracy and rule of law from member states like\u00a0Hungary\u00a0and\u00a0Poland.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>On the Iran deal, Britain, France and Germany have already said that they will uphold the terms and will work to keep Iran in the agreement, while trying to protect their companies.<\/p>\n<p>That is likely to include euro-based financing for some companies and efforts at legislation to block secondary sanctions from the United States.<\/p>\n<p>The European Union has a \u201cblocking regulation\u201d dating from 1996, designed as a countermeasure against United States sanctions against Cuba and Iran, and later only Cuba, that seeks to prohibit compliance with foreign-trade restrictions. But it is rarely used, it would have to be amended to deal with United States sanctions on Iran, and it would not entirely reassure companies that also trade with the United States.<\/p>\n<p>But Mr. Shapiro pointed out that\u00a0European companies feel too vulnerableto risk American sanctions. \u201cWhat they might lose in Iran is dwarfed by the American market and the reach of the American banking system,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The French also say that they will use the time before the sanctions come back into force to seek American exemptions for some of their companies.<\/p>\n<p>Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Europe was \u201cincreasingly irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom Washington\u2019s perspective, the Europeans seem happy to kick the can down the road, which is effectively hollowing out the deal the Europeans spent 10 years trying to conclude,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>If the Europeans \u201care not willing or able to put more teeth into talks with Washington,\u201d she said, \u201cwe risk becoming irrelevant on the political side, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There are also calmer voices, more resigned to adaptation. \u201cNobody thinks the trans-Atlantic alliance is over,\u201d said Pierre Vimont, a former French ambassador to Washington.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut how do we make it work with a U.S. leadership that doesn\u2019t want to play the role of leader?\u201d he asked. \u201cHow do we move ahead in a world, not without the U.S., but with an American leadership not willing to play its traditional role?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The hard part for Europe, Mr. Vimont said, would be saving the partnership with Washington while avoiding \u201cthe slow drift toward confrontation between Iran and its neighbors and Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With Europe pushed by the United States to side with Iran on the nuclear deal and to side with China on the trade deal, he said, \u201cit\u2019s going to be very tricky.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>May 9, 2018 By\u00a0Steven Erlanger, The New York Times BRUSSELS \u2014 It is by now a familiar, humiliating pattern. European leaders cajole, argue and beg, trying to persuade President Trump<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10233","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\/10233","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=10233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}