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French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes President Donald Trump at the Biarritz lighthouse, southwestern France, ahead of a working dinner in 2019.
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Ronald H. Linden: With Biden failing and Trump rising, Europe holds its breath

Markus Schreiber/AP

Ronald H. Linden: With Biden failing and Trump rising, Europe holds its breath

While Amer­i­cans wait to de­cide be­tween some­one whose gaffes make us cringe and some­one who just makes us cringe, we should know that we are not the only ones fear­ful about the re­sults in No­vem­ber. The peo­ple of Europe — and es­pe­cially their lead­ers — worry about what a fail­ing Joe Biden and a re-emerg­ing Don­ald Trump would mean for their lives and their fu­ture.

Con­cerns are not un­founded.

Trashed ties

In the years be­tween 2017 and 2021, then-Pres­i­dent Trump trashed U.S.-Euro­pean ties thor­oughly and on pur­pose and left us all worse off at home and glob­ally. In vir­tu­ally ev­ery area of cru­cial co­op­er­a­tion, Trump de­railed joint ac­tion and de­meaned and dis­missed the ef­forts of the Euro­pe­ans.

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These were not ver­bal stum­bles or mo­men­tary loss of con­cen­tra­tion. These were the aims and means of Trump’s “Amer­ica first” pol­icy. Nei­ther we nor the Euro­pe­ans can doubt that this ap­proach will be in play again if he is re-elected.

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Com­plain­ing that Amer­ica got a “raw deal” in trade, Don­ald Trump ended ne­go­ti­a­tions on a com­pre­hen­sive treaty with our most im­por­tant part­ner. U.S.-Europe trade is more than dou­ble that with China; U.S. in­vest­ment stock in Europe, twenty times that in China. Euro­pean in­vest­ment sup­ports one-quar­ter of a mil­lion jobs in Penn­syl­va­nia.

In­stead of co­op­er­a­tion in the face of an eco­nom­i­cally ag­gres­sive China, Trump em­braced trade wars, de­scrib­ing them as “good, and easy to win.” He ap­plied tar­iffs on Euro­pean alu­mi­num, steel and other ex­ports to the U.S., dress­ing them up as na­tional se­cu­rity.

On that, he also es­chewed joint ac­tion. In 2018 Trump pulled the U.S. out of the multi-sided Joint Com­pre­hen­sive Plan of Ac­tion that aimed at mon­i­tor­ing and re­strict­ing Iran’s nu­clear am­bi­tions. The plan pro­vided for en­force­able lim­its, on-site in­spec­tions and in­cluded the UK, France, Ger­many and the In­ter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency.

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It of­fered the first ef­fec­tive re­straints on Iran’s nu­clear ca­pa­bil­i­ties. No. Much bet­ter, un­der “Amer­i­can First,” to have no mon­i­tor­ing or ef­fec­tive pen­al­ties at all, es­pe­cially in light of Iran’s peace­ful ori­en­ta­tion.

For good mea­sure, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the long­stand­ing bi­lat­eral treaty with Rus­sia that had lim­ited de­ploy­ment of in­ter­me­di­ate range nu­clear mis­siles tar­get­ing Europe. Glad we’re not hear­ing any nu­clear threats from Vladimir Putin.

Go­ing it alone

The path of U.S.-Euro­pean re­la­tions dur­ing Trump time is lit­tered with U.S. re­jec­tion of mul­ti­na­tional ef­forts to deal with prob­lems that do not re­spect na­tional bound­aries — Amer­ica’s or any­body else’s. Like dis­ease. Trump sus­pended fund­ing for the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion and started with­draw­ing the U.S. from that or­ga­ni­za­tion.

He with­drew the U.S. from the Paris Cli­mate ac­cords, which, for the first time, put bind­ing goals and lim­its on na­tional pro­duc­tion of the CO2 emis­sions that are cook­ing the planet and ren­der­ing weather more un­pre­dict­able and dan­ger­ous than ever. Both of these ac­tions — as well as many other such iso­la­tion­ist moves — were re­versed by Joe Biden.

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As these ex­am­ples show, Don­ald Trump’s go-it-alone strat­egy was not con­fined to Europe. He pulled the U.S. out of the Trans Pa­cific Part­ner­ship that would have fa­cil­i­tated the ef­forts of 12 of the larg­est Asian econ­o­mies to stand up to China.

Dur­ing 2018 he abruptly or­dered U.S. troops out of Syria, then back in to pro­tect oil, then aban­doned our Kurd­ish al­lies there — the most ef­fec­tive counter to the Isla­mist ISIS forces. These pol­i­cies prompted his own Sec­re­tary of De­fense, Gen­eral Jim Mathis, to re­sign.

Still, these could at least be con­sid­ered pol­i­cies. Those en­am­ored of an “Amer­i­ca first” ap­proach could make a prin­ci­pled ar­gu­ment about their mer­its. But as in do­mes­tic pol­i­cies, Trump for­eign pol­icy was es­sen­tially trans­ac­tional.

He of­fered aid to an em­bat­tled Ukraine only on con­di­tion that its leader dig up dirt against an elec­tion op­po­nent. Trump fawned over dic­ta­tors like Kim Jong Un of North Korea (who promptly rolled out new and big­ger mis­siles), dis­par­aged ties with our South Korean ally, and blessed Vladimir Putin’s de­nial of Rus­sian med­dling in our elec­tions when U.S. in­tel­li­gence find­ings showed ex­actly that.

Cast­ing NATO as a pro­tec­tion racket, he in­vited Rus­sia to “do what­ever the hell they want” to any ally who did not pay up.

Too dan­ger­ous for so­lip­sism

Half a decade ago, the world was al­ready too dan­ger­ous for such so­lip­sism. Since then, we have seen a dev­as­tat­ing pan­demic, the re­turn of na­tional and sub­na­tional war­fare in Europe and the Mid­dle East, and a de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of nat­u­ral con­di­tions that, along with des­per­a­tion and war, is pro­duc­ing a global mi­gra­tion cri­sis.

In the midst of this, U.S. in­ter­ests and val­ues, which we share with our al­lies, face ma­jor po­lit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal chal­lenges. Given Europe’s tur­bu­lent his­tory, its peo­ple know — and we should as well — the con­se­quences of spurn­ing co­op­er­a­tion in fa­vor of a trans­ac­tional uni­lat­er­al­ism that can only of­fer na­tion­al­is­tic fan­ta­sies.

Ronald H. Linden is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he directed the Russian and East European Studies and European Studies programs. From 1989 to 1991 he served as director of research for Radio Free Europe. His previous article was “The growing European Right may change Europe, and for the worse.” On this subject, see also his “Donald Trump is wrong: America needs NATO.”

First Published: July 9, 2024, 9:30 a.m.

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French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes President Donald Trump at the Biarritz lighthouse, southwestern France, ahead of a working dinner in 2019.  (Markus Schreiber/AP)
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