Indecent disrespect
US PRESIDENT Trump’s rejection of the Iran nuclear deal has unleashed fury in Europe. However palpable the frustration, the question once again is whether Europeans are prepared to, or even able to, stand up to the president.
This is what many Europeans would dearly love to do. Europe must not accept being the “vassals” of the US, declared the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire.
“The West as we once knew it no longer exists,” wrote the editors of the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel. “Our relationship to the United States cannot currently be called a friendship and can hardly be referred to as a partnership.”
Europe’s trade with the US is incomparably larger than its trade with Iran, and even if Britain, France and Germany try to maintain the Iran deal and support their companies against so-called secondary sanctions by Washington, many European banks and industries would be wary of defying America’s enormous economic clout.
The anger in Europe, however, is not so much about the cost of renewed sanctions as about the disdain for the Europeans’ arguments, and, by extension, for the trans-Atlantic alliance and all it has stood for.
There have been differences before, but to Europeans, Trump’s contempt is of a higher order, an arrogant mind-set that even on matters of paramount importance, the US will do what it wants without concern for the interests of its allies.
That was made clear by a tweet from the US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, shortly after he presented his credentials last week, declaring German firms doing business in Iran “should wind down operations immediately”. To the Germans, that was an unacceptable order to fall in line, and Grenell’s subsequent assurances that there would be no trade war did little to temper the outrage.
Roiled by its own internal crises and divisions, Europe lacks the big stick that would compel Trump to listen to reason. The sweet talk attempted by President Emmanuel Macron of France has proved equally futile. But that does not excuse Europe, and especially Germany, Britain and France, from standing firm against Washington’s bullying and making every effort to keep the Iran deal – and all the other aspects of the international order Trump has tried to destroy – from collapse. developments.