Preparing Europe for Trump 2.0

Welcome back. Donald Trump’s victory in New Hampshire’s Republican primary this week makes it urgent for Europeans to confront the question — what if the former US president wins the election in November?

Can or should Europe make itself “Trump-proof”? Does all of Europe even want to make the attempt? I’m at tony.barber@ft.com.

Horrified, dismayed or sanguine?

I’ll start by questioning the assumption that all European politicians and policymakers would react with horror or dismay to Trump’s re-election.

True, few have forgotten that he once called Brussels a “hellhole”. And, despite the occasionally soothing language of Trump’s White House, everyone remembers the special loathing he reserved for former German chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe’s most important leader during his presidency.

But it is sometimes overlooked that not all European countries have uniformly bad memories of Trump’s 2017-2021 administration.

In this perceptive article for the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, Constantinos Filis makes the point that US-Greek relations flourished under Trump. He writes:

Co-operation with Greece during the Trump administration was strengthened and consolidated . . . The groundwork for the strategic relationship and the liquefied natural gas terminal in Alexandroupoli, northern Greece, was laid in 2017-2018, while the US also participated for the first time in the Israel-Greece-Cyprus trilateral summit, from which it had discreetly withdrawn in recent years …

. . . in the eastern Mediterranean his staff saw Greece as the most reliable partner and did not reverse the policy of supporting our relations with Egypt and Israel for the sake of Turkey.

No doubt these memories explain why Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece’s conservative prime minister, sounded fairly sanguine about the prospects of a Trump second term when he spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos:

I’ve worked with both President Trump and [Joe] Biden . . . As Europe, we will have to work with whoever the American people choose to elect as their next president.

Trump and the European nationalist right

A second point is that a Trump victory would give heart to leaders and parties on the hard-right, nationalist side of Europe’s political spectrum. Among the first politicians to applaud Trump after his victory in the Iowa caucuses this month was Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and leader of the Lega party.

Moreover, a legislator of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party travelled to Florida in November to develop contacts with Trump’s team. He reported back that Trump regarded Meloni as “trustable”.

Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s illiberal premier, would assuredly feel more at home with Trump than Biden, partly because of their shared hard-right world view, and partly because Trump might force the end of the west’s military support for Ukraine — a cornerstone of Orbán’s foreign policy.

In the UK, Trump has friends such as Nigel Farage, an architect of Brexit, and former premier Boris Johnson, who wrote this month that a second Trump administration could be “a big win for the world”. Johnson rather undermined his own argument by saying he hoped Trump would continue US support for Ukraine — which is precisely what is in doubt.

It seems probable that, by next January, the opposition Labour party will be in power, so the opinions of the British hard right will count for less. A Labour government would certainly try to work with Trump, but there can be little doubt that the party’s leaders share the view of Sir Richard Dearlove, a former MI6 chief:

“If Trump, as it were, acts hastily and damages the Atlantic alliance, that is a big deal for the UK.”

Hard-right hopes for European parliament elections

A Trump second term wouldn’t take place against a backdrop of political stasis in Europe. On the contrary, many elections will be held and new governments formed over the next 12 months. In some countries, the hard right will gain influence or even a share of power.

A good example is the Netherlands where, by the time Trump could take office next January, it is likely that a new government will be in power. Geert Wilders, the far-right leader who won the Dutch elections in November, may not become prime minister, but he will be a powerful force in or over that government — and he, like Orbán, shares much of Trump’s outlook.

Meanwhile, there will be elections to the European parliament in June. According to an opinion poll published this week by the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, hard-right parties are poised to make gains.

The authors of the ECFR’s accompanying report hit the nail on the head when they assessed the implications of a Trump victory, combined with advances for the hard right in the EU elections:

Europe will have a less globally engaged US to rely on. This may increase the inclination of anti-establishment and Eurosceptic parties to reject strategic independence and a broad range of international partnerships in defence of European interests and values, instead seeking to pursue a more cautious approach to foreign policy decisions.

Ringing the alarm bells

In Europe, as in other parts of the world, the general public’s attitudes to the US touched record lows in many countries during Trump’s presidency, but have shown a marked improvement under the Biden administration. This Pew Center Research chart illustrates the point:

Like millions of voters, mainstream European politicians and policymakers are concerned about what might unfold during a Trump second term. In an unusual public statement for a central banker, Christine Lagarde, the European Central Bank chief, said the return of Trump would be “clearly a threat” — in terms of trade protectionism, US support for Nato and efforts to combat climate change.

According to Thierry Breton, France’s EU commissioner, Trump told European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in 2020 that “if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you”.

Nato’s future is at the heart of Europe’s fears. Even hard-right leaders like Meloni are strong supporters of the Atlantic alliance.

European governments drew some comfort from the decision of Congress last year to insert a clause in the US National Defense Authorization Act that prevents a president from withdrawing from Nato without Senate approval or an act of Congress.

However, even that clause wouldn’t stop Trump from saying aloud what he is reported to have told von der Leyen in 2020. It follows that the credibility of Nato’s collective defence guarantee would suffer tremendous damage.

Ukraine and Nato

The consequences of a Trump second term could also be devastating for Ukraine. If he were to withdraw US support and propose a ceasefire or settlement, with Russia still in control of large parts of Ukrainian territory, Europe would be divided over what to do. Some governments might try to keep up military and financial support for Ukraine, but others would surely fall in line with Trump and accept it was time to end the war.

In this article for the Centre for European Reform think-tank, Ian Bond sets out some fairly drastic options for Europe if Trump were to pull the plug on Ukraine:

Nato and EU members that take defence seriously should be war-gaming not only how to save Ukraine, but how to respond to an attack on an EU or Nato member in the event that the US decided to remain aloof. They should consider whether the remaining allies could “take over” Nato if the US pulled out.

Before matters reached such a point, however, it would make sense for Nato’s European members to explain to a new Trump administration that they are, at long last, stepping up defence expenditure — a long-standing and fully justified US grievance. From government circles in Berlin, I hear that’s what Germany’s ruling coalition plans to do.

Coping with Trump

As far as concerns US-European economic relations, the danger is that Trump would slap protectionist tariffs on imports from the EU and the 27-nation bloc would struggle to find an adequate response. A trade war would be pointless, as Bond writes, because it would probably be “more damaging to the EU than the US”.

The impact of a Trump second term would be serious enough in terms of transatlantic security and trade. But the most dramatic impact of all could be on democracy — in Europe and beyond. I fully endorse the view of Andrew Gawthorpe, writing for the Foreign Policy Centre:

“Political trends which begin in the United States rarely stay there, and a crisis of democracy at the heart of the western alliance would likely weaken the commitment to democratic and legal norms throughout the rest of the world.”

More on this topic

US-EU trade relations in the Trump era: which way forward? — a March 2019 research paper by Marianne Schneider-Petsinger for Chatham House, the UK’s Royal Institute of International Affairs

Tony’s picks of the week

• China’s Ministry of State Security, the nation’s premier intelligence agency, is emerging from the shadows to tout its role fighting “subversion, separatism, terrorism and espionage”, the FT’s Joe Leahy reports from Beijing

• Europe has an opportunity to become more self-sufficient in lithium, a raw material essential for making electric vehicle batteries, but China appears likely to dominate the supply chain until 2030, Bryan Bille writes for The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies