{"id":10950,"date":"2018-07-16T15:03:55","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T14:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/?p=10950"},"modified":"2018-07-24T16:03:37","modified_gmt":"2018-07-24T15:03:37","slug":"amid-the-trumpian-chaos-europe-sees-a-strategy-divide-and-conquer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/amid-the-trumpian-chaos-europe-sees-a-strategy-divide-and-conquer\/","title":{"rendered":"Amid the Trumpian Chaos, Europe Sees a Strategy: Divide and Conquer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>July 13, 2018<\/p>\n<p>Steven Erlanger, The New York Times<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>BRUSSELS \u2014 European allies knew to expect the unexpected from President Trump, especially after their rancorous encounter last month at the Group of 7 summit meeting in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>But Mr. Trump\u2019s European tour has still rattled many on the Continent and in Britain, who have watched from a distance the chaos he creates on a daily basis in the United States but had not been directly exposed to it until this week.<\/p>\n<p>More important, for the long term, they have begun to believe that underneath the presidential narcissism, sarcasm and bluster there is a strategy: to undercut European solidarity in NATO and the European Union so the United States can exercise its economic and military power to shape relations with individual countries, just as China and Russia seek to do.<\/p>\n<p>The atmospherics have been awful. Mr. Trump happily broke protocol at NATO and in Britain, skipping appointments with other leaders, forcing changes in the agenda, scolding other leaders, calling an early news conference to get onto morning television programs in America, making unfounded claims about agreements and giving an interview to the British mass-market tabloid The Sun that deeply embarrassed his host, Prime Minister Theresa May.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>But Europeans are now convinced that Mr. Trump has an agenda that is inimical to their interests, said Fran\u00e7ois Heisbourg, a French political analyst. \u201cEuropeans realize that he\u2019s not just a temperamental child, but that he wants to dismantle the multilateral order created 70 years ago that he believes limits American power.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>European leaders had already taken into account the disrupter Trump, said Tomas Valasek, the director of Carnegie Europe, a foreign policy think tank. \u201cWe\u2019re not in the dark about him, but we\u2019ve never dealt with this sort of political animal before,\u201d Mr. Valasek said. \u201cThis is a new ballgame and we\u2019re learning how to play it. We\u2019re not necessarily more effective, but we\u2019re getting wiser.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>Different leaders have tried different strategies with Mr. Trump, from the \u201cbuddy-buddy\u201d approach of President Emmanuel Macron of France and Ms. May, to the cooler attitude of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. \u201cBut we found that none of this matters,\u201d Mr. Valasek said. \u201cHe\u2019ll treat you like a competitor one way or another. He wants to pit countries against one another and use U.S. power and wealth against the others for his advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The frustration sometimes comes out in meetings. At the NATO meeting, for instance, Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen of Denmark told Mr. Trump that Danes had suffered as many casualties per capita as the United States had in Afghanistan, and that blood mattered more than money.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn direct and clear speech, I have made it clear to him that Denmark\u2019s contribution cannot be measured in money,\u201d Mr. Rasmussen said afterward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside>\n<div>\n<article>\n<h3>The personal distaste could also be measured in body language, when European leaders made little effort to engage with Mr. Trump, chatting to one another while Mr. Trump walked along with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a semiauthoritarian outsider.<\/h3>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>\u201cTrump is becoming politically toxic in Western Europe,\u201d Mr. Valasek said. \u201cNo one wants to be seen smiling with him after being berated on Twitter. Even more, Mr. Trump\u2019s insults and his unpopularity among European voters make it harder for European leaders to do what he wants them to do, like increase military spending, even when they think they should do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After Mr. Trump split with the Europeans on issues like climate change and the Iran nuclear deal, Mr. Valasek said, \u201cleaders don\u2019t want to be associated with anything he wants; it\u2019s the kiss of death.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They are also fearful of his populism, his support for Britain\u2019s withdrawal from the European Union, or Brexit, and his affinity with their political adversaries, who share his nationalist, anti-immigration message.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, Europe faces a dilemma with Mr. Trump, as Sigmar Gabriel, the former German foreign minister, said in\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/plus\/sigmar-gabriel-donald-trump-will-in-deutschland-einen-regimechange-a-2ef9b3a6-789b-4ae3-bae0-4666292b846b\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">an interview<\/a>\u00a0with Der Spiegel. \u201cThe truth is, we can\u2019t get along with Trump and we can\u2019t get along without the U.S.,\u201d Mr. Gabriel said. \u201cWe therefore need a dual strategy: clear, hard and, above all, common European answers to Trump. Any attempt to accommodate him, any appraisal only leads him to go a step further. This must be over. From trade to NATO.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He continued: \u201cWe cannot delude ourselves anymore. Donald Trump only knows strength. So we have to show him that we are strong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>How to do that, however, is less clear, since Europe\u2019s security dependence on the United States is both obvious and will not change soon, despite European talk of more money for a joint European defense.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>The problem is visible not just in Germany but in Spain, distant from Russia. Pedro S\u00e1nchez, Spain\u2019s new Socialist prime minister, outraged the leftist lawmakers who helped put him in office when he pledged to raise his country\u2019s military spending to 2 percent from the current 0.9 percent of the country\u2019s gross domestic product.<\/p>\n<p>John C. Kornblum, a former American ambassador to Germany who still lives there, said that \u201cthe real problem is that postwar Europe seems not to have regained a sense of purpose and direction.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt cannot formulate self-confident and achievable goals,\u201d Mr. Kornblum continued, \u201cand above all seems unable to stand up for itself against the criminals of the world\u201d \u2014 including the former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia now.<\/p>\n<p>The European nations\u2019 great accomplishments \u2014 continental peace and social welfare \u2014 have led them \u201cto become self-righteous in their pride about them, but in reality these steps forward were only possible within an American bubble,\u201d Mr. Kornblum said.<\/p>\n<p>And now Mr. Trump has called them out on it and \u201cspoken the unspeakable,\u201d Mr. Kornblum said, and it is both unwelcome and uncomfortable.<\/p>\n<p>If nothing else, Mr. Trump\u2019s apparent willingness to turn over the table has gotten the attention of Western allies, creating a sense of urgency to meet the spending goals, and not everyone drew back in alarm.<\/p>\n<p>The French newspaper Le Monde, for example, was relaxed. \u201cOnce again, Donald Trump brought on the show, but the damage was limited,\u201d the newspaper said. \u201cThe NATO summit, which threatened to become a psychodrama because of the American president\u2019s caprices, wound up reinforcing the alliance. The Europeans are ready to pay more for their defense, and the U.S. reaffirmed its military commitment to its historic allies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>But the big question is whether any amount of spending would actually satisfy Mr. Trump, or whether his real attempt is to divide NATO and the European Union, both Mr. Heisbourg and Mr. Valasek said. Mr. Trump mixes his threats about more trade tariffs if the European Union does not come to better terms with his threat to withhold security from those same countries.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, Mr. Trump also uses and misuses the figures he chooses. He often says that the United States pays for 90 percent of NATO, or sometimes he says 70 percent, when the figure\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nato.int\/nato_static_fl2014\/assets\/pdf\/pdf_2018_07\/20180709_180710-pr2018-91-en.pdf?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=NATO%20Press%20Release%202018091%20-%20Defence%20Expenditure%20of%20NATO%20Countries%202011-2018&amp;utm_content=NATO%20Press%20Release%202018091%20-\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">is really about<\/a>\u00a067 percent, and includes the percentage of global military spending.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, of the $603 billion the United States spends on defense, only about\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/IISS_org\/status\/1016339935450759168\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">$31 billion goes to Europe<\/a>. That number is increasing. But the European countries of NATO are spending about $239 billion and rising, even if their spending is not very efficient or coordinated.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, Mr. Trump likes to cite a $151 billion trade deficit with the European Union. But that figure is\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/trade\/policy\/countries-and-regions\/countries\/united-states\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">for goods only \u2014 not for services,<\/a>which represent nearly 80 percent of the economy, where the United States has a small trade surplus with Europe.<\/p>\n<p>For Mr. Heisbourg, Mr. Trump the businessman is simply \u201cmonetizing American power.\u201d As Mr. Trump recently said, he regarded the European Union \u201cpossibly as bad as China, just smaller.\u201d He sees Germany as dominating the bloc, and Germany, for which he has a special animus, as \u201cthe weak link in an organization vulnerable to linkage between trade and security,\u201d Mr. Heisbourg said.<\/p>\n<p>The same is true of Mr. Trump\u2019s support of Brexit, on display again on Friday in Britain. Mr. Trump\u2019s view is that \u201cif you have a soft Brexit and stick with the European Union too closely, it doesn\u2019t work for me, so goodbye, you\u2019re on your own,\u201d said Pierre Vimont, a former French ambassador to Washington. \u201cFor Trump there are no allies and no enemies, just partners or not, and the U.S. will deal with them separately. And the Europeans have no key to answer this new U.S. foreign policy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July 13, 2018 Steven Erlanger, The New York Times BRUSSELS \u2014 European allies knew to expect the unexpected from President Trump, especially after their rancorous encounter last month at the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10951,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10950","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\/10950","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=10950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}