{"id":1366,"date":"2018-07-30T19:50:17","date_gmt":"2018-07-30T19:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euromenaenergy.com\/?p=1366"},"modified":"2018-07-30T19:50:17","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T19:50:17","slug":"is-europe-americas-friend-or-foe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/?p=1366","title":{"rendered":"Is Europe America\u2019s friend or foe?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By Jean Pisani-Ferry\/Paris<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Since Donald Trump became US president in January 2017, his conduct has been astonishingly erratic, but his policies have been more consistent than foreseen by most observers. Trump\u2019s volatility has been disconcerting, but on the whole he has acted in accordance with promises made on the campaign trail and with views held long before anyone considered his election possible. Accordingly, a new cottage industry in rational theories of Trump\u2019s seemingly irrational behaviour has developed.
\nThe latest challenge is to make sense of his stance towards Europe. At a rally on June 28, he said: \u201cWe love the countries of the European Union. But the European Union, of course, was set up to take advantage of the United States. And you know what, we can\u2019t let that happen.\u201d During his recent trip to the continent, he called the EU \u201ca foe\u201d and said it was \u201cpossibly as bad as China.\u201d Regarding Brexit, he declared that British Prime Minister Theresa May should have \u201csued\u201d the EU. Then came the truce, on July 25: Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, agreed to work jointly on an agenda of free trade and World Trade Organisation reform.
\nSo it seems we are friends again \u2013 or perhaps just resting before the dispute resumes. But the deeper question remains: Why has Trump repeatedly attacked America\u2019s oldest and most reliable ally? Why does he seem to despise the EU so deeply? Why should the US try to undermine Europe, rather than seeking closer co-operation to protect its economic and geopolitical interests?
\nTrump\u2019s approach is particularly striking given that China\u2019s rapid emergence as a strategic rival is America\u2019s main national security issue. Contrary to earlier hopes, China is converging with the West neither politically nor economically, because the role of the state and the ruling party in co-ordinating activities remains far greater. Geopolitically, China has been actively building clienteles, most visibly through its Belt and Road Initiative, and it intends to \u201cfoster a new type of international relations\u201d that departs from the model promoted by the US in the twentieth century. Militarily, it has embarked on a significant build-up. Obviously, China, not Europe, is the number one challenge to US world supremacy.
\nFormer president Barack Obama\u2019s China strategy combined dialogue and pressure. He started building two mega-economic alliances that excluded China and Russia: the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 other Pacific Rim countries, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union. But Trump withdrew the US from the TPP and killed the TTIP before it was born. Then he opened a trade rift with the EU. And he has attacked both the EU and its member states, especially Germany.
\nThere are three possible explanations. One is Trump\u2019s peculiar obsession with bilateral trade balances. According to this view, Trump regards Germany, the rest of Europe, and China as equally threatening competitors. Nobody else thinks this makes economic sense. And the only result he can expect from this strategy is to hurt and weaken the long-standing Atlantic partnership. But he has been complaining about Mercedes cars in the streets of New York City at least since the 1990s.
\nA second explanation is that Trump wants to prevent the EU from positioning itself as the third player in a trilateral game. If the US intends to turn the relationship with China into a bilateral power struggle, there are good reasons for it to regard the EU as an obstacle. Because it is itself governed by law, the EU is bound to oppose a purely transactional approach to international relations. And a united Europe that commands access to the world\u2019s largest market is not a trivial player. But after the EU has been undermined, if not disbanded, weak and divided European countries would have no choice but to rally behind the US.
\nFinally, a more political reading of Trump\u2019s behaviour is that he is seeking regime change in Europe. In fact, he has not disguised his belief that Europe is \u201closing its culture\u201d because it has let immigration \u201cchange its fabric.\u201d And Stephen Bannon, his former chief strategist, has announced that he will spend half of his time in Europe to help build an alliance of nationalist parties and win a majority in next May\u2019s European Parliament elections.
\nA few weeks ago, only the first reading looked plausible. The other two could be dismissed as fantasies inspired by conspiracy theories. No US president had ever presented the EU as a plot to weaken the US. Indeed, all of Trump\u2019s postwar predecessors would have recoiled in horror at the idea of the EU\u2019s dissolution. But the US president has gone too far for Europe to dismiss the more dismal scenarios.
\nFor the EU, this is a pivotal moment. In the 1950s, it was launched beneath the US security umbrella and with America\u2019s blessing. Since then, it has been built as a geopolitical experiment conducted under US protection and in the context of a US-led international system. For this reason, its external dimensions \u2013 economically, diplomatically, or regarding security \u2013 have always come second to its internal development.
\nWhat the recent crisis signifies is that this is no longer true. Europe must now define its strategic stance vis-\u00e0-vis a more distant and possibly hostile US, and vis-\u00e0-vis rising powers that have no reason to be kind to it. It must stand for its values. And it must urgently decide what it intends to do regarding its security and defence, its neighbourhood policy, and its border protection. This is an acid test.
\nEconomically, the EU still has the potential to be a global player. The size of its market, the strength of its major companies, a unified trade policy, a common regulatory policy, a single competition authority, and a currency that is second only to the dollar are major assets. It could \u2013 and should \u2013 use them to push for a revamping of international relations that addresses legitimate US grievances vis-\u00e0-vis China and legitimate Chinese concerns over its international role. Europe has played a leading role in fighting climate change; it could do the same for trade, investment, or finance.
\nEurope\u2019s main problem is political, not economic. The challenge it is facing comes at a moment when it is divided between island and continent, North and South, and East and West. And the questions posed are fundamental: What defines a nation? Who is in charge of borders? Who guarantees security? Is the EU based on shared values or on the pure calculus of national interests?
\nIf the EU fails to define itself for a world that is fundamentally different from that of ten years ago, it probably will not survive as a meaningful institution. If it does, however, it may regain the sense of purpose and legitimacy in the eyes of citizens that years of economic and political setbacks have eroded. \u2013 Project Syndicate<\/p>\n

* Jean Pisani-Ferry, a professor at the Hertie School of Governance (Berlin) and Sciences Po (Paris), holds the Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa chair at the European University Institute and is a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jean Pisani-Ferry\/Paris Since Donald Trump became US president in January 2017, his conduct has been astonishingly erratic, but his policies have been more consistent than foreseen by most observers. Trump\u2019s volatility…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1368,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,57,90,96,107,137,139,160,174,184,201,202,209,232,233,244,246,249,256,267,277,279,288],"class_list":["post-1366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aramco","tag-baroudi","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-embargo","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}