A transatlantic rift?

Donald Trump isn’t the first president to make Europe’s leaders nervous, said Chris Cillizza on Cnn.com. Recall how spooked they were by George W. Bush’s “cowboy” approach to foreign affairs. But at least Bush “never sought to undo the basic tenets of Nato or the G7”. Whereas Trump did just that on his first official trip to Europe last week, said Tom Peck in The Independent. He hectored his Nato allies for “chronically underfunding” Nato; looked set to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement; and called Germany “bad, very bad” for flooding the US market with its cars. Who can blame Angela Merkel for suggesting an era of transatlantic co-operation is coming to an end? “The era in which we could fully rely on others is over to some extent,” she said. “We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands – in friendship, of course, with the US and Great Britain – but we must fight for our own future and destiny.”

Salute the new “leader of the free world”, said Suzanne Moore in The Guardian. There is “a vision, a morality, a core” to Merkel that the arrogant, bumbling Trump entirely lacks. She’s in a class of her own: “this is what strong and stable actually looks like”. But she was highly irresponsible in talking as she did, said Gideon Rachman in the FT. Yes, Trump’s performance – notably his pointed refusal to reaffirm the “one-for-all, all-for-one” principle enshrined in Nato’s Article 5 – has widened the rift in the Atlantic alliance. But by implying that the alliance is indeed coming to an end, Merkel compounded his error. And how unfair to bracket the UK – which has sided with the EU on climate change and stressed its commitment to Nato – with Trump’s America. In any case, Trump’s actions speak louder than his words, said The Times. The US is deploying four battalions to the Baltic states and Poland: Western European Nato members are deploying only two. This is the true measure both of the US commitment to Europe and of Europe’s failure to take more responsibility for its own security.

Whisper it quietly, said Yascha Mounk on Slate, but Trump actually makes Europe’s leaders happy. They’ve always looked down on America: its culture, its cuisine, its brash politics. And they can’t quite conceal their jealousy that this vulgar upstart isn’t just richer and more powerful, but the “world centre for fashion, science, pop culture and technological progress”. Trump, with his plebeian manners, his bellicosity and his crude plans to keep out Mexican immigrants and Muslims, helps restore their good image of themselves. They forget that their governments, too, have built hundreds of miles of border fortifications and spent vast sums to get a sworn enemy of democracy, President Erdogan of Turkey, to keep migrants at bay. Their centre-right parties, including Merkel’s CDU, have shamelessly failed to expel Viktor Orbán of Hungary, another enemy of democracy, from their group in the European Parliament. Merkel, the “new leader of the free world”, remains his political ally. Europe and America’s leaders need to recognise that they’re far more alike than they like to admit.