The divide grows between the U.S. and Europe
To the degree that the United States and Western Europe, in the form of alliances such as NATO, can still be considered a family of nations, the current situation can best be understood as one in which a senior member has divorced the spouse whom the rest of the family liked and married a new one whom they hate, but still has to be invited to family events.
The others, this time particularly France, Germany and the United Kingdom, see their relationship with the United States as sufficiently important not to cut ties, but live in the fervent hope that Americans will get sufficiently sick of President Donald J. Trump to rid themselves of him in November 2020, thus removing their obligation to deal with him, his relatives and his hangerson, as well as his approaches to relations and policies.
This is the basic juncture in U.S.- European relations that revealed itself clearly in the recent encounters in Europe between the heads of Western Europe’s leading countries, including Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, and various Trump surrogates such as Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan. It should be no surprise that the messages they were delivering were so badly received, given, first, that they were pure garbage as policies, and, second, that they were delivered against a background of Trump non-attendance at the parlays and constant, sometimes vicious tweets from the White House.
How could any senior U.S. official deliver a message with any certainty that he would not be humiliated by a White House tweet or fired the next day? Oh, I forgot, he cannot fire Mr. Pence, although he can deny him the second slot in the 2020 race if he so decides.
Another interesting question: Why is the Defense Department, the consumer of a huge percentage of the U.S. budget, still headed by an acting Cabinet secretary, months after Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned over policy in December? Could it be that no one wants the job, given Mr. Trump’s treatment of people who work for him? It’s not as if the secretary of defense isn’t an important member of any American government. Or is it that Mr. Trump can’t be sure that the Senate will confirm anyone he nominates, given his treatment of it? Trying to get around Congress to grub money for his wall can’t have filled their hearts with joy.
The bones of contention that have troubled the Europeans most in recent meetings are trade and Iran. On trade, in spite of the New York realtor’s claims of skill in deal-making, he has managed to create sour relationships with America’s relatively tame neighbors, Canada and Mexico, during his nearly 26 months in office. He has also riled the Western Europeans and China with tariffs, verbal threats of tariffs, and economic sanctions applied or not removed. His latest target is German cars, many of them assembled in the United States.
On Iran, the problem is that China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States signed the 2015 agreement with Iran trading its nuclear weapons program for the removal of economic sanctions against it. Mr. Trump, at the instigation of Israel and American political opponents of improving relations with Iran, withdrew the U.S. from the accord.
The Europeans, instead of saying, “Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full, sir” to Mr. Trump’s action, have instead sought to continue to take the agreement as an instrument to draw Iran into a more useful relationship with the international community, in political and economic terms. In particular, the United Kingdom, facing a break with the European Union in the form of Brexit, has pursued improved trading relations with Iran. Recently, France, Germany and the United Kingdom created a new mechanism, the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (Instex), to permit trade with Iran outside the reach of the U.S. Treasury, the U.S. banking system, U.S. sanctions and the dollar.
The more sinister line that American officials were promoting with the Europeans in recent meetings was war with Iran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, running for re-election April 9, at a meeting in Warsaw, Poland, actually tried to put it into a communique. American officials, led by Mr. Pence, were less bellicose than Mr. Netanyahu but were pushing the same line. Mr. Trump obviously feels he needs war with Iran to make himself a war president as candidate in 2020, as President George W. Bush did with the Iraq invasion in 2003.
The problem with breaking with the Western Europeans to seek a war with Iran is that it is to line the United States up instead with the Sunni Muslim states of the Middle East, including Egypt, where President and ex-Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is seeking to remain in power until 2034, and Saudi Arabia, ruled by the murderous Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as well as some of the European non-powers such as Hungary, Poland and Slovakia instead of the region’s more reasonable leaders.
European countries such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom are obviously seeking, like some Americans, simply to wait out Mr. Trump as president until, they hope, the tide changes in 2020. Their other hope is that too much damage, particularly in the form of a war with Iran which they clearly would not support, has not occurred in the meantime.