© REUTERS/Adriano Machado

Senator, how did American foreign politics change under President Donald Trump? One very significant change is this administration’s attitude toward China. There has been a generation-long, bipartisan tradition among American presidents of being tough on China while running for office, but not following through once elected. The president campaigned on China’s abuses with respect to trade and other issues, and he is governing accordingly. What might not be apparent to Europeans is just how much popular support this tough approach to China commands in America. When we aren’t in moments of crisis or fighting wars, foreign policy doesn’t generally dominate the American political discussion. But China is an exception. In my home state of Arkansas, people see the harmful effects that unfair Chinese competition has had on their neighbors and communities, and like all Americans they have a sense of justice and fair play that is offended by the abuses in Hong Kong, or in Xinjiang where the Chinese Communist Party has built concentration camps. So that genie is out of the bottle. It won’t be put back anytime soon, even if there’s a US-China trade deal.

There is an impression that the United States under Donald Trump is taking a step back from world politics while placing a stronger focus on domestic affairs. What is your view? I don’t accept this premise—and remember, Barack Obama campaigned and tried to govern on the notion that it was time to engage in nation building at home. His attempt to pull back from the world, and his largely rhetorical “pivot to Asia,” which wasn’t sufficiently backed up by military assets, contributed to the chaos beginning in 2014 and 2015, whether it was ISIS and the refugee crisis, China bullying its neighbors in the South and East China Seas, or Russia invading Crimea. America remains committed to NATO and committed to its allies in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. The threats to NATO are China and Russia, as well as other NATO members that don’t take China and Russia seriously as adversaries.

What do you think of German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer’s suggestion of creating a safe zone in Syria? I’d welcome increased German involvement in northeast Syria. It is imperative that we coordinate to stamp out the last remnants of ISIS. As part of this process, we must ensure that ISIS detainees are returned home and detained. Additionally, we should cooperate to halt further Iranian expansion in the region and protect the Kurds from being overrun, even if they don’t receive an autonomous zone in northeast Syria.

The global order is changing. Right now, there are two main beneficiaries: China on the one hand, Russia on the other. Does the US accept this development and if not, how does it counteract it? Russia and especially China are very serious threats to countries like the United States and Germany. Analysts typically speak of Russia as an economically challenged and, literally, demographically dying nation, and China as the real threat for our future. There’s something to be said for that, but what we should keep in mind is that Xi Jinping and his cronies act as much out of desperation as does Russia’s leadership. As Xenophon taught ages ago, tyrants everywhere and always rest uneasily. Government without the consent of the people is an inherently fragile situation.
One thing we must keep in mind is that dictators like Putin and Xi want to split apart allies like the United States and Germany. The greatest threat to NATO today is the failure or refusal of some members to take seriously the malign intentions of these two men and their policies. Take Huawei, which some NATO members like Germany may allow in their 5G infrastructure, despite its track record of espionage for China. Or take Nord Stream 2, which is, frankly, an appalling and shameful project. While Germany touts the pipeline’s commercial benefits, Putin will use it as a strategic tool to split Eastern Europe from Central and Western Europe. It would effectively double the amount of natural gas Russia could export to Europe along a route that bypasses the alliance’s eastern frontier. This would enhance Russia’s ability to blackmail countries like Poland and the Baltic states by threatening their energy supplies, while deepening NATO members’ reliance on Russia to heat their homes and power their economies. Russia’s use of oil and gas exports to pressure Ukraine is a preview of how it could use Nord Stream 2 against NATO. And remember that when Putin invaded Crimea, he threatened to cut off European countries that assisted Ukraine. If NATO members increase their reliance on Russian gas, it will give the Kremlin more opportunities for blackmail and more leverage over the alliance.

Are you satisfied with the contribution of Germany and the European Union to the international security architecture? What do you expect the Europeans and especially Germany to do in terms of security and foreign policy? I appreciate Germany’s recommitment last month to increasing its defense budget to levels agreed upon by NATO leaders. Given the common threats we face, it’s urgent that all NATO members meet their defense spending commitments. NATO may struggle to remain a credible military force if all but seven NATO members refuse to spend sufficiently on their militaries. Additionally, I support European initiatives to streamline the defense acquisition process for our European allies. However, as these initiatives develop, it’s critical that they be designed in a manner that doesn’t duplicate NATO functions or impact NATO interoperability.

Germany has not ruled out incorporating Huawei in its 5G mobile networks. Would Huawei’s participation limit the intelligence sharing between Germany and the US? I’m deeply concerned about the German government’s proposal to include Huawei in the country’s 5G infrastructure. Huawei is an intelligence-gathering arm of the Chinese Communist Party. China’s neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region—Australia, Japan, and New Zealand—have already banned Huawei from their 5G networks. The United States has gone further by placing the company on our trading blacklist. Some NATO allies have also acted to counter the Huawei threat, including Poland and Estonia.
Huawei technology may be favored by the German business community because it is relatively inexpensive, but at what cost? Huawei networks present a risk to German security that can’t be mitigated. It could enable the CCP to spy on the German government and invade the privacy of German citizens. I’d urge the German government to look at more secure 5G providers such as European firms Nokia and Ericsson.
The adoption of Huawei technology by some allies could split NATO into Huawei and non-Huawei blocs, harming our ability to cooperate and thus helping our adversaries. Unfortunately, the presence of Huawei in allied nations’ networks will force the US government to review our intelligence-sharing procedures.

President Trump stated that the EU and Germany are among America’s “foes.” Do you agree with that, also considering the recent 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall? The United States, Germany, and the EU are never going to agree about everything, including trade, which is the context of the remarks you’re referring to. We’ll have disputes. Our relations will be better under some leaders than others. But important anniversaries like the fall of the Berlin Wall, and threats like China and Russia, remind us that we’re united by common interests much stronger than any supposed divisions.

Could it be already too late for the US to effectively limit China’s expansion in the world? The Chinese Communist Party poses a threat not just to the United States, but to the entire free world. China is run by a totalitarian regime that doesn’t tolerate dissent, at home or abroad. It’s easy to dismiss the Communist Party’s concentration camps in Xinjiang as a “far-off” problem. But the CCP’s malign activities are already at our doorsteps. Beijing is already using predatory economic tactics and censorship to steal from our companies and stifle our citizens’ ability to speak out against it.
Americans and Germans know the evils of totalitarianism, so we must mount a firm, unified response to these threats from Beijing. The US and Germany have many allies and friends, so I’m confident in our ability to confront this challenge.

How would you evaluate the current relationship between the United States and Russia? As I’ve long said about Vladimir Putin: once KGB, always KGB. I expect that the United States and Russia will remain adversaries as long as he remains in power. It would be good if we had a better bilateral relationship, but that may not occur anytime soon—particularly given Russia’s continued aggression against the NATO alliance, as well as its meddling in Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela, and elsewhere.

Do you fear any reoccurring Russian interference in the 2020 US presidential elections, and how do you plan on confronting the issue? I don’t fear anything to do with Vladimir Putin or his efforts to keep Russia relevant. His actions deserve a firm response, not fear. I sit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Russia’s malign activities on this front are something we track closely, and for which the United States is well prepared. But it’s also important to remember that Russian interference was not a decisive factor in recent US elections. The American people decide their own future, and we’ll do everything in our power to ensure that remains true.

Former national security adviser of president Trump, H.R. McMaster, and economic advisor Gary Cohn stated in a 2017 op-ed that nations should prioritize their own interests over global alliances. Does this statement still resonate with you today? Alliances must be dedicated to some purpose—they are instruments to strategic ends, and so they are critical elements in any nation’s pursuit of its own interests. I look at the world today and I have no doubt about the purposes to which NATO, for example, remains dedicated.

In your view, what are the most important topics for the Munich Security Conference 2020 and what do you expect from it in order to be a successful conference? The most important topics for the 2020 Munich Security Conference are the nefarious intentions of our adversaries, Russia and China. Russia continues to bully, intimidate, and occupy its neighbors. Meanwhile, China seeks to build an international system antithetical to constitutional government, the rule of law, and market-based economics. Despite these threats, some allies continue to strike dangerous deals with China and Russia that risk betraying their safety and the safety of their allies. Conference attendees should discuss how we can prevent our transatlantic alliance from being infiltrated and divided by these hostile powers. How we respond to the threats posed by Nord Stream 2 and Huawei will be critical.

The post “Putin and Xi Want to Split Apart Allies” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

There must be times when Angela Merkel closes her eyes and wishes that Donald Trump would simply go away. In her brief daydream, she would be dealing with a very different politician in the White House: a rational and enlightened person, amenable to debate and argument, and open to a wider view of the world and its history.

But every single time the German chancellor opens her eyes, Trump is still there, busily upending traditional US policy and trying to forge a world according to his own views and interests. All too often, this entails conflict with Germany: over trade, over Iran, over gas from Russia, and—most persistently—over military spending.

A long succession of US presidents has believed that Germany is spending too little on its military (a position somewhat validated by the Bundeswehr’s huge problems with outdated and frequently malfunctioning equipment). But none of them have ratcheted up the pressure like Donald Trump, who seizes every occasion to scold Germany for free-riding.

Where Trump goes, his handpicked diplomats pave the way. In early July, two months before Trump is scheduled to visit Europe twice (both without a stop in Germany, and there’s supposed to be a lesson there), his ambassadors to Poland and Germany raised the issue again. In Warsaw, Georgette Mosbacher tweeted: “Poland meets its 2 percent of GDP obligation toward NATO. Germany does not. We would welcome American troops in Germany to come to Poland.”

Richard Grenell, Trump’s appointee to Berlin and one of the most heartily disliked diplomats ever, happily retweeted Mosbacher’s statement and followed it up with a statement of his own. “It is offensive to assume that the US taxpayers will continue to pay for more than 50,000 Americans in Germany, but the Germans get to spend their surplus on domestic programs,” he said in an interview.

Currently, Washington has 35,000 soldiers stationed in Germany, supported by 17,000 American and 12,000 German civilians—far fewer than during the Cold War, but still the second-largest force outside the United States.

Raising the Pressure

Grenell’s comment allows for several interpretations, all of which aim at raising the pressure on Berlin: the US could bring home some or all of its forces; it could station them in Poland; or it could make Germany pay a much higher contribution in order to keep them.

All three scenarios have been talked about before. In June 2018, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon was looking at options for bringing back troops from Germany or relocating some of them to Eastern Europe. Warsaw, both because its government is ideologically close to Trump and because it would like US troops on its soil as an insurance against Russian aggression, offered to contribute $2 billion toward the costs of setting up permanent bases.

In March of this year, Bloomberg reported that the administration was drawing up demands for Germany, Japan, and South Korea to pay much more toward the upkeep of US troops. The plan was to make those countries pay the entire cost plus an additional 50 percent for the privilege of hosting them, Bloomberg said, citing anonymous sources in the administration.

According to this report, Trump has been championing the idea for months. In talks with South Korea over the status of the 28,000 troops stationed there, he overruled his negotiators with a note to National Security Adviser John Bolton saying, “We want cost plus 50.” In the end, the American delegation accepted a much lower increase to the South Korean contribution, but the new agreement was concluded for only a year, which means that further talks must be held before the end of 2019.

Bad News for Germany

“Cost plus 50,” if confirmed, is particularly bad news for Germany. According to a study by Rick Berger, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Germany could be asked to pay 10 times more than today—$10 billion instead of $1 billion per year—if the US decides to include all its costs, even the troops’ salaries.

To irk Germany further, Washington apparently is pondering two rates, with a rebate given to countries that are ideologically aligned with the Trump administration. Germany would certainly not qualify, given the many policy disagreements and the personal dislike between Trump and Merkel.

Most recently, Merkel’s government rebuffed a request from Washington to join a US-led military operation to secure shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Germany fears being drawn into war against Iran by a US administration that unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement and is ratcheting up the pressure on Tehran.

Costly for All

In his remarks about the troops, Grenell did not refer to the differences over Iran, but they certainly contributed to the Trump administration’s profound exasperation with Berlin. But is it really imaginable that the US would withdraw its armed forces from Germany?

Such a step would be harmful to Germany, and not just because the US bases are an important economic factor. Europe is not ready to defend itself—talks about a European army aren’t getting anywhere in a hurry—and US troops in Germany provide a tangible guarantee of American assistance in case of need.

At the same time, pulling out of Germany would be extremely costly for the US, both financially and in terms of power projection. Most of the troops aren’t in Germany to defend Germany anyway, but because it is an established hub for operations further afield.

Ramstein Air Base is vital for US air operations throughout the Middle East, Stuttgart hosts the US Africa Command, and the Landstuhl Regional Medical is the largest overseas military hospital in the world, providing emergency care to US soldiers wounded in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other trouble spots. Even with huge investment, Poland could not build up such an infrastructure anytime soon.

Officials in the State Department and the Pentagon are deeply worried about any schemes to withdraw the troops or make Germany pay much more for them—which, given the strong current of anti-Americanism in Germany, would be politically impossible.

Keeping Promises

Yet if there is one thing that the world has learnt about Donald Trump, it is that he is good at keeping his promises—whatever the cost. And Trump has been arguing for a very long time that America’s allies should either pay for the troops or see them brought home.

“The Japanese have their great scientists making cars and VCRs, and we have our great scientists making missiles so we can defend Japan,” he said in an interview with Playboy in 1990. “Why aren’t we being reimbursed for our costs?”

Closing her eyes may give Merkel a temporary reprieve from the headache that is promising to happen. But if Trump gets reelected to a second term next year, this one is guaranteed to come back.

The post Trump’s Not-So-Empty Troops Threat to Germany appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Carlos Barria

The European Union usually plays only a subordinate role in the American debates on Europe. But recently, interest in the European Parliament elections has picked up markedly—focused mainly on the current upswing, real or imagined, of conservative or far right populist parties. And there is certainly someone who would welcome a strong result for these nationalist forces: US President Donald Trump.

After a troubled decade most US observers see the EU as a weakened organization. This perceived weakness hasn’t softened Trump’s ire, however. While frequently criticizing those governments that support further European integration, Trump lavishes attention on the nationalist governments in Warsaw and Budapest. Following Trump’s speech in Poland in 2017, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Budapest and Warsaw this February; a Berlin visit, planned for earlier this months, was canceled on short notice. And last week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was a guest at the White House, allowing Trump to clearly indicate which political forces he is routing for in the European elections.

Prior to the Trump-Orbán meeting, both Republican and Democrat senators had called on the US president to address the Orbán government’s increasingly repressive actions against civil society and independent media organizations in Hungary. Instead, Trump praised Orbán (“respected all over Europe”) for his stance on immigration and that he had been “great with respect to Christian communities.” In other words, the president sided clearly with Europe’s nationalist, euroskeptic, and anti-liberal forces. For Orbán, whose Fidesz party has been suspended from the center-right EPP parliamentary group and whose government is in dispute with the EU, Trump’s support could not have come at a more favorable time.

Good and Bad Allies

Trump’s EU-critical stance has been reinforced by his National Security Advisor John Bolton, who openly opposes the supranational EU and sees in it an anti-American organization that deprives its member states of their national sovereignty. Like Trump, Bolton supports Brexit and has promised the United Kingdom special trade relations with the US after it leaves the EU. In addition, the Trump administration—similar to some members of the government of George W. Bush—seems to distinguish between EU members that are considered good and those that are considered bad partners for the US. The present aversion against the EU was also at play in the small, but symbolic step taken by the State Department at the end of 2018 to downgrade the diplomatic status of the EU delegation in Washington, DC. (It reversed the decision after protests.)

Meanwhile, similar to politics, the US news media, conservative and liberal, is particularly interested in the surge of the right-wing populists and nationalists in Europe. Fox News, whose commentators often share Trump’s EU-critical stance, argued that the election could become a tipping point in post-war European politics. Others zoomed in on the strong poll ratings for the Brexit Party in the UK and Nigel Farage’s announcement that his fight against the “globalist project that seeks to replace national democracies with unelected bureaucracies” would be continued after the election.

Breitbart News, the website once run by the one-time White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, also mostly focused on the UK campaign, reporting on Tony Blair’s “desperate” calls on the British not to vote for the Brexit Party. It also pointed to strong poll results for the French Rassemblement National and on Marine Le Pen’s call on Macron to step down if his party La République en Marche won’t come top in France in the European elections.

The Washington Post focused on the strength of Farage, Le Pen, and Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, but also reported on the difficulties the latter had to bring together all right-wing populist parties. The populist parties can only agree on a few topics beyond advocating for strong national borders, rejecting immigration, and combating Islamic terrorism, The Atlantic concludes.

A Trump-like Triumph?

The great interest among US observers in the right-wing populist movements can be partly explained by the fact that many see parallels to the developments in the US, and some wonder whether nationalist politics will continue to gain ground. Polls across Europe showed that “the forces that fueled President Trump’s rise are gaining, not losing, strength,” argued the conservative Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen. Since Trumpism would outlast Trump, the mainstream parties would need to adapt and offer real, effective responses to drive down populist discontent, Olsen wrote.

With Bannon eager to pave the way for a global revolution, US observers have also shown much interest in his efforts to bring together the right-wing populist parties in Europe. However, Bannon has been largely unsuccessful so far, as far-right leaders like Le Pen have rejected his advice, pointing to Bannon’s lack of understanding Europe, The New Yorker reported.

This may make gratifying reading for Bannon’s critics. But the queasy feeling that European right-wing populists could achieve a surprise success next Sunday remains—just like Donald Trump did it in 2016.

The post Focused on the Far Right appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Pool

Let’s begin by looking at the bigger picture: who is in charge of foreign policy in the United States, and is there a development that worries you the most? Donald Trump very much drives American foreign policy. The US president is outside of both the Republican or Democratic party’s foreign policy communities. Europeans and others have tried to find other interlocutors on specific issues, but the big decisions ultimately reflect Donald Trump and his incredibly disruptive world view. What is interesting to me about him is that there has not been a single mistake as significant as the Iraq War or a single development as damaging as the financial crisis. Yet the very fact of Trump’s election and the nature of his presidency have profoundly shaken the ability of the US to play the role that it had over the last seventy-plus years. Other nations and their citizens simply do not have the same confidence in America as they had before.

And with regard to your concerns? What worries me is the absence of a US commitment to the international order. There is no other nation that can replace this void. I would argue that there was always going to be an evolution of that international order, and Barack Obama in many ways helped drive it. But this was supposed to play out over the next 20 or 30 years, as China emerged, as Europe balanced its relationship with the US against its own diverging interests, and as other nations of the Global South came forward. Instead we see these changes now playing out within two or three years. That is potentially very destabilizing. Ultimately, Trump’s abandonment of the international order puts us back into pre-World War I geopolitics.

Meaning that everything is merely a test of strength? Yes. Foreign policy is no longer informed by values. Trade interests are pursued through tariff wars, and strategic interests are pursued through alliances of political convenience rather than alliances based on shared democratic values and long-term interests. The international order can survive four years of Trump, even if it is never going to be quite the same. But eight years of Trump would completely upend everything from US alliances to international institutions. So, I think whether this a four-year aberration or an eight-year change of direction matters a lot. I also worry that a lot of the negative consequences of what Trump is doing around the world are not immediately apparent. In foreign policy and in global economic policy it takes some time for negative consequences to sink in. I worry that the bill for Trump’s actions is going to come due after he leaves office. Or in his second term, if he gets reelected.

Trump has always been hostile to alliances. Yes, indeed. He never felt that the US should essentially “pay” into an international system of rules, agreements, and institutions. That should not surprise people. For decades, he has been consistent in his hostility to alliances and the US-led international order. His only vision as to what replaces that is the US acting belligerently in its own business interests.

Doesn’t every US president have an element of domestic politics that informs his foreign policy? True, but I’ve never seen a president so clearly having domestic politics front and center in his foreign policy decision-making. The movement of the Embassy to Jerusalem, leaving the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA), the recklessness with which he pursues these trade wars—I think a lot of this is based on where he sees political interest at home or interest of his political base. That is quite disruptive to US foreign policy because you need to be able to make and keep long-term commitments. If we are shifting like a weather vane based on which constituency is loudest in the current moment, the already difficult task of maintaining consistency in US foreign policy is going to basically become impossible.

Simply being anti-Trump is not a viable option for states or governments. What would you recommend to the European Union: more or less opposition, more cooperation or less—or just patiently waiting for a quick ending of his presidency? Throughout the first two years of the Trump administration, we have basically seen Europeans try all the different approaches available to them. You had Chancellor Angela Merkel essentially writing off Trump from the beginning, you had French President Emmanuel Macron trying the all-out charm offensive, making friends with Trump, you had British Prime Minister Theresa May veer between reaching out to Trump and having to stand up to him when he would insult London and the United Kingdom. All those approaches led to the same result; none of them was any better than the other. And that gets at the point that Trump really does have a world view or orientation, one that I think is hostile to Europe and hostile to alliances.

Having a personal relationship with him or not did not really change that. No. The end-result remained the same: Trump ended up being in direct conflict with each and every one of those leaders and continued his adversarial posture toward Europe. So how do you deal with that? I do think Europe has to figure out the means to an independent foreign policy while also standing up to Trump on certain issues. Not every issue, but those issues that are particularly important. The JCPOA is an interesting example. Can Europe keep the Iranians from taking a provocative step in the nuclear program while also taking a stand against the enforcement of US sanctions, thereby demonstrating that there are issues on which Europe can have a position that differs from a significant geo-strategic US decision?

What are your thoughts about a common European defense force? Contrary to what Trump says, these debates are constructive. Even with a normal US administration, there are going to be certain issues that are of greater interest to Europe than to other NATO member states, and Europe having its own military capacity I think is wise. There is no reason for Europe not to have that capacity if the US military carries out all kinds of missions beyond NATO. I also like the fact that Europe is, in some respects, taking a firmer stance on human rights issues. The Saudi case being the most recent example, but given the absence of an American voice on democracy and human rights in the world, it is actually very important that Europe steps up to that role of being the global spokesperson.

That’s not an easy task for Europe. Of course not, but worthwhile in a world in which China is seeking to press an alternative, authoritarian model. I do not think that Europe should try to break with the United States wholesale. Europe should hold out the possibility that this is a profound aberration in American politics and that there could be a different kind of president in two years. But over time, it is somewhat inevitable that Europe will need at least a slightly more independent set of policies. So now Europe needs to ask itself: what are those issues where we really do differ from Trump. What would it look like if we not so much opposed the US, but formulated European approaches? I recognize that this is difficult, as Europe itself is under a lot of strain, but I still think it is worth doing.

Many commentators say that Trump has only continued what Obama had started. Meaning a new conception of US foreign politics, which no longer sees its role as the world’s policeman, withdraws from the Middle East etc. How do you respond to that? I have heard that a fair amount, particularly in Europe—and I think it is kind of crazy. I do understand the premise though. Obama and Trump made similar criticisms of aspects of US foreign policy: they both criticized open-ended, extensive wars in the Middle East and they both talked about the need for greater burden-sharing, for example the two-percent defense spending goal in NATO. They diagnosed some similar challenges, but their treatments are diametrically opposed. Obama’s answer is yes, the US cannot do all these things alone, and we got over-extended after 9/11 with the Iraq War. So, now we have to channel US influence into new agreements, new global accords, new trade agreements. The world order that Obama sought was manifest most clearly in the Paris climate agreement, the TPP trade agreement, and the Iran Nuclear Deal. He used US influence to build new coalitions to solve new problems.
And Trump? His is the absolute opposite approach. If Obama’s approach was to channel American influence into new modes of international cooperation, Trump’s approach is to withdraw entirely from international agreements, abandon everything—not only Obama’s agreements, but long-standing treaties as well—and turn each foreign policy issue into a bilateral test of strength. I think it is true that they both spoke to a certain frustration with post-9/11 US foreign policy, but the answers they came up with are radically different. I think we underappreciated the extent to which it appeared like we were pivoting away from Europe and toward Asia. In our minds, we only talked about pivoting out of the wars in the Middle East, but I think we sent an unintended message.

What are your thoughts on the role of Chancellor Merkel and her role for the West? Do you think she will be replaced easily, or will things fall apart after she leaves office? Only recently, I was talking to Obama about Merkel. One reason why they got along so well was personal chemistry and history. Yet the important point about her is that she was one of the rare leaders in our time who was willing to do things that were either politically difficult or politically dissident and not advantageous to her, if she felt like a core Western principle was at stake. This was not only the case with the refugee crisis, but also with the eurozone crisis. Even if she did not do as much on Greece as Obama would have wanted at certain times, she did enough, despite encountering resistance domestically and on the European level. We have seen her do this in a number of different circumstances. The Russia sanctions following the Crimean crisis were not an easy step for her to take either, but she wanted to send a clear signal that there need to be consequences for the invasion of the Ukraine. If you look at these decisions on refugees, Russia, the eurozone, and other EU issues, you see her being a leader who understands her role first and foremost as Chancellor of Germany, but also as someone who needs to take difficult stances in defense of issues and principles important to the future of the West.

So, losing that will be difficult? Yes, it will. Equally, the reason many Germans are ready to move on, her very long time in office, is of incredible importance to the West, as it means she has enormous institutional memory. She has seen it all, and a lot of these issues that are in the world today, from migration to European integration to terrorism, have developed during the more than a decade that she has been around. Losing the Western leader with the deepest institutional memory is a significant blow. You will not be able to replace that quickly and you do need a German chancellor, whoever it is, who is at least inclined to see part of their job as defending Europe and European values. That does not mean we need a second Angela Merkel, but I do hope that the next German chancellor is someone committed to being a European leader and shepherding the EU through this difficult moment. I recognize that as Americans who did not manage to do that, we do not get to choose here.

What about other leaders? It’s heartening to have somebody in Macron who, more so than his predecessor François Hollande, sees part of his role in energizing the EU and pushing back on right-wing nationalism. You also have a charismatic leader in Justin Trudeau who can speak on democratic values with more experience on the world stage than he had a few years ago. And you have some other people invested in making the case for liberalism on the world stage. Still, Merkel will leave a big vacuum, which puts even more focus on the outcome of the next US presidential election and Brexit. If she indeed sees out her fourth term and we get what I would hope to be a better result in the next presidential election, she may have helped create a bridge over the Trump years in a way that is interesting. I say that recognizing that America will not get back its credibility overnight, but the timing may prove to be interesting nevertheless.

Do you know whether President Obama and Chancellor Merkel are still in contact and do you have an anecdote from the two of them? Occasionally, they are in contact. He calls her. He reached out to her on her birthday and called her after her election. His constant refrain is to be supportive of her and what she is doing, to offer any help he can, in any way, and just stay in touch. While also respecting that she is currently dealing with Trump and does not really have to have a very high-profile relationship with Barack Obama right now. It has been a quiet, but ongoing relationship.

The interview was conducted by Martin Bialecki.

The post “Trump Is Hostile to Europe” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

When Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987, it banned all American and Soviet (and later Russian) land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, and resulted in the destruction of nearly 2,700 missiles.

In 2014, the United States charged that Russia had violated the INF Treaty by testing a ground-launched intermediate-range cruise missile (later identified as the 9M729, also called Iskander), and in 2017, US officials said that Russia had actually deployed the 9M729. Russian officials deny that charge and assert that it’s the US that is not in compliance.

On October 20, 2018, President Trump declared that the United States would withdraw from the treaty, and in early December, US officials announced that, if Russia did not return to full compliance within 60 days, the United States would suspend its obligations under the treaty (which would relieve Russia of observing its commitments as well).

If we take the US accusation to be true—that Russia has been violating the INF Treaty for many years—then it is indeed logical that Washington withdraws from the treaty or suspends its obligations. The US cannot be expected to remain in the treaty forever if Russia does not correct its violation. However, the timing and manner of President Trump’s decision—announced at a campaign rally in the western state of Nevada—amounts to a major blunder.

A Series of Missteps

First, his announcement was immediately divisive among NATO allies. Senior officials in Paris, Berlin, Rome, and other European capitals have expressed regret and even strong criticism. Amazingly, Washington apparently did not consult with allies about the decision before Trump’s announcement. That stands in stark contrast to when the treaty was negotiated and US officials consulted frequently with NATO allies, aware of the agreement’s impact on member states’ security: Russian intermediate-range missiles can strike targets in Europe (and Asia), but they cannot reach the US. While the treaty was global in scope, it focused on enhancing European security. NATO foreign ministers backed the US position at their December 4 meeting, but there is no agreement yet on how NATO should respond.

Second, by the time that Trump made his announcement, the White House had provided little substance publicly to back up its charge that the 9M729 missile violates the treaty. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats provided more detail on November 30, but the Russians continue to deny the charge and assert that the US has overstepped the treaty rules. This looks like it will degenerate into a war of words between Washington and Moscow. US withdrawal from the treaty will also ensure that it gets most of the blame for the treaty’s demise.

Third, once the treaty’s limits are abandoned, the Russian military will no longer have to pretend that it is observing those limits. It will be free to deploy the Iskander as well as other intermediate-range missiles. The US military currently has no land-based counterpart. As a result, an arms race in intermediate-range missiles may begin in Europe, but it will be one-sided: only Russia will be racing.

The United States ends up the loser on all three counts. And European security loses out as well.

A Better Approach

The Trump administration could have taken other measures that would have had a greater chance of changing the Kremlin’s policy. As part of a strategy to bring Russia back into compliance in December 2017, US officials said that the Pentagon would begin research and development on a ground-launched intermediate-range missile. But that was hardly cause for concern in the Kremlin.

Actually fielding a new missile would take a number of years. Moreover, Russian officials likely calculated that NATO would not find consensus to deploy a new US missile in Europe—and they undoubtedly would be right. An intermediate-range missile based in the US would not bother Moscow much, since it could not reach Russia.

What else could Washington have done? The US military could have increased the number of conventionally-armed air- and sea-launched cruise missiles deployed in the European region. That could have been done quickly, it would have been compliant with US treaty obligations, and most importantly, it would have caught the attention of the Russian military.

Moreover, Washington could have sought to raise political pressure on Moscow. US officials could have consulted with allies and urged them to crank up the political heat on the Kremlin, including at the highest level: Vladimir Putin would have received an earful from Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Emmanuel Macron, and other European leaders who want to keep the treaty and don’t like being targeted by new Russian missiles.

True, these steps might not have been enough to persuade Moscow to alter its course, but even if they did not succeed in bringing it back into compliance, Washington would have at least prepared the ground for withdrawal.

An Illusory Asia Bonus

For Trump, the end to the INF treaty means his country can deploy land-based intermediate-range missiles to counter China, which has hundreds of those kinds of missiles.
But the US military has to build the missiles first, and that will take time and cost billions of dollars from the Pentagon’s already severely stressed budget. And it makes little sense to build the missiles if they cannot be deployed within range of Chinese targets. But which Asian ally will agree to have new US missiles based on its territory and within range of China?

It’s doubtful Japan would: Tokyo has shown no enthusiasm for hosting US missiles that could strike China (or Russia), and even if the Japanese central government agreed, local governments could prove problematic.

South Korea would also prove to be a struggle. The decision to host a US missile defense system there in 2017 triggered huge domestic controversy; the prospect of a US surface-to-surface missile threatening China would be highly problematic, to say the least.

With no ally near to China that is ready to put out the welcome mat for new US missiles, the fallback option will be Guam, a small American territory already stuffed with US military hardware. This, however, means there will be no early solution to the hosting issue. The fastest way the US could develop a ground-based intermediate-range missile would be to take Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missiles and modify them to be deployed on land-based launchers. But Guam lies 3,000 kilometers from the Chinese coast, and the Tomahawk has a range of just 2,500 kilometers.

It is problems like this—where to put a ground-launched intermediate-range missile—that make the Asian “bonus” of ending the INF Treaty illusory. That is why senior US military leaders have consistently said that they will counter Chinese ground-launched missiles with air- and sea-based weapons.

This Time, It’s Not Gorbachev

Regardless of the challenges, some have posited the theory that a renewed arms race would give the US a significant lever to bring Russia to its knees, economically speaking—that did, after all, work for Reagan.

But while the US economy and defense budget could afford to run an arms race in the 1980s, that may not be so easy today. Washington’s budget deficit is alarmingly high. Trump has already told the Department of Defense that its budget will be slashed next year, and they will have a difficult time finding money to fund existing Pentagon priorities.

Moreover, the Soviet economy in the mid-1980s was a basket case, particularly as the price of oil, a key Soviet export, fell. The Russian economy today can hardly be called robust—stagnant is a more apt description—but it may be better able to sustain an arms race, particularly as Russia today has hot production lines running for new ballistic missile submarines, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers, and cruise missiles of various kinds.

It’s also important to remember that Reagan dealt with Gorbachev, who recognized that the Soviet Union could not run an arms race and also meet the needs of its people. Trump, on the other hand, must deal with Putin, whose outlook is vastly different. The Russian leader is prepared, if necessary, to engage in an arms race. He appears to believe that stockpiling nuclear weapons is a good thing, and seems more than willing to sacrifice the Russian people’s well-being if necessary.

An arms race is a recipe for more nuclear weapons. That would make no contribution to European or global security, and it would make for poorer economies.

The post Trump’s INF Blunder appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Jason Reed

Former President Bill Clinton once said, “Follow the trend lines, not the headlines.” But as Donald Trump and a raft of more than ten Democratic presidential candidates think about US foreign policy with 2020 in mind, even trend lines don’t command the power they once held. The United States has fallen into the “arc of history” trap—following the trend line—at least four times in the past thirty years, each time exposing strategic weaknesses in US foreign policy.

The first miscalculation was that the fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet communism would easily lead to the victory of liberal, free-market democracy over all competing ideologies.  A second was that “Europe”—and particularly the broadened core of Europe within an enlarging EU and NATO—would effectively cease to be a geo-strategic theater of international politics. The third—articulated in 2008 by Barack Obama in Berlin and his subsequent administration—was that the ugliness of the Bush administration with its unilateralism, norms-breaking, vengefulness, corruption, feckless management, jingoism, and penchant for violence, was a deviation from the true character of American moral leadership. The final—heralded particularly at the onset of the 2011 Arab Spring—was to see the spread of technology as an unqualified global good paving the way for democracy, freedom and dynamic civil society.

Addressing—and in some ways correcting for—these four interrelated traps will define the US foreign policy debate in 2020 and beyond. No candidate can ignore these four hubristic blind spots. The outcome of this reimagination could be a foreign policy that is more sober, reflective, and circumspect in its ambition. It could also be more imaginative.

No Status Quo Ante

The folly of 1990s triumphalism has been widely derided, but foreign policy in the United States is only now beginning to change. It has become difficult to lean on the platitudes of post-Cold War foreign policy. The Iraq War and 2008 financial crisis dealt twin blows to the unreflective global acceptance of US leadership and the power of American ideals. China’s rise, Russia’s aggression, and Trump’s election have hastened it. As Trump has shown through his withdrawal from the TPP, Paris Climate Accord, the JPCOA with Iran, and UNESCO, agreements with the US will from now on always have a built-in sunset clause lasting the term of an administration. That is a staggering limitation on the credibility of the country that had been the international system’s underwriter since Harry Truman.

In 2020 and beyond, US foreign policy will have to engage and prepare for a world without unquestioned US hegemony. The potential for conflict is rising as great powers and aspirants jockey to fill vacuums. The December 2017 National Security Strategy recognized as much: “After being dismissed as a phenomenon of an earlier century, great power competition returned.” The strategy frames US foreign policy in terms of great power rivalry with China and Russia wielding above-board and below-the-belt instruments to expand their spheres of influence.

US foreign policy has been at once jolted from its complacency and made aware of its limitations. At least in some areas, this could lead to the US becoming a more mature great power. Progressives and mainstream Republicans recognize the need to shore up alliances, institutions, and vehicles of US influence in the international system—albeit clipped by an awareness of the dent in credibility caused by the Trump administration.

This has also created space for creative thinking about policy areas that were once sacred tenants of the liberal order, like free trade and the unencumbered flow of capital. Having cast off slavish adherence to the divinity of open markets, Trump—and any progressives that follow—will feel freer to deploy geo-economic instruments to shape foreign policy. The Trump administration is making maximal usage of the $20 trillion US economy as a cudgel against US rivals—attempting to quarantine Iran through sanctions against the wishes of the other P5+1 JCPOA signatories; levying more than a quarter trillion dollars of tariffs on China; and hanging sanctions and visa bans on hundreds of Kremlin-linked Russians.

Both progressives and Trump adherents will continue to reach for these tools and emphasize their effectiveness against the backdrop of a continuing distaste for military intervention abroad. In fact, 2020 could well see consensus across the political spectrum about the reluctance to use force. Trump has attacked the Iraqi, Libyan, and Afghan wars, as have many leading potential Democratic challengers (with Joe Biden the major exception). Whatever the case, the US could end up in a position where the challenges are more acutely felt and the instruments at its disposal more limited.

No Happily Ever Afters

The grand illusion that Europe would cease to play a role in US foreign policy and domestic politics has also been blown apart. Russia’s Ukraine invasion and the flows of migrants from Syria have brought Europe back to the fore as an active theater for US foreign, security, and to some extent, domestic policy.

On the Republican side, positions on Russia are sticky. The Republican party has long been driven by Russia hawks, led principally by John McCain, who seethed as the early Obama-era reset brought pragmatic nodes of cooperation like New START, supply transport to Afghanistan, and Russian WTO accession. Trump’s own officials, aided by Republicans in Congress, have worked to fortify US power in Europe and elsewhere, strengthening the interior NATO frontline, considering permanent basing in Poland, providing lethal assistance to Ukraine, and naming a Special Envoy to Ukraine negotiations.

But that is slowly changing. More and more, the Trump-allied GOP is broaching the idea of a new openness to the model of Putin’s Russia. Kissinger-style realists are congregating around Trump along with Rand Paul-style isolationists and anti-gay evangelicals like Franklin Graham to form a powerful coalition of Putin admirers within the GOP.

On the other side, Democrats have become decidedly more hawkish. It began with Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and Syria, which hardened progressive foreign policy establishment somewhat, even though Obama still winced at the idea of supplying Georgia-war levels of assistance and lethal weapons to Kyiv. Russia’s 2016 assault on the US election then galvanized Democrats and made Russia a domestic issue to a level that makes rapprochement with Putin impossible.

Behind the rhetoric, there remains a great deal of consensus in US transatlantic policy. The building blocks will remain the same. Concerns about defense spending, trade imbalances, and energy dependence remain high in both parties in Congress and even with the Trump administration. These positions are unlikely to change. But the school of thought underpinning US grand strategy is in line for a massive electoral overhaul.

Who Is Doing the Rigging?

Even as American defenders of the liberal order woke up to the threats from the East and South, Trump has also unmasked threats from within. Obama’s promise that he could transcend the divisiveness both at home and abroad was built on the assumption that the Bush administration was a departure from a wide American liberal consensus of normative leadership, faith in alliances, institutions, and global trust. Of course, the presidency of George W. Bush was not an apparition. Neither is President Trump, who has reinforced several of the core elements of the first Bush administration while adding elements of unpredictability and ethno-nationalism.

By 2020, the wheel will have turned. There is no intellectual consensus on the ideals underpinning the US role in the world. Trump came into office promising to unshackle the country from a rigged system based on pluralism, nondiscrimination, immigration, open trade, an institution- and rules-based international community, and norms built on trust. At the heart of this is a searing critique of Enlightenment Europe with the EU and NATO at its core. As Trump stated in Warsaw in July 2017: “The danger is invisible to some but familiar to the Poles: the steady creep of government bureaucracy that drains the vitality and wealth of the people.” The Bannonist wing of Trump’s coalition will seek to validate this vision at the 2020 polls. If successful, a second Trump administration could revisit a broad range of multilateral arrangements the president considers constraining, including NATO, America’s partnership with the EU, and even membership in the WTO and UN.

Just as Trump is articulating his vision of technocratic globalism and its dangers, 2020 progressives have found a new organizing principle in the fight against kleptocratic authoritarianism. For progressives, US foreign policy will have to draw on new lines of political philosophy that are rooted domestically. These include the fight against corruption and concentration of power and wealth, particularly in big finance, big oil, and big tech. With Trump and Putin both squarely in the crosshairs, Bernie Sanders outlined his unified theory of the global plutocratic sucking sound in a Guardian article in September 2018. He believes there is an “international authoritarian axis” with connections between “unaccountable government power” and “unaccountable corporate power” that reaches across borders and sectors. Progressives increasingly see this clutch of corrupt oligarchs—aided by political clients—as the force that demolishes the rule of law in the pursuit of shameless extraction of wealth, destructive climate policies, monopolistic control of information flow, unfair trade, election manipulation, and a narrower space for democratic action.

In some ways, the narratives behind both paradigms—the fight against globalism and the fight against kleptocracy—have a similar ring. Both feature an unaccountable elite riding roughshod over the will of citizens. Both contain transnational overtones pointing to a world-wide phenomenon that must be confronted both at home and abroad. But only the latter is compatible with the liberal world order.

The Deep Digital Age

Finally, there is technology. The squabbling travails of today’s foreign policy might look quaint when compared to the challenges from artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, and block chain ledgers. If algorithms are ideologies, as Lawrence Lessig and others have argued, then creating the structures in which they develop could be the most important challenge both for relations within states and between states. The understanding that the rise of technology is the driving political, ethical, economic and security factor of our day has been particularly slow to work its way into the American strategic discourse.

The lesson of the hacks against the Democratic National Committee  by FancyBear is that tech can be a wormhole for instability and subterfuge. Political progressives, mainstream conservatives, and US social media platforms are aware of this threat vector and have worked to patch vulnerabilities in the information space. The American left has painfully experienced how open elections are vulnerable to manipulation through hacking, fake news, deep fakes, and other hybrid tools. Both Democrats and non-Trumpist Republicans have attempted to build in consequences for future attempts to undermine the legitimacy of elections in the form of sanctions, asset freezes, and visa bans.

But the myopic focus on social media, fake news, and election meddling ignores other potential effects of technology on American foreign policy. Automation is a source of populist anger globally and potentially as destabilizing as immigration and trade. Cyber threats are increasingly defined not only by data theft and manipulation but by physical harm, as autonomous vehicles and connected homes, appliances, even clothing join critical infrastructure as a vector of attack.

And then there’s artificial intelligence. The AI race between the US and China is accelerating—and not solely for its commercial applications. In fact, AI technology has the potential to have the same effect on relations within states that nuclear weapons had on relations between states. Machine learning voice and visual recognition and omnipresent information analysis could perpetualize authoritarian governing systems like that in China. Neither Republicans or Democrats have begun to rethink a world order where AI-infused predictive policing, communication analysis and wall-to-wall surveillance would make a Tiananmen Square-style uprising almost unthinkable.

Nothing Is Inevitable

The intellectual energy of foreign policy thinkers on both right and left has delivered stinging rebukes to the pristine niceties of the post-Cold War era. Yale historian Timothy Snyder calls those who propagate those platitudes a class of “inevitability politicians” who allow a vague sense of righteousness to anesthetize their followers into inaction. Those day are over. But if the rise of populism, revisionist powers—including the United States—and technology are rendering the old order unfit, we must ask ourselves: are we present at the new creation? All indications point to yes, even if American progressives, stewards of the establishment, and Trump-style reactionaries have yet to fully grapple with the singularity of this moment.

The post The End of Linear Thinking appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

It’s November 4, 2020. Across the United States—and across the globe—liberals and Trump-opposing conservatives alike drag themselves from fitful sleep, red-eyed and exhausted, filled with dread, incomprehension, and déjà vu. How did he do it again?

The night before, Donald Trump won reelection as president—despite a chaotic and frustrating first term, multiple investigations, and a historically low approval rating. Of course, Trump had won in 2016 despite many of the same weaknesses, but that win was thought to be a fluke, a product of a weak Democratic candidate, Russian interference, and Trump’s novelty. His critics never imagined lightning could strike a second time.

With a second term, Trump has the potential to be among the most influential presidents in American history. The reelection gives him a mandate to continue his goal of dismantling historic U.S. alliances and trade deals. It means Congress will likely finally acquiesce to building the border wall that the president continues to demand. Trump has already started roundups of millions of illegal immigrants and cut the number of refugees the nation accepts to barely anything, and he’s now expected to forge ahead with plans to curtail legal immigration as well. Having appointed three justices to the Supreme Court in his first term, Trump will likely notch at least another or two in his second term, solidifying the first truly conservative court in almost a century for decades to come. The federal government will be radically reoriented around his form of laissez-faire conservatism. Stung by the Mueller investigation and impeachment attempt of his first term, Trump is also poised to purge the Justice Department and give the president broad protection from scrutiny and investigation.

In the press and the academy, Trump is almost uniformly recognized as a catastrophe, the worst president in history. And even though the public holds little regard for either institution, a majority of voters agree with them, and voted for Trump’s Democratic opponent by a margin of several million. It’s no matter: through a mixture of shrewd strategy and massive spending—both radical departures from the 2016 campaign—Trump has managed to wring out a sizable margin in the electoral college. It’s not an unalloyed victory: once again, Trump failed to win the popular vote, though he continues to insist otherwise. He is now considering new maneuvers to curtail the press, which keeps peskily pointing out his lies and hyperbole. For now, the president is willing to take a moment to enjoy his triumph. They said it couldn’t be done, and he did it—twice.

It Really Could Happen

Is this a euphoric daydream of Trump fans? The dystopian nightmare of pessimistic progressives? Or simply a plausible prediction about 2020?

Perhaps it is all three. Despite the struggles of the Trump presidency, which are acknowledged at home, abroad, and even dramatically inside the administration, as an astonishing anonymous New York Times op-ed in September 2018 demonstrated, the president stands a decent chance at reelection in two years’ time. There are other possible scenarios, as we’ll discuss later, but the prospect of a Trump reelection is both so widely disregarded among his many critics and also so plausible that it deserves serious priority consideration. With the midterm elections over, Trump is expected to ramp up the pace of his campaigning, even though the presidential election is two years away.

The fact is Trump enjoys campaigning far more than he enjoys governing. He never stopped talking about the 2016 race, filed for reelection the day he entered office, and has held campaign-style rallies throughout his presidency. His aspiring rivals will be on the trail soon, too. For years, American political analysts have talked about the “permanent campaign,” which refers to the importation of election-style tactics into governance. Trump has literally created such a permanent campaign, keeping the election-style tactics while largely ignoring the work of governance, save for a few top priorities.

In his bid for a second term, Trump will benefit from systemic features of US politics as well as a few attributes particular to himself. Let’s start with the system. First, incumbency is a powerful force. Since the Second World War, only two elected presidents who sought a second term have failed to win it. One, Jimmy Carter, was hobbled by a poor economy. The second, George H.W. Bush, was also hurt by the economy and by the fact that Republicans had run the country for 12 years, enough for voters to be ready for a change. Even presidents whom voters have harshly punished during midterm elections by pounding their allies in Congress have won reelection (Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama). So have those overseeing failing wars (Richard Nixon, George W. Bush).

The incumbency advantage is particularly strong if the economy is good. With remarkable consistency, a president overseeing a growing economy wins at the polls, even if—as is usually the case—he had little to do with creating it. As of writing, the American economy is chugging forward. Employment and stocks are both up, and while wage growth remains frustratingly slow, it is positive. A lot could change between now and November 2020, and some economists believe the US is due for a recession, but as long as current trends hold, Trump has the wind at his back.

White vs. Non-White Voters

Trump also benefits from the peculiarities of the American electoral system. For years before his election, progressive demographers have pushed the “Emerging Democratic Majority” theory. It  holds that as white voters shrink as a portion of the population, the new makeup of the electorate, with greater shares of black, Hispanic, and Asian voters, as well as younger voters of all races, will slant heavily toward liberal candidates. Barack Obama’s two victories, carried by surging votes from African Americans, convinced the theory’s proponents they were right. A high-profile Republican Party “autopsy” of Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012 concurred, arguing that the party needed to open up to non-white voters or risk irrelevance. In the meantime, Democrats benefited from their legacy of strong support in the Rust Belt. There, the shrinking but still large number of blue-collar workers would provide Democratic candidates with a built-in electoral-college advantage. This “firewall” could protect the party until the minority youth movement arrived.

Then Trump came along and demolished both of these basic premises for electoral forecasting. The 2016 race proved that a candidate could still win by relying on white votes—in fact, he could win enough white votes to be elected while explicitly stoking racial grievances. Meanwhile, the return of minority votes to pre-Obama norms suggested that only a rare Democratic candidate can produce the high turnout required to win. At the same time, Trump demolished the Rust Belt firewall, winning Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and coming close in Minnesota.

On the remade electoral map, it is Republicans who have the built-in edge. If Trump can hold most of the states he won in 2016, he’s well on his way to victory. Meanwhile, the list of Republican states that Democrats can hope to flip is short. Liberals are hopeful about someday taking over Texas, as well as minority-heavy Southern states like Georgia, but that’s likely an election cycle or two away. The minority surge is coming, but it’s still on the horizon. In the medium to long term, relying on white votes and racially divisive rhetoric may well be suicidal for the Republican Party, but Trump will be long gone by the time it’s too late.

Trump’s Palace Media

Finally, Trump benefits from his media environment. First, he has the unstinting support of what effectively are palace media. Partisanship in the press is nothing new, but for decades, the United States had nothing resembling the party-aligned organs that exist in many other democracies. Instead, there was a center-left mainstream press that mostly aimed for objectivity, and a small, scrappy conservative media alternative. The right-wing press has grown in strength for the last three decades, but in the Trump era, it has reached its apotheosis, becoming a servant not so much of conservatism as of Trump himself.

The most prominent example is of course Fox News, where star anchor Sean Hannity reportedly speaks to the president daily, but there are dozens of other important outlets of all sizes. The network’s former head, ousted for covering up sexual harassment, is now Trump’s communications director. These conservative media outlets wield enormous influence over their audiences. John Dean, the Richard Nixon aide-turned-informant, has said his boss would have survived Watergate if Fox News had existed to spin alternative narratives.

At the same time, trust in the media as a whole is low—in part thanks to unrelenting attacks in the conservative press—though it has rebounded somewhat since the beginning of Trump’s term. A certain segment of the population will dismiss anything that CNN or The Washington Post reports simply because CNN or The Washington Post reported it, which has lessened the impact of the impressive investigative journalism focussd on the Trump administration.

None of this is to discount the specific characteristics of the 2020 race. Trump’s flaws have been so extensively rehearsed that it’s easy to lose sight of his strengths as a politician. One reason why so many observers didn’t take Trump seriously in 2016 was that for years, businessmen had announced their arrival in politics and expected it to be easy, only to flame out. But unlike his failed predecessors, Trump possesses an unequalled instinct for connecting with voters and exploiting their grievances. One of his great weaknesses is also a great strength: He is willing to do and say almost anything, and he shows no sense of shame.

A Prolifically Mendacious Figure

The most important skill Trump learned in business and cross-applied to politics is media manipulation. His reputation in business always far outstripped his success, because he was so adept at courting coverage, and he quickly applied that to campaigning, offering nonstop press conferences and interviews (he only later curtailed access.) As the 2016 campaign showed, the traditional media is ill-equipped to deal with a prolifically mendacious figure like Trump. As a candidate, he perfected the art of making an outrageous and often false statement and then quickly changing the focus by replacing it with another outrageous and often false statement. This means that no story ever got full scrutiny, but Trump was constantly the center of attention. According to one media tracking firm, Trump captured the equivalent of $5 billion in advertising in the 2016 election. There’s no indication the mainstream press has solved the problem of how to cover Trump without playing into this ploy. If anything, it’s harder than ever to avoid taking his bait now because he’s the president of the United States.

Although Trump is deservedly known for his dishonesty, he is surprisingly dogged in pursuing his core campaign promises, even over the noisy objections of his Republican allies and even when it’s clear that by keeping a vow to his base, he is undermining his popularity with the nation at large. Though he has been repeatedly stymied, he has shown no indication of letting go of his dream of a wall on the border with Mexico. He has pursued trade wars even when they have begun to hurt American consumers and producers. He withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal over the objections of his advisers. His Supreme Court picks have been the conservative Christian crusaders he promised—in contrast to previous Republican presidents who, despite more religious piety and commitment to conservative ideals, chose moderate justices.

Trump is also expected to enter the election with a huge campaign fund. While he ran his 2016 race on the cheap, he won’t do that again. By summer of 2018, he had already amassed close to $100 million. Trump also benefits from a Republican Party that not only isn’t ambivalent about him, as it was two years ago, but has largely been reshaped in his image.

Finally, Trump could once more be lucky in his choice of opponents. Hillary Clinton was a slow-moving and clumsy candidate who cleared the field in 2016. The 2020 field is crowded, with no obvious standard-bearer. The Democratic primary will likely be expensive and bruising. While there are many potential candidates, all have major possible flaws: Too old (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders), too young (Cory Booker, Kamala Harris), too boring (Kirsten Gillibrand, Eric Garcetti), too exciting (Michael Avenatti), too liberal (Sanders, Warren), too moderate (Biden), and so on.

Backlash against Midterm Winners

While Democrats are expecting midterm victories this November, there’s a real danger of overreach that comes with renewed heft in Congress. The party has already planned extensive investigations into alleged corruption as well as other schemes to confound Trump. It is true that Trump, as an unusually divisive figure who is despised by his opponents, is susceptible to inquiries. But aggressive pressure from opposition parties following midterm victories has backfired in the past. Voters swept Republicans into power in 1994 but opted to keep Bill Clinton two years later. After making Barack Obama’s life miserable by electing Tea Party Republicans in 2010, voters resoundingly reelected him in 2012.

Without knowing how the economy will perform for the next two years or a clear vision of how Democrats might behave with control of Congress, and without knowing whether Trump is likely to face a true crisis not of his own creating, it’s too early to declare him the 2020 favorite. But it’s well within reason that he could be.

Who Can Beat Him?

Nonetheless, Trump’s weaknesses are real, and it’s easy to envision him joining Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush as one-term presidents—one of the few things that would unite the three men. The question is who would beat him, and how.

Trump might choose not to run again. He will be 76 on election day 2020, older than any nominee in history. His first term has been beset with frustrations and investigations, he often seems plainly unhappy, and by some reports, he never especially wanted or expected to win in 2016. Given Trump’s defiant demeanor, it’s hard to imagine him ever resigning from office, but retiring after one term could give him a comparatively graceful exit. It would probably be a relief to him and the country.

Grace, then again, has never been Trumps’ strong suit. What would his opposition look like? At this stage, Trump seems likely to face some sort of primary challenge by fellow Republicans, with John Kasich generally considered the most eager contender. It’s no surprise that a president as unpopular as Trump would face a rival, but the president is in a surprisingly strong position to withstand it. Despite poor approval ratings overall, Trump’s remains extremely popular with Republican voters.

Though there will surely be calls for a third-party challenger, the American system as constituted continues to make it all but impossible for any third-party candidate to do more than play spoiler. Besides, the two most obviously formidable independent prospects have both ruled themselves out: Kasich said he’ll only run as a Republican, while perennial potential independent candidate Michael Bloomberg is exploring running as a Democrat.

The Democratic field remains packed and up for grabs, but the party’s options fit into three basic groups. The party could opt to nominate a reliable, familiar face: former Vice President Joe Biden, 2016 runner-up Bernie Sanders, or former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. They could opt for a fresh face—Senators Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, or Kamala Harris; Governor John Hickenlooper of Colorado; or Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, to name a few. Or voters could choose a wild-card candidate. It’s a sign of the desolation of the Democratic Party’s ranks of leaders, following the down-ballot losses of the Obama years and Clinton’s defeat, that each of these paths is fraught with danger.

Take the old reliables. Biden has run for president before, and has never fared well. He has something of Trump’s touch with blue-collar voters, but otherwise is out of step with the Democratic Party of today. He would be 77 when inaugurated. Sanders, also at the end of his career, surprised most observers in 2016, but it’s still unclear whether his dyspeptic leftism has broad enough appeal in a general election. Patrick was a well-regarded governor, but he has little national profile.

Fresh faces have the advantage of novelty but the danger of being unproven. Warren might be the strongest (and oldest) of the bunch, though she’s only ever run in very liberal Massachusetts. The highly ambitious Booker is charismatic but a political cipher. Harris has captured the imagination of many Democrats, but she’s only just barely arrived in the Senate. Gillibrand has a longer track record and the advantage of representing wealthy and populous New York, but she isn’t the most exciting candidate. As for Garcetti, no mayor has been nominated for the presidency since 1812. Hickenlooper is a heartthrob for centrist pundits but his broader appeal is unproven.

Democratic voters could also decide to fight fire with fire and choose an outsider, celebrity candidate to mirror Trump. The appetite for such a plan became clear in January 2018 when a speech by Oprah Winfrey at an awards show sparked widespread calls for her to run for president. She demurred, but others may not be so restrained. Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, is said to be considering a run. Michael Avenatti, the brash lawyer who represents Stormy Daniels, the porn actor and director who claims to have had an affair with Trump, has declared his interest in running and has even visited the key early state of Iowa.

Driving the Minority Turnout

The preceding analysis makes barely any mention of what is often portrayed as the central battle in the Democratic Party: between the center-left and the quasi-socialist left wing. If Sanders or Biden won the nomination, that dispute might become operative. Otherwise, it’s likely to be beside the point. For one thing, even the more cautious, moderate candidates like Booker have increasingly adopted Sanders-esque policy ideas like a guarantee of a job for all able adults. For another, the priority for Democratic voters as a whole in 2020 likely is to choose a candidate who can beat Trump, regardless of what particular platform he or she proposes.

Given the party’s increasing reliance on minority and women’s votes, it is however difficult to imagine Democrats nominating a white man to lead their ticket this year, and perhaps for several cycles to come. There are some members of the party who believe the best way to beat Trump is to win back the blue-collar white voters who once backed Democrats but flipped to Trump in 2016. But the prevailing view at the moment holds that in a party with a large crop of women and minority candidates, and given Trump’s divisive rhetoric about women and minorities, nominating a white man is politically untenable.

That may be true. If so, the result will be that the party leans hard on driving turnout among minority voters, just as Obama did. The Democrats will also be able to rely on heavy turnout in large, strongly liberal states like California, Illinois, and New York—which will inflate the vote for the party’s presidential nominee, but won’t affect the electoral college, since all three states are reliably Democratic. But they’ll still have to fight to win back the Rust Belt states Trump clawed away in 2016. The Democratic candidate in 2020 could win the popular vote by a landslide or by a small margin, but if they win the electoral college it’s likely be a very tight victory. Or they could find themselves stunned and defeated by Trump once more. 

The post White House Déjà Vu appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque

It has become a weekly ritual. In the midst of desperate attempts by American diplomats to assuage the concerns of counterparts in Europe, President Donald Trump unleashes a volley of tweets that further destabilize a transatlantic alliance that has been crucial in sustaining the global dominance of the United States. In the past few weeks the pace of Trump’s malevolent bumbling has accelerated, with the bullying of European allies at the NATO summit in Brussels and his courting of Vladimir Putin at their summit in Helsinki leading many European policymakers to question the future of an alliance that has endured for over seventy years.

For many observers, the disruptive impact Trump has had on a global order that entrenched the preeminence of the United States seemed to mark a sudden break from established American foreign policy traditions. Disoriented policymakers in the United States often interpret this system shock in near revolutionary terms. The willingness of Donald Trump to undermine America’s alliances is often depicted as a sudden moment where a relatively stable liberal order was overturned by a small faction of Trump loyalists that reject the global role American institutions have played since 1945. Indeed, the idea that the current turmoil engulfing the transatlantic alliance is the product of a unique electoral aberration is comforting to those who hope for its swift restoration after Trump falls.

Yet a closer look at the evolution of relations between the United States and members of the EU since 1992 indicates that there are long term structural factors at play that have been causing tensions within the transatlantic alliance for quite some time. Many of the resentments that Donald Trump’s wildly provocative rhetoric plays upon reflect frustration over supposed free-riding on American generosity. This issue has repeatedly flashed up under previous presidents. In the 1990s, the inability of European states to head off the Yugoslav wars of secession caused frustration among US policymakers who had hoped that the collapse of the Soviet Union could lead to a shift of strategic focus to the Asia/Pacific theater. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to deep tensions with key EU states, though British, Spanish, and Polish support for the US war effort balanced rhetoric from those US conservatives, such as John Bolton, who were already beginning to define the EU as a potential strategic adversary.

For many Europeans, the subsequent election victory of Barack Obama in 2008 fueled hopes that the transatlantic alliance could overcome such challenges. But despite initial emphasis on renewed cooperation, the inability of European states involved in the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 to sustain targeted airstrikes without American assistance brought to the surface frustration with what many US officials believed was a lack of equitable burden-sharing when it came to defense spending. In his final years as president, Barack Obama expressed frustration with a perceived imbalance between high levels of US defense spending and budget cuts in EU member states that were increasingly hampering the operational effectiveness of European militaries.

An Emerging Europe

A paradox of these growing tensions between the US and its European allies is that they were also a product of the EU’s increasingly powerful global role in other key policy areas. While the end of the Cold War led to cuts in European defense budgets that exacerbated the military imbalance with the United States, it also intensified a process of European integration that would lead to an vast concentration of collective trade and regulatory power in a restructured EU. When the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992 consolidated economic and monetary integration and deepened political union, the ability of the EU’s institutions to influence trade and regulation on a global scale expanded rapidly in ways that clashed with the interests of key American business sectors.

Though there are still many unresolved aspects of economic and monetary integration despite the waning of the Eurozone crisis, it is notable that Europeans have repeatedly resisted American pressure over the past decade—for example, Europe has brushed off American calls to change course over such issues as debt relief for Greece or Brexit. The divergence of European strategic priorities from American attempts to shape the global economy has been a source of tension since at least a decade before Trump’s election. As the EU intensifies integration and puts pressure on trading partners to adopt its own regulatory framework, that tension will only grow.

In the context of a transnational system that is increasingly developing its own state-like structures, the EU’s internal institutional dynamic was also creating pressures for greater defense coordination before Donald Trump took power. The dawning realization of the extent of military weakness in the period between the Libyan War and the Russian annexation of Ukraine fueled concerns within Europe about the extent of its reliance on US security guarantees.

The increasingly unpredictable behavior of the US has accelerated these efforts, as even many Europeans who are strongly committed to the transatlantic alliance have swung to the view that American unreliability may well make the effort needed for the EU to achieve strategic autonomy a matter of existential necessity. In what can be described as a belated victory for the Gaullist view of geopolitics, there is now an emerging consensus across the EU that its interests can no longer be made reliant on an American political system that is vulnerable to violent electoral swings between belligerence and paralysis. As ever with shifts in EU policy, this is still likely to be an incremental process. But the emergence of an EU able to project collective power in all areas of policy would diminish US leverage and influence in Europe and geopolitical flashpoints surrounding it.

So rather than just assuming that Donald Trump is the primary factor behind the crisis threatening the transatlantic alliance, it is worth looking at how he has been able to use this long term divergence in institutional approaches and strategic interests between the US and the EU to his advantage. Even in an alternative scenario in which Trump had lost in 2016, a more benign US president would have still have faced tensions between the EU and the United States. These would have needed to be managed in a way that acknowledged the divergence of interests while still retaining the benefits of continued cooperation in security and defense. If Trump leaves office soon, it could still be possible to have such an honest dialogue. Both sides could discuss the implications of a strategic rebalancing process in which the EU expands its military strength to lighten the load on an overstretched United States while American political elites accept the strategic implications of a truly equal partnership.

Yet if Donald Trump continues to sabotage any attempts to explore such a managed rebalancing, the accelerating strategic divergence could quickly become unbridgeable. The differences in opinion between Europe and America would then fuel strategic rivalry. If one takes the potential global implications of such a breakdown in the alliance between the US and the EU into account, then those American policymakers should be careful what they wish for in demanding a massive expansion of European military power.

The post It’s Not Just Trump appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

By the end of this week’s NATO summit in Brussels, it wasn’t just European leaders who were leaving with negative feelings about America. Even the European journalists covering the summit left flummoxed and frustrated.

“Why do we have to put up with this?” one asked me. “I am so sick of America. Trump comes here and humiliates us and there’s nothing we can do about it.” Even the White House press corps, he complained, was granted a sizeable area in the summit’s press room, cordoned off from other media—the US was the only country with such a reserved space.

Indeed, the press seating arrangements seemed to mirror the general power dynamics in NATO itself. It is viewed by many not as an alliance of equal members committed to defend each other, but as an American military protectorate over Europe. Trump, breaking decades of protocol, acknowledged this on Wednesday morning during a fiery breakfast with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “We’re supposed to protect you against Russia but they’re paying billions of dollars to Russia and I think that’s very inappropriate.”

Trump was referring to Germany, and Berlin’s approval of a new pipeline to import Russian gas. Washington, and many others, say this will increase Europe’s energy dependence on Russia, and they should instead import US liquefied natural gas. “Germany is totally controlled by Russia,” Trump said, before citing a markedly incorrect figure for how much gas Germany already imports.

It was an unprecedented public display of aggression by a US president toward the NATO allies, and it was a humiliating blow to Merkel. When she arrived at the summit later, she told press that as someone who grew up in East Germany—a country that really was controlled by Russia—she is glad that a unified Germany is independent today.

But is it? To many, Trump’s remarks sounded like a protection racket. The American military protectorate comes at a price, and apparently that involves European countries surrendering sovereignty to Washington. In Trump’s view, Berlin is not free to make its own decisions as long as it is the recipient of American military protection.

Attack, Then Retract

Trump’s comments sparked such discord that he and Merkel hastily arranged a joint appearance before the media. Trump insisted that he has a great relationship with Merkel and relations between Germany and America are the best they have ever been. Merkel did not look convinced.

It is a tactic Trump uses often – attacking and then later insisting no attack was made. He did it again during his visit to London on Friday, criticizing Prime Minister Theresa May in an interview with The Sun tabloid newspaper and saying her rival Boris Johnson, who just quit her cabinet, “would make a great prime minister.” He later walked back his statements during a damage control joint press conference with May.

But his biggest lurch in tone came on Thursday. Around midday, reports emerged that Trump had threatened to pull the United States out of NATO unless countries immediately increased their military spending. Stoltenberg hastily convened an emergency meeting of the 29 NATO members to try to come to a solution. Trump then called an unscheduled press conference, where he said he had successfully strong-armed the Europeans into committing to spend more on their military. He was asked three times if that involved making a threat to pull the US out of NATO, but he didn’t answer.

“We have now got it to a point where people are paying a lot more money,” he said. “And if you talk to Secretary General Stoltenberg, he gives us total credit, I guess that’s me. He gives me total credit. Everybody in that room by the time we left, got along and agreed to pay more.”

Except they didn’t. French President Emmanuel Macron quickly contradicted Trump’s assertion, saying NATO members made the same commitment agreed at the 2014 summit in Wales – to aim to increase military expenditure to two percent of GDP by 2024. Inside the room, Trump had demanded that this be increased to four percent – even though the US itself doesn’t spend this amount. The other leaders said this was not only impossible, it would also be ill-advised to throw so much money at their militaries so fast.

For the rest of the afternoon, in press conference after press conference, prime ministers had to find diplomatically creative ways of saying Trump lied, without actually saying it. Asked repeatedly why Trump had made the claim that Canada will be doubling its military spending, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repeatedly pointed out that Canada is increasing its military spending by 70 percent over the next ten years.

Nobody wanted to incur the wrath of the US president by calling out his untruth. In a particularly creative attempt, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel offered that it might be a question of differing interpretation.

A Shaky Alliance

It was a display of just how fractious the nearly 70-year-old alliance has become, and it had a lot of journalists asking why Europe should continue to put up.

In the short term, the answer is clear: Europe has relied on the NATO military protectorate for the last seven decades, spending little on their militaries and instead investing that money in generous welfare and healthcare systems. Even with the end of the Cold War and the supposed end of the Russian threat, nobody other than the French was suggesting that this arrangement might not make sense in the future.

The NATO system makes Europeans completely dependent on the goodwill of the United States to guarantee their protection because they would not be able to defend themselves from a Russian attack.

The EU has now launched a defense union, which got underway in earnest this year. But it will take years to develop to the point where it could actually serve as an effective coordinator of Europe’s militaries in the event of a conflict without American assistance.

The UK remains adamantly opposed to the EU Defense Union because they say it undermines NATO. But Britain is on its way out of the EU, and London can hardly object to the enhanced cooperation now.

But what exactly did Trump say on Thursday? Most accounts point to the president saying: ‘If you don’t increase your spending, then America may go it alone.’

Some officials have cautioned not to read too much into that, and that Trump may not have understood what he was saying. This is the interpretation that European leaders have chosen to accept, in public at least. Macron insisted that there had been no threat to pull the US out.

In private, officials acknowledge that this was obviously an implicit threat. The implications are serious. If the US did pull out of NATO, the alliance would become a hollow shell. The US is, obviously, the largest pillar, and Trump’s comments caused understandable alarm. A US exit could leave Europe relatively defenseless overnight.

Like most NATO summits, this ended with few tangible outcomes. Conclusions regarding increased military spending remained unchanged from the Wales goal – something most of the NATO members are well on their way to reaching.

In past years, these annual summits of NATO leaders have become more about putting on a display of unity and power, a message to the world, and particularly to Russia. But this year’s gathering highlighted the exact opposite, putting NATO’s weaknesses and serious divisions on full display.

And those divisions will be brought into sharp relief as President Trump meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

The post Calling His Bluff appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Jesco Denzel

When US President Donald Trump comes to Europe this week, he is not going to be greeted by cheering crowds. Thousands of people are expected to turn up at anti-Trump demonstrations in Brussels this weekend, ahead of Trump’s attendance at a NATO summit on Wednesday and Thursday. Even larger protests are expected in the United Kingdom when Trump makes an official state visit following the summit.

This is not just protestors demonstrating against the actions of their government; they are doing so with the tacit approval of their leaders. Revulsion at Trump’s America extends from the top down in Western Europe. London Mayor Sadiq Khan this week authorized a giant balloon depicting the US president as a baby in a diaper to fly over Westminster during the visit. Trump has in the past brutally criticized Khan, accusing him, among other things, of being soft on terrorists.

But all eyes will be on the NATO summit, where Trump will meet Europe’s two most powerful leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Both of them seem to have lost patience with the US president. This week, Merkel told the German parliament that Europe will not back down in the face of Trump’s trade and military threats, disputing his claim that the US has a large trade deficit with Europe. She warned that the current trade conflict could escalate into “a real war” if cooler heads don’t prevail.

She also shot back against a letter Trump sent to her ahead of the summit demanding that Germany immediately increase its military spending to two percent of its GDP—the suggested level for NATO members. “We are the second biggest provider of troops, we are participating in several missions, and Germany will remain a reliable partner of NATO,” she told the parliament.

Macron, who had previously tried to make nice with Trump, seems to have abandoned that strategy following the disastrous G7 summit in Canada last month, where Trump berated the other leaders and left early. Macron’s team let it be known that during the summit Trump called NATO “as bad as NAFTA”—the US free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico that Trump says is unfair—and even offered Macron a financial reward if he took France out of the European Union.

Friends No More

Even populist and far-right leaders in Eastern Europe, who might be ideologically sympathetic to Trump’s world view, have grown exasperated with the US president’s Europe-bashing over the past months. They all signed on to EU counter-measures against Trump’s trade and aluminium tariffs without hesitation. And while leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán haven’t openly condemned Trump, they haven’t defended him either. Indeed, it would seem Trump has no friends at the moment in the EU.

That exasperation grew last week when Trump told a rally in the US state of Wisconsin that the EU was “set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank.” The EU was, of course, actually set up in cooperation with the United States—at America’s urging.

EU leaders are talking in increasingly stark terms about the death of the transatlantic alliance. A senior EU official said Trump’s attacks on the EU, NATO, and free trade now look like “the pattern of an American doctrine in which there are no friends.”

Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said in a letter to national leaders last week that the EU must prepare for “worst-case scenarios” in its relations with the United States. Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the Liberal group in the European Parliament, said on Monday that Trump is pushing a pro-Russia foreign policy that aims to cause the collapse of both the EU and NATO in order to benefit Moscow.

Trump is planning a bilateral summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on July 21. There are expectations that he may offer to end US sanctions for Russia’s 2014 invasion and annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, and offer Russia a free hand to back Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

“Whether Trump realizes what he is doing is up for debate, but what is clear is that he is now acting in a way that threatens the stability and economic partnership between western liberal democracies,” said Seb Dance, a British Labour member of the European Parliament.

NATO No More

It is this context that has so many worried about the outcome of Wednesday’s summit—including Trump’s own generals. Reports have circulated that the US Mission to NATO is trying to manage Trump’s visit in a way that will give him as little opportunity to speak as possible. There was even speculation that the US military leadership had tried to convince the US president not to attend the summit.

Trump is expected to berate the European leaders for not spending enough on their military, as he did during last year’s summit. But the fear is that he will go much further this time. A lot has changed since last year. Europe and America are now in a trade war, and it seems unlikely that this will not come up at the summit, even though it is not related to military matters. Trump has implied that Europe owes America favorable trading terms as payment for the US military protection that NATO provides.

In the corridors of power in Brussels, Europeans are coming to accept that they are not considered friends of Trump’s America. But what if they become enemies? It depends which Donald Trump shows up in Brussels on Wednesday. An erratic Trump could threaten to pull the US out of NATO, which would leave Europe without the ability to militarily defend itself. It is a volatile moment, and much will depend on whether the American generals can steer the president away from microphones.

But Trump can only be steered for so long. What is clear now is that the enduring institutions of the Pax Americana, set up by the US after World War II, are unraveling. Perhaps the most astonishing sign of this came this week, when reports emerged that the Trump administration wanted to partially pull the US out of the World Trade Organization.

“It is clear to me following President Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from TTIP, TPP, JCPOA, Paris Climate Change Agreement, and blockage of the US nomination to the appeal body of WTO that this is part of a wider exceptionalist policy,” said Charles Tannock, a British Conservative member of the European Parliament.

“I don’t think President Trump holds sacrosanct any of the traditional pillars of the UK special partnership such as close alliance within NATO or even the UN primacy for security,” he added. “Trump wants a club of strongmen all operating on a bilateral basis again. It’s as if World War II has taught the West nothing. President Putin will be overjoyed by all this.”

Trump will be able to deliver that message to Putin personally a week after the NATO summit. By the end of July, the world may be looking at a very changed geopolitical and economic landscape. Wednesday’s NATO summit could, therefore, prove to be the most consequential in the alliance’s history.

The post Boiling Point appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.