Europe gets ready for Donald Trump

JUST over a year ago Barack Obama decided that the European Union needed his help. His advisers devised a strategy to bolster America’s European allies, incorporating transatlantic visits, political theatre and pep talks. Mr Obama talked of the dangers of Brexit in London and invited Matteo Renzi, Italy’s ill-starred prime minister, to Washington to back his constitutional referendum. Last April Mr Obama’s visit to Hanover, ostensibly to encourage a floundering transatlantic trade pact, occasioned a stirring defence of European unity, the memory of which still turns beleaguered Brussels bureaucrats misty-eyed.

Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that each of these gambits failed. Britons ignored Mr Obama’s warning that a post-EU Britain would be at the “back of the queue” for any new trade deals; Italians spurned Mr Renzi’s constitutional changes (and forced him from office); and Donald Trump’s victory, in the words of the EU’s trade commissioner, put multilateral trade talks into the “freezer”. All of these outcomes revealed voters’ discontent with their political masters, a mood that found its fullest expression in the election of Mr Trump.

If Europeans seek change, they will receive it good and hard from America’s new president. This week Mr Trump told British and German newspapers that he expected other countries to follow Britain out of the EU, which he termed “basically a vehicle for Germany”. Slamming America’s allies for miserly defence spending, he declared NATO “obsolete”. He said he was as likely to fall out with Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, as with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. These remarks hardly represented an about-face: Mr Trump has lamented security free-riding for decades, for example. But coming four days before his inauguration, they delivered a hefty payload.

Mr Trump appears to promise the biggest rupture in transatlantic relations since 1945. Should he be taken at his word? On a recent visit to Washington your columnist was urged by Atlanticists to pin his hopes on appointments like that of James Mattis, Mr Trump’s pick for defence secretary. During last week’s confirmation hearings General Mattis, a conventional Republican hawk, hammered Russia and declared NATO vital to American interests. What to make of such apparent conflict inside Mr Trump’s cabinet? Perhaps it is a calculated strategy to confound America’s foes. More likely it reveals Mr Trump’s slapdash approach to policy, and promises bureaucratic chaos those adversaries will be delighted to exploit.

Mr Trump shows little affection for Germany, despite his Bavarian grandfather. Yet if this has caused panic in Germany, it is well concealed. Charlemagne has heard an official in Berlin suggest, with a straight face, that Mr Trump would surely change his mind on Mr Putin once the intricacies of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine agreed to give up its legacy nuclear arsenal in exchange for guarantees of territorial integrity, were explained to him. Other German officials place their faith in America’s institutions—Congress, the civil service, the military—to restrain the new commander-in-chief.

Very well: hope for the best. Bien-pensant Europeans were terrified of Ronald Reagan when he took office in 1981; less than a decade later they watched the Berlin Wall tumble. Mr Trump has no track record in government on which to base forecasts, and his habit of self-contradiction renders prediction impossible. Some even spy opportunity. Perhaps a Putin-friendly president could ease tensions with Russia, at least in the short term. Mr Trump’s threat to withdraw America’s security umbrella provides a useful argument to those Europeans pressing for more defence spending at home. Maybe the uncertainty Mr Trump has injected into global politics will galvanise Europeans into resolving their petty differences and forging a genuine common foreign policy.

Be afraid

But the risks to Europe of a Trump presidency outweigh any possible benefits. First, a fraying EU may be susceptible to the president’s brand of bilateralism. Watch Britain, seeking fresh partners as it Brexits (Mr Trump pledges a trade deal “very quickly”, though Brussels rules make that impossible). Poland’s nationalist government, a pariah in the EU for its unconstitutional power grabs at home, is a prime candidate for Trumpian deal-making, says Jan Techau of the American Academy in Berlin, a think-tank. Watch, too, Mr Trump’s choice of European friends. The roll call of visitors to his gold-plated tower since the election includes the leaders of populist outfits from Britain, Austria and France, who see in Mr Trump’s victory a validation of their own assaults on the established order.

The principal victims may be outside the EU. Europe’s fate lies in its own hands, Mrs Merkel said this week. But the EU struggles to extend its sway to weak countries on its fringes. Take Mr Trump’s hint that he might ease sanctions on Russia, imposed in 2014 over its aggression in Ukraine. The offer carries a cost even if it comes to nothing. Without American backing the EU’s consensus on Russian sanctions will evaporate (especially if François Fillon, a Putin-friendly Gaullist, wins France’s presidential election in May). As the West loses its attraction Ukraine may be sucked into Russia’s orbit. Atlanticists in post-Soviet states like Moldova and Georgia will be left in the cold. Tensions in the Balkans may bubble over, especially if Mr Putin steps up his meddling.

American support, both hard and soft, has always undergirded European unity, and its absence will be keenly felt. The condition may not be permanent: American presidential terms last only four years. But that is plenty of time to inflict immense harm. During his last visit to Europe, in November, Mr Obama sought to reassure his allies that the transatlantic bond would survive the Trump era. Europeans must hope that on this trip, unlike the earlier ones, the president got it right.