(This article was written by Derk Jan Eppink and appeared in Wynia’s Week. Derk Jan Eppink: Donald Trump gaat Europa op het appèl roepen)
He gets along well with Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orbán, but with most European heads of government it is a different story. Mark Rutte he will use above all to make the European NATO countries pay more for their defense. Derk Jan Eppink looks ahead from Washington to the second term of ‘comeback kid’ Donald Trump.
Never has a politician risen so powerfully like a phoenix from its ashes as Donald Trump. His victory in the 2016 presidential elections seemed a freak accident. He lost to Joe Biden in 2020 and brought upon himself the stain of 6 January 2021 when his supporters stormed Congress.
Trump seemed finished, got all sorts of trials on his back, prison threatened and during the election campaign he faced two assassination attempts. He was branded by Democrats a ‘nazi’, ‘fascist’ and ‘Hitler’ but nonetheless becomes the first president since Grover Cleveland (1885-1889 and 1893-1897) with two non-consecutive terms in the White House. Trump, the ‘comeback kid’.
His victory also has to do with the inability of the Democrats to come up with a viable candidate. The party bungled constantly this year. President Biden’s cognitive deficiencies were long covered up and only came to light during a debate with Trump, which Biden himself had requested. It became his Waterloo. The leader of the Western world turned out to be a helpless elderly man who could no longer handle his task. Vice-president Kamala Harris took over the torch but could not develop a profile of her own. Her campaign had something of amateur theater about it. The established media hoisted her on their shield, but the shortcomings of Harris could not be hidden. Voters saw that sooner than the media, now in depression.
The Democrats are due for some soul-searching. Just as in 2016, they lost parts of their ‘coalition of minorities’. Trump broke into their base: among Latinos and black men. He turned the Republican party into a party for the working population, for the common man. The swing states in the Midwest went to Trump. The Republican party became a workers’ party; the Democratic party an association of the higher-educated, better-off and better-knowing intellectuals. In short, a party of the elite. It is a gap that is also visible in Western Europe and in the Netherlands.
What is Trump going to do once he is sworn in on 20 January 2025? He has already paid a lot of tuition in the years after 2016. He has learned above all how not to do it, and made many mistakes in hiring staff. ‘You are fired’ they often heard. The White House seemed a transit house and chaos reigned. During this campaign Trump was more disciplined, as far as possible at least, and he also has an idea of which staff he will need. At the State Department Mike Pompeo may come, who knows how to wield that axe.
Foreign affairs demand almost as much attention from Trump as domestic affairs: the war in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East, trade disputes with numerous countries and the rise of China. In foreign policy Trump has an almost free hand, and with a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives he has little trouble from the Democrats, who are licking their wounds.
Europe, however, can brace itself, because Trump’s irritation with the old continent is great. It stands to reason that he will give a speech in which he serves European countries some ‘tough love’. He believes that European member states of NATO must contribute more. NATO is a cornerstone of security policy for Republicans too, but the fact that the Americans pay the lion’s share of European defense must change.
In his first term Trump already reprimanded European heads of government and seemed like a headmaster calling unwilling pupils to account. During a NATO meeting Trump produced a piece of paper and went through all the heads of government. Countries that paid their share received praise, but the defaulters got a verbal spanking. Above all the German chancellor Angela Merkel: Germany, at 1,5 percent for defense, was not good, not good. Merkel had to undergo this scolding with all her European colleagues present.
Trump is going to crank up the percentage, so it is said in Washington. If 2 percent of GDP as a benchmark is already a lot for many European countries, Trump is going to demand more: 3 percent. A fine assignment for the new secretary-general of NATO, Mark Rutte, to collect the ‘overdue rent’ from European member states on behalf of the real estate owner in Washington DC. There must also be an end to budget tricks to artificially pump up the defense budget. Thus Germany pays the pensions of former GDR officers out of the defense budget. Pure budget pollution.
The European Commission too ends up in the doghouse. In the worldview of Trump (and many American conservatives) the EU is a regional organization like the Organization of American States (OAS). In his eyes Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is an unelected top official who is not on an equal footing with elected national leaders. As a counterpart Trump sees elected heads of government, and with them he does business. He sees nothing in supranational organizations such as the EU, but does in intergovernmental organizations such as NATO.
That attitude does make trade policy with America difficult, because that is the exclusive competence of the EU. Trump wants trade barriers for American companies to be cleared away and accuses the EU of protectionism. It is better if an authoritative head of government discusses that with Trump, because he does not want to see Von der Leyen. But the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni will be more to his taste.
The Netherlands is in Trump’s good books, certainly the current coalition with Geert Wilders who even provided the Americans with voting advice for Trump. Such gestures he does not forget. With Germany Trump has less affinity, and that will show. German politics and media are boundlessly negative about Trump, in an almost childish way. East Germany even displays traits of anti-Americanism. With the French president relations are sometimes strained. Trump then threatens, in a dispute, with import duties on, for example, French champagne. Emmanuel Macron then quickly tucks his tail back in.
The head of government with whom Trump has the best relationship is the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. They are thick friends. The relationship with Poland is strained because Trump is angry at the Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, who is busy at high speed doing what his predecessors also did: making life difficult for the media and dismissing judges. The relationship with British prime minister Keir Starmer will also be prickly. The British Labour party sent volunteers to America to help the Democrats with their election campaign. Trump sees that as ‘interference’.
A new theme in Trump’s relationship with Europe is the war in Ukraine. Trump has always said that the Russian invasion in 2022 would not have happened if he had still been president. At campaign rallies he announced that after his election and before his inauguration he would put an end to the war in Ukraine. Raising the question ‘how do we get out of that war?’ is in itself not bad. But how Trump is going to do that, he has not said. Is he going to summon the Russian president Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky together? Is he going to put pressure on them with hard sanctions for Russia and fewer weapons for Ukraine?
In any case, Trump’s patience with Europe has run out. And Europe will notice that even more than was already the case in his first term as president.
Derk Jan Eppink is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.
