Feeling that Trump will ‘say anything,’ Europe less restrained
HAMBURG, Germany — The Europeans have stopped trying to paper over their differences with President Donald Trump and the United States.
Traditionally respectful of U.S. leadership and mindful of the country’s crucial role in European defense and global trade, European leaders normally repress or soften their criticism of U.S. presidents. Europeans were generally not happy with President Barack Obama’s reluctance to involve the country in Libya and Syria, for example, or his tardiness to engage in what clearly became an international confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, but their criticism was quiet.
But at the Group of 20 summit meeting of the world’s industrialized nations, public splits with Trump were the order of the day. Those rifts have been reflected in European domestic politics, too, from Britain and France to Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Europe must “take our fate into our own hands” and stop “glossing over” clear differences.
The new French president, Emmanuel Macron, whose election has given renewed confidence to the Europeans, said bluntly: “Our world has never been so divided. Centrifugal forces have never been so powerful. Our common goods have never been so threatened.”
Macron, who waved his iPhone around during the meeting as a symbol of global trade, sharply criticized those like Trump who do not support multilateral institutions but push nationalism instead.
“We need better coordination, more coordination,” Macron said. “We need those organizations that were created out of the Second World War. Otherwise, we will be moving back toward narrowminded nationalism.”
Trump and the British vote to leave the European Union “have proved to be great unifiers for the European Union,” said Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “There is a renewed sense of confidence in Europe after the French election,” the apparent retreat of populism, an increase in economic growth and the prospect of Merkel’s re-election in September, he said.
“There is an increased willingness to be assertive toward Trump, who makes Merkel look like a figure of international importance,” Leonard said. “If the election is about who can save the international world order from Trump,” he added, then Merkel’s opposition seems unimportant and she finds an eager partner in Macron. “They egg each other on and feel more self-confident together and help keep Europe together, too.”
Jan Techau, director of the Richard Holbrooke Forum at the American Academy in Berlin, said: “There is now a more openly confrontational language with the United States. The European public is already outspoken about Trump, but now there is a more outspoken European leadership that won’t paper over these divisions anymore.”
If Europeans had previously felt constrained because of their security dependency, Techau said, there is now a feeling that “Trump has no constraints and will say anything, and now the Europeans feel they can do the same.” And, he said, “that means less respect for each other, and less mutual confidence.”
The strains were most visible here on climate policy and trade. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord was widely condemned, with Merkel saying she deplored the move, and all the leaders aside from Trump signing up to language that called the agreement “irreversible.”
“Whatever leadership is,” said one senior French diplomat, who was not authorized to speak by name and insisted on anonymity, “it is not being outvoted, 19-1.”