How they see us: If Trump wins, Europe’s on its own
A second Trump presidency would produce a “destabilizing shock wave” across Europe, said Sylvie Kauffmann in Le Monde (France). During his first term, Trump publicly called NATO obsolete and harangued European leaders about falling behind on their defense spending obligations. Now we’ve learned from those leaders that he went even further privately. A French EU commissioner said last week that at the 2020 World Economic Forum, Trump was brutally blunt with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “If Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you,” Trump told her. “NATO is dead.” That was a chilling prospect four years ago. Now that “war has returned to the continent,” it is downright terrifying. If Ukraine falls to Russia, more European countries could follow. That’s why Europe needs to “start Trump-proofing,” said Bruce Stokes in Politico.eu (Belgium). First, European governments will have to raid their budgets to find money for Ukraine aid. And in the longer term, they must supercharge their own defense spending.
Few believe Trump could actually pull the U.S. out of NATO, because Congress wouldn’t let him, said Nana Brink in the Frankfurter Rundschau (Germany). But he could well alter the terms of U.S. support to defend only those countries that met their obligation to spend 2 percent of their GDP on the military—the money he repeatedly and falsely claimed was NATO dues. Or he could simply let the alliance “go dormant,” with a “massive reduction of the U.S. presence in Europe.” That means Germany would have to become the backbone of conventional defense against Russia. We have a long way to go to get there, said Joachim Käppner in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany). After Russia invaded Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz famously said we were at a “historic turning point” and that Germany would massively invest in its military. But two years on, we’ve made little progress. And what if the U.S. withdraws its nuclear umbrella? France and the U.K. each have nukes, but not enough to deter a Russian first strike. Yet Berlin has so far “ignored France’s offers of joint planning” for a nuclear policy. We will have to work together if we are to survive without U.S. protection.
If a Trump comeback forces such cooperation, it could actually prove good for Europe—“and especially for the United Kingdom,” said Richard Vinen in UnHerd (U.K.). The British relationship with America is unhealthy: We’re like young adults who still live with our parents, “sulking and complaining but assuming that someone else will do the laundry.” Trump’s return would explode that complacency and compel us to finally “get a flat of our own.” After all, Trump is correct that Russia is a threat to Europe but not to the U.S., so why should America bear the brunt of containing it? Europe, including the U.K., should create a new defense alliance focused on containing Russia. Even if Trump loses in November, it’s time for European leaders to stop seeing America as a protector and instead “look to one another for the defense of their own continent.”