Europe should have grown up a long time ago — now with Trump there’s no choice – POLITICO Europe

It was only three years ago that the world was left aghast by Russia’s full-scale invasion of a neighboring sovereign nation. But now, it seems Trump, the leader of the free world, and Russian President Vladimir Putin are of the same mind: Might makes right — and it has prerogatives too.

Europe had plenty of warnings about what a second Trump term might entail. But amid much eye-rolling, hand-wringing and wishful thinking, it failed to put a plan in place that would minimize the impact of a man who seems to relish the prospect of emulating former U.S. President William McKinley.

America’s 25th president also imposed protective tariffs and expanded U.S. territory, gaining control of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines during his time in office. And in a nod to his kindred political spirit, Trump lauded McKinley in his inauguration address, praising his predecessor for paving the way for the Panama Canal. “We’re taking it back,” Trump said.

He later signed an executive order reversing former President Barack Obama’s decision to rename North America’s highest peak by its ancient name “Denali,” and restoring it as Mount McKinley.

So, what lessons should America’s Western allies draw from the first few days of Trump’s reintroduction of the law of the jungle?

First, of course, the obvious one: The next four years are going to be torrid for them.

Trump 2.0 is a disorienting step change from the president’s first term — more triumphalist, confident and determined to ignore guardrails; more revolutionary in how it sets about implementing the “America First” agenda. Disassembling what has gone before is the chosen strategy for what is set to be a massive realignment both at home and abroad, and the howls of disapproval from critics will merely embolden an administration that sees protest as evidence it’s on the right track.

The Trump doctrine pursued at home or abroad is cut from the same cloth. What the president wants, the president should get without congressional constraint or legal quibble — hence, the arbitrary and likely illegal suspension of foreign aid, abrupt freezing of federal assistance programs and loans, and the mass firing of civil servants, including inspectors general. The ambition is to replace a seemingly professional civil service — at least at the higher ranks — with an enlarged spoils system instead.

Internationally, whether Trump would actually invade Greenland is, to some extent, beside the point. But he’s serious about acquiring the island, declining to rule out an invasion and threatening a fellow NATO member. And in Trump 2.0, it’s okay to try and poach a territory using military threats or crushing tariffs to do so.

Too often, Trump has been mischaracterized an isolationist — he’s not. At heart he’s always been a mercantilist, and his sudden expansionism is wrapped up with his ambition to augment U.S. economic power. Greenland has enormous untapped mineral wealth, and 40 percent of U.S. seaborne container traffic plies the Panama Canal.

This brings us to the second lesson for America’s Western allies: Their options are stark, and it’s going to cost cash-strapped Europe one way or another. The bloc has to start looking after itself — America is no longer paying for its defense in the way it has before, and Trump’s mercantilism will see him do everything he can to ensure the U.S. increases its wealth by selling more than it buys from other nations.

Muddling through and thinking everything will reset in four years’ time isn’t going to cut it. There’s scant common ground between the European establishment and the powers that be in Washington now. The first administration’s transatlanticists like Mike Pompeo, James Mattis and H.R. McMaster are long gone. Rather than show at a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting to get the new transatlantic relationship off on the right foot, new Secretary of State Marco Rubio simply placed a call. There’s no one in Washington who can or wants to moderate Trump.

In response, Europe could just roll over and do Trump’s bidding. But it would then have to endure without demur his disorienting goading and needling, likely followed by ever bigger demands. It would certainly have to follow through on the admittedly justified U.S. demand to dramatically boost defense expenditure and shoulder a much fairer burden for the West’s defense.

In this scenario, the bloc should also probably copy Saudi Arabia and purchase more weapons systems rather than focus on developing its own defense industries. Taking this route, Europe would have to fully choose between Trump and China — no more fence-sitting or trying to have it both ways in the name of growth.

Alternatively, however, the European Union could brace against the hurricane and become as coldly and determinedly transactional as Trump. Go tit-for-tat when the inevitable tariffs are imposed and get serious about strategic autonomy.

Europe does have some economic leverage of its own — if it’s steadfast enough to apply it. As Rym Momtaz of Carnegie Europe highlighted: “EU countries represented 45 percent of all foreign direct investment pouring into the United States in 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis — amounting to $2.4 trillion. European private savings accounts and businesses invest three times as much in the United States as the next region does. This not only creates and sustains millions of U.S. jobs but also contributes to fueling America’s innovation and industrial edge in its competition with China.”

Moreover, Europe is responsible for buying 50 percent of all U.S. liquefied natural gas exports and 28 percent of all U.S. natural gas exports. From 2019 to 2023, it received more than a quarter of U.S. arms exports — an uptick from 11 percent between 2014 and 2018, and it buys 17 percent of U.S. exports overall. American exporters would thus howl if they started facing retaliatory tariffs. (Interestingly, McKinley — who was dubbed the “Napoleon of Protection” — changed his mind about tariffs late into in his second term, and announced support for reciprocal trade treaties the day before his death.)

But beyond that, going toe-to-toe with Trump would require a total rethink about geopolitics and Europe’s place in the world. It would require refashioning the transatlantic relationship, while Washington actively seeks to split the bloc by approaching its members on a bilateral basis and encouraging ideological allies on the continent — like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico — to disrupt EU unity.

Europe’s leaders have much to blame themselves for. They wasted time and talked a big game while doing little to Trump-proof the bloc. They consigned their nightmare scenario of his return to the back of their minds rather than prepare for it, and their indecision has compounded the failure to expand the bloc’s military forces and to stop treating the transatlantic relationship like an à la carte menu — picking and choosing delicacies without paying the full tab.

The EU should have grown up a long time ago — now it may be forced to.