The Wall Street Journal reports on a secret meeting of European and NATO leaders on what to do about President Trump:
It was almost midnight in Brussels and the leaders of Europe were locked in their fifth hour of an emergency meeting with a single theme for discussion: how to manage a breakup with America.
The new year was only three weeks old and President Trump, after removing Venezuela’s autocratic strongman, had briefly threatened to seize Greenland from Denmark. Around a circular table in the European Council headquarters known as “The Space Egg,” heads of government were venting so emotionally about the 47th president that some of the nearly 30 leaders present would later call the session “therapy night.”
European leaders purported to take the Greenland threat seriously:
Now, French soldiers were in Greenland, alongside Danish special forces equipped for a shooting war with America.
Oh, please. Europe’s leaders can’t simultaneously say that they are ready to get into a “shooting war” with us, and also be in a panic at the possibility that we might not defend them against Russia.
Canada’s Mark Carney was a leading anti-U.S. voice:
The reporting reveals the important role of Canada in molding the allied consensus on how to deal with the new Washington. Trump’s threats to make his northern neighbor America’s 51st state lighted a fuse of unintended consequences that continues to burn.
Trump’s comment about making Canada our 51st state wasn’t a threat, it was a joke or an expression of disdain. No one seriously thinks that we are going to mass troops in North Dakota for an invasion of Saskatchewan. And then, of course, there is this:
Canada, which is encouraging Europe to hedge against a more capricious America, is paradoxically much more reliant on the U.S. than almost any country on earth.
Europe’s leaders don’t like Trump, that much is clear. But what, exactly, is their complaint? Trump, believing that Europe has largely been freeloading on the U.S. with regard to security since World War II, wants them to contribute more to their own defense. That message may not be welcome, but the Europeans admit that Trump is right, and they are in fact contributing more.
More fundamentally, they are afraid that the U.S. may not be fully committed to defending them in the event of a Russian attack. I think that fear is misguided; I believe any administration would come to Europe’s defense. The problem really isn’t whether European countries spend 5% of their GDPs on defense or not. The Europeans pay lip service to this goal, but don’t mean it:
To ease the financial pain, Whitaker offered a plan under which the 3.5% for military investment could be topped-up by another 1.5% of GDP for “security-related investments,” like airport runways, meteorological services and cybersecurity, which countries were already forking out. Rutte quickly bought into the idea, reassuring holdouts: Certain bridges and tunnels could be deemed vital conduits for a potential war with Russia. In private, he prodded European colleagues: The headline number was the “win” Trump needed. In practice, they knew, no one was going to force fiscally constrained governments to meet the goal, 10 years away.
But ultimately, the issue isn’t money. The issue is whether Western Europe is capable of mustering the martial culture that would be needed in the event of another European war. I think these leaders don’t believe they can do it, and that is the root of the problem.
Meanwhile, they are looking for ways to disengage from their alliance with the U.S.:
Authorities from France to the Netherlands are quietly removing American tech from their systems, adopting European open-source software and urging civil servants to no longer use Microsoft Teams or Office. Belatedly, they are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to try to boost Europe’s own private space firms, AI companies, and data centers, to avoid leaning on U.S. juggernauts.
Will there be a revival of tech innovation in Europe? I would be glad to see it, but am not holding my breath.
To me, what is most striking about the Journal’s account is that America’s volatile president isn’t really the heart of the problem.
The French president [Macron] repeated an argument he’d been pressing for years, with mounting urgency: that Europe’s overreliance on America was a security risk. “There is no going back,” he said.
Why not? Our next president is likely to be a Democrat. Why, then, wouldn’t the alliance go back to the status quo ante? Because inexorable historical forces are at work. Because there is a difference between an alliance and a dependency. Because Trump, however erratic he may be in the moment, is, in the larger picture, right.
If Russia invades Central and Western Europe, those countries will receive our help. What really worries many European leaders, I think, is that they doubt whether their populations can be brought to fight, let alone win, a war.
