The Trump administration not only dislikes the European Union, it is
out to destroy it. The trip by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo,
to Europe last week was episode three of the onslaught, designed to play
on east-west divisions within the EU. Episode one was Donald Trump’s
2017 Warsaw speech,
infused with nativist nationalism. Episode two was Trump’s 2018 moves
on tariffs, and his tearing up of key agreements such as the Iran
nuclear deal and the
Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.
To which should be added his open encouragements to Brexiteers, and his
decision to pull out of Syria. All of the above affect European
(including British) interests in very concrete ways, unlike mere tweets
or insults thrown at allies.
Europe is trying to put up a resistance. Angela Merkel, Trump’s
favourite political target in the EU, received a standing ovation on
Saturday at the annual Munich security conference for her speech on the
virtues of
multilateralism.
But perhaps we have yet to fully fathom what the EU is dealing with in
this new Trump era. The man now whispering into Trump’s ears is John
Bolton, his national security adviser. His brand of anti-EU ideology was
on full display during Pompeo’s tour of
Budapest, Bratislava and Warsaw.
Some of it smacked of 2003 when, in the run-up to the Iraq invasion,
the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, coined the terms “
old Europe”
(bad) and “new Europe” (good). But one big difference today is that the
European project is struggling to keep afloat; back then optimists
believed it would “
run the 21st century”.
An article Bolton penned in 2000 helps to bring the Trump strategy into sharper focus. Headlined “
Should we take global governance seriously?”,
it reads today like a roadmap of the Trump administration’s intent to
destroy the EU. In it, Bolton lashes out at “globalists” who seek to tie
nation states into a web of international norms and agreements that
restrict sovereignty. He says a truly democratic mandate can only exist
at the national level. Along the way, he hammers NGOs and civil society
(“which sees itself as beyond national politics”) and the “limitless”
breadth of multi- or supra-national institutions.The EU, he says, is
“the leading source of substantive globalist policies”.
Bolton
goes further: he identifies the EU as a threat to US interests (last
year Trump called it “a foe”). “European elites” are “not content alone
with transferring their own national sovereignty to Brussels, they have
also decided, in effect, to transfer some of ours to worldwide
institutions and norms, thus making the
European Union a miniature precursor to global governance”. And he depicts the EU as “tinged with a discernable anti-Americanism”.
Never mind that Trump has arguably done more to bolster anti-American
sentiment in Europe than any other US leader. What this reveals is that
conventional explanations often given for Trump’s attacks on the EU are
only one part of the picture. Trump’s anger at the EU as a trading bloc,
his tactics to boost US armament exports to the continent, as well as
his personal aversion to Merkel, are but the translation of a wider
ideological battle about global governance.
Beware of thinking Bolton’s 2000 writings are outdated. They will
only appear so if you believe the Trump administration has no ideology
whatsoever, only commercial interests. It’s true that it’s a bit of a
stretch to think of Europe today as capable of challenging the US on the
global stage: in comparison it is a military weakling, and has endured a
decade of crises. Yet it embodies something Trump and Bolton detest.
And some of its larger member states are now trying to stand up in ways
that clearly irk the Trump team – as with the new mechanism to
sidestep sanctions against Iran.
Meanwhile, though liberal central Europeans
may hope
for positive US engagement in the region – such as Pompeo’s promise to
support an “independent media”, and Nato deployments facing Russia –
that glosses over what I’d describe as the “newspeak” contained in last
week’s visit. Words such as “freedom” and “independence” flowed from
Pompeo’s mouth as he paid tribute to those who broke away from communist
dictatorship. But there was no mention that the EU helped to anchor
democracy. The value-based dimension of the EU is arguably stronger than
that of Nato – an alliance that for years included authoritarians
(think Portugal’s Salazar regime, and the Greek colonels in power in the
1960s), and does again with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey.
Pompeo’s talk of freedom, above all, echoed Bolton’s thinking. “All
Americans celebrate their own individual freedoms, and are at least well
wishers for others around the world to enjoy the same freedoms,” Bolton
noted in 2000. However, attacking the EU, he added that the “‘human
rights’ rubric has been stretched in a variety of dimensions to become
an important component of globalists’ effort to constrain and embarrass
the independent exercise of both judicial and political authority by
nation-states”.
Today, that thinking fits perfectly with rightwing
populists in Warsaw and Budapest who complain about the EU’s response to
their curtailing of independent judges and media.
Less than 100 days before the recent European parliament election, Pompeo had dinner in
Hungary
with its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who wants to redraw Europe’s
political map to suit his vision of “illiberal democracy”. They may have
disagreed on Russia, and it’s true Pompeo did also meet NGO
representatives in Budapest, but there was little sign of divergence
with Orbán over values. It’s true also that Pompeo visited Slovakia,
whose government thinks of itself as a constructive member of the EU,
not a disruptor. But this was possibly aimed at drawing Slovakia deeper
into the embrace of European illiberals, not the other way around.
Pompeo’s visit was a vindication of the enemies of a values-based EU,
and another attack on the EU’s very existence. Postwar Europe was able
to build itself up as a collective project thanks to US protection and
financial support.
Today the EU is the target of multi-faceted political
offensives from both Washington and Moscow, not just because of what it
does, but what it is. The earlier Europeans take stock of this, the
better.
EU-Digest
The Digest Group
