EU leaders: Might have to go it alone
Trump comments cause ‘astonishment’
BRUSSELS — European leaders said Monday that they may have to stand alone without the United States once Donald Trump enters office, raising the prospect of an unprecedented breach in transatl antic relations after Trump’s comments that the European Union is bound for a breakup and that NATO is obsolete.
Trump said in a weekend interview with the Times of London and Germany’s Bild newspaper that the 28-nation European Union was a vehicle for German interests and said that he was indifferent to the bloc’s fate. He also said he was committed to European defense even as he expressed skepticism about NATO’s current configuration.
Trump’s attitudes have alarmed Europe, which is facing a wave of elections this year in which antiimmigrant, Euroskeptic leaders could gain in power. Most mainstream leaders had committed to working with Trump after his inauguration Jan. 20, even as they expressed hope that he would moderate his views once he took office.
“We Europeans have our destiny in our own hands,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin. She pledged to work with Trump whenever it would be possible.
The full ramifications of a breakdown in transatlantic relations are so extensive they are difficult to total. U.S. guarantees underpin European security. The United States and the European Union, with a population of 500 million, are each other’s most important trading partner.
Trump’s comments “caused astonishment and excitement, not just in Brussels,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters in Brussels on Monday, where he was gathering with other European foreign ministers at a previously scheduled German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged Monday to work with president-elect Donald Trump whenever possible. “We Europeans have our destiny in our own hands,” she said. meeting. Coming directly from a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Steinmeier said NATO had listened to Trump’s comments “with concern.”
The incoming U.S. president is the first American leader since World War II not to support European integration. The European Union has long been considered to be in the U.S. interest, because it created a unified market for U.S. businesses, provided a bulwark against communism during the Cold War and helped quell the bloody slaughter that cost U.S. lives, among others, in the first half of the 20th century. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the European Union expanded eastward into formerly communist nations, a development that leaders there say helped bring rule of law and stability as they modernized their economies.
Steinmeier said that Germany was still trying to assess what U.S. foreign policy will be.
For example, James Mattis, the retired general nominated to be Trump’s defense secretary, offered straightforward support for NATO and skepticism of Russia at his confirmation hearing last week.
“Wehave to see what will come out for American pol- icy,” Steinmeier said.
French leaders, who face tough presidential elections in April, also appeared to be scrambling to handle the fallout. Trump allies have expressed support for the anti-EU, anti-immigrant National Front, whose leader, Marine Le Pen, is doing well in opinion polls. Le Pen lunched in the basement of Trump Tower last week in the company of a man who has served as an i nformal conduit f or Trump’s contacts with Euroskeptic leaders on the continent, although the Trump transition team denied any formal meeting with her.
“The best response is