Europe's nightmare: an isolationist America

[Celerity]

A spectre is haunting Europe, Paul Mason writes. It is the spectre of Trumpism, mark two.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/europes-nightmare-an-isolationist-america

Brooding presence: Donald Trump at the NATO summit in Brussels in 2018, next to the secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg

On the evidence of the first month of this year’s polling, Donald Trump could beat Joe Biden in the American presidential election in November. There is a long way to go—on the campaign trail and in the courts—but the minds of European leaders are turning to the nightmare question: what happens to Ukraine, and indeed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, if Trump becomes president again? It haunted Emmanuel Macron, as the French president addressed the Swedish Defence Academy last week. ‘This is a decisive and testing moment for Europe. We must be ready to act to defend and support Ukraine whatever it takes and whatever America decides,’ said Macron, hinting that the project could strengthen Europe’s autonomy from its transatlantic ally.

The same fear lies behind a joint letter, signed by the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the prime ministers of Estonia, Denmark, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, calling for a major scale-up of European military aid to Ukraine. ‘If Ukraine loses,’ the letter says, ‘the long-term consequences and costs will be much higher for all of us.’ There was relief on Thursday at the unanimous decision by the European Council to raise €50 billion for Ukraine during the next two years—the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, having withdrawn under pressure his earlier veto. But the strategic concern remains.

Political capital

Despite Trump’s threat, under his previous presidency, to walk away from NATO, made at the organisation’s Brussels summit in 2018, it is unlikely that the United States would pull out of the alliance altogether, were he re-elected. A decision to abrogate the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty would require a vote in Congress and expend political capital Trump may not have. By executive order he could however draw down American personnel from NATO duties in Europe or—following the model of France from 1966 to 2009—withdraw from the military-command structures of NATO. More particularly, he could pull aid, intelligence support and the supply of ammunition to Ukraine, in an attempt to engineer a sell-out peace deal favouring Russia. So European leaders face three huge challenges. They need to find tens of billions of euro to plug a funding gap left by the US. They must ramp up their fragmented and competing arms industries to supply the weapons, ammunition and intelligence needed.

And they must do all this while mounting a credible force at NATO’s borders—to deter further Russian aggression—with no guarantee of American backing. Let us be honest. Suppose that they could find the money and that they could scale Europe’s defence industrial capacity to support Ukraine—even that the United Kingdom as a NATO though ex-EU member were fully integrated into the project. The intelligence, surveillance, targeting and reconnaissance tasks now carried out under US leadership would be beyond the European powers as currently equipped. Whether they committed to the task and failed or—more likely—folded in the face of the enormity of the problem, the implications for Ukraine would be the same. It would be forced to seek a temporary peace with Russia, to avoid being overrun once again in the summer of 2025.

Strategic concept...............

snip

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. TFG will let Putin attack Europe

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet